"Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions."

While most books about vocation give tips for success, goals to achieve, or habits to form Let Your Life Speak (1999) by Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to our lives. Palmer, a scholar and activist, shares that finding vocation comes from paying attention to our lives and not from striving for improvement. He illustrates this by sharing his own vocational and spiritual journey. Clear, vulnerable, and reassuring, Palmer helps readers dial down the background noise. The quiet brings relief and helps us hear what our lives are saying.

We try to find what we were made to do in life through wrestling and striving for opportunities we believe we should possess. But Palmer reminds us that vocation is the call of our lives, and we must listen and respond. Through emphasizing this inner calling, Palmer promotes inner intercity. The outside world poses many opinions on what paths we should take, but to listen for our own vocation, we must know the values and truths that we hold dear. Sometimes listening to truth requires ignoring outside influences. When we listen to truth, it is easier to hear and follow the voice of our lives calling us to do what we were created to do.

In the most powerful point of this book, Palmer points out that knowing our own limits is key to finding out and understanding vocation. Rather than fearing things that we cannot do or handle, Palmer calls us to embrace our liabilities. He shares his own journey with depression. He dsicribes a time in his life when he ignored his true self for so long and fell into a pit of depression. He could not escape his struggle without acknowledge the depression that called him to his need. He writes, “God gives us strength by suffering with us.” By acknowledging his depression rather than pushing it aside, Palmer found some relief. He points to presence in suffering as a way toward healing. This is an example of listening to our lives. Palmer encourages readers to care for others not by trying to fix their problems, but rather by sitting with them in their life’s mysteries.

Let Your Life Speak gifts gentle wisdom that slows the reader down enough to put aside quick tips and SMART goals for a moment. Palmer invites us to quiet those external things that often add to the noise and humbly pay attention to where we have been and where we might be going. Vocation calls us, and Palmer reminds us to listen.