Perhaps it is because I live with someone who has just completed his freshman year in college and is sorting out the "what I want to be when I grow up question". Or perhaps it is because I am a woman of a certain age, surrounded by others of a certain age who are asking "what is it I want to do with the ‘rest’ of my life question. Perhaps it is both….but I find myself being drawn again today to Parker Palmer’s book
Let Your Life Speak.

I spent yesterday with a friend who has made significant changes in her life and had created a very diligent and thoughtful plan for her life’s next chapter. But there has been a glitch…isn’t it always the case? We plan, pray,research, discuss, take-on, get-rid-of, bargain, pray again and then one movement can bring us to a screeching halt. As I tried to listen deeply to her story, I thought of the Quaker concept of "way" that Palmer describes in his book. Way is that door or path that leads us to what we are meant to be doing,being in the world, our vocation, what people of faith describe as "God’s will for my life."

As I have listened to my son talk of his freshman year in college, I am again reminded that the experiences he has just had are so much more than just learning about academic subjects. He is learning to ‘listen to his life.’ He is learning who he is, what he can do, what he is meant to become. He is hopefully learning to know himself well enough that he will shed what he thinks people think he ‘should do’ and instead make himself open to what his soul urges him toward.

Age doesn’t hold hostage this desire to find our voice in the world. We come at it at so many different times of our life. The Quakers say "have faith and way will open". But one of the most difficult lessons is described by Palmer in these words: There is as much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as there is in what can and does – maybe more.

If someone had asked me at eighteen what I wanted to do with my life, I was clear: be a singer-actress. Many doors opened for me in that pursuit. But more doors closed and that has made all the difference. If those doors had not closed, I would not be in the position to hear my friend’s story. More importantly, I would not have had the privilege to be present to the unfolding life of this amazing young man.

Have faith……way will open