Originality

Today was the first gathering of the slow book club I've started. I'm so happy this idea found some wings and actually is happening, and so grateful to have a place of my own that lets me host it. The book club is 'slow' because we're only reading one or two chapters of a book each month rather than a whole book. The book I picked is Crossing the Unknown Sea: work as a pilgrimage of identity by David Whyte, a book I've mentioned here before (at least twice).
I wanted to gather the four or five of us to read this book together partly to hear different perspectives and voices from a variety of women all with some kind of vocational question, and partly to begin trying to test my sense that vocational advising in some capacity is in my future.
This group is also a way for me to feel more rooted, to stop postponing living until I get my life and work sorted out: one of the things I have learned about vocation is that it starts with who we are now. In other words, instead of imagining what kind of work you could do, or the kind of person you would be if you had such-and-such a job, pay attention to what you do now, who you are now. What gets you out of bed on the days you don't work? How do you choose to spend your time? What leaves you feeling energized rather than drained? Start isolating and attending to those things, initially without thinking about how they may tie into a career. So that is what I'm trying to do, and I do feel energized and enlivened by the evening's discussion.
In the first section of the book Whyte describes a dramatic moment in his life when - without spoiling the impact of the story for you - he ends up face down in the mud and has an instantly life-changing epiphany about his future career. We agreed that such moments are rare but I suggested that what we have to do in the absence of major epiphanies is be alert to the minor epiphanies that happen more frequently. For me, this evening was one such minor epiphany.

Being original doesn't mean trying to be different. It means being connected to the origin. You can't be original by trying to be original. You become original by staying true to what your heart sees.

Cynthia Bourgeault ~ The Wisdom Way of Knowing

My fingers Emit sparks of fire with Expectation of my future labours

William Blake 

(quoted in Crossing the Unknown Sea)