The scenic route

I'm very much enjoying The Echo Within by Robert Benson (excerpt here). When I took the book from its amazon packaging I initially felt a little cheated as it's small and has what seems like fifty words per page. It's like a student's assignment when they completely ran out of things to say and started tweaking the margins and the line spacing. However, it won me over rapidly: this guy took the scenic route to his vocation (check) and he's an 'orbiter' (check), so naturally it's reassuring to read. The combination of this and a long chat with my best friend gave me the gumption to go ahead with a new thread to my vocational work, planning work with pre-graduation students in the new year. Chatting with them about my new work made me realize how needed that work is and that it's a Thing I Could Do Now. So I'm taking steps. Small steps, but steps all the same. Journey of a thousand miles and all that. Pushing ahead with something that is authentically meaningful and true to me is new, and makes me feel bare and vulnerable. But I also feel like my vision is broadening, clarifying somehow. It makes me raise my head.

Your Eden is your Eden; it is your starting point and only yours. Any resemblance to someone else's starting point is purely coincidental. You wander through your Eden; you listen as fiercely as you can; you watch yourself closely to see what you love and what you do not. You look for signs of your own wonder. You look for the things that make your spirit quicken and your pulse race.

You look for the thing that appears to be light in the midst of your dark. You venture forth; you answer the bell; you take the call; you try something new on for size. You claim you are being called to do so. And you are right, every time.

Robert Benson ~ The Echo Within