Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Two Poems on Vocation

In the Freshman seminar I teach at Trinity Lutheran College, we've been reading Parker Palmer's "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation" (a book I highly recommend).  At one point, Palmer quotes a 21 word poem, that "evokes the quest for vocation--at least, my quest for vocation--with candor and precision."  I invited the class to come up with a 21 word poem that evoked their quest for vocation.  I wrote two:

Opened doors
and closed--a path
clear and then obscured
and yet, throughout
seeing the hand of God,
if only backwards.

Down this trail
then that one
a destination that
always seems far off
but only on turning
around does
the path emerge.