Callings Inspirations
Callings Poetry
The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
For a Leader
John O’Donoghue
May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a call to action,
Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.
As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,
May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.
When the way is flat and dull in times of grey endurance,
May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.
When thirst burns in times of drought, may you be blessed to find the wells.
May you have the wisdom to read time clearly
And know when the seed of change will flourish.
In your heart may there be a sanctuary, for the stillness where clarity is born.
May your work be infused with passion and creativity
And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.
May your soul find the graciousness, to rise above the fester of small mediocrities.
May your power never become a shell, wherein your heart would silently atrophy.
May you welcome your own vulnerability, as the ground where healing and truth join
May integrity of heart be your first ideal, the source that will guide and bless your work.
When you are inspired by some great purpose,
some energising project
all of your thoughts break their bonds.
Your mind transcends limitations.
Your consciousness expands in every direction
and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world.
Dormant forces, faculties and talents come alive
and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far
than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
Patanjali 200 BC
Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke
Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must write. Perhaps it will become apparent to you that you are indeed called to be a writer. Then accept that fate; bear its burden, and its grandeur, without asking for the reward.
Go within. Search for the cause; find the impetus that bids you. Put it to the test. Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write?
Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this, must I? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. If you can confidently meet the serious question with a simple “I must” then build your life upon it.
It has become your necessity. Your life, even in the most mundane and least significant hour must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.
Everyone is a hero,
this is a given.
We have a call to adventure.
We refuse.
A crisis ensues.
We cannot turn back - we answer the call.
We collect helpers, teachers, guides.
And we cross a threshold into the unknown.
We lose our identity and enter an abyss, a nadir,
The belly of a whale.
We emerge.
We begin travelling back to what we have known -
Recrossing the threshold.
We return.
We have changed.
Joseph Campbell
Autobiography in Five Chapters
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost... I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I walk around it.
I walk down another street.
Reference: Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying p.131
Irish Blessing
John O’Donoghue
Blessed be the longing that brought you here
and that quickens your soul with wonder
May a secret providence
guide your thought and shelter your feelings
May your soul be as free as the ever-new waves of the sea.
May you succumb to the danger of growth.
May you live in the neighbourhood of wonder.
May you belong to love
with the wildness of dance.
May you always know that you are ever-embraced
in the kind circle of God.
Table Talk
Rumi
The master said there is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but were not to forget this, there would be no cause to worry, while if you remembered, performed and attended to everything else, but forgot that one thing you would in fact have done nothing whatsoever. It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into the world for a particular task, and that is his purpose. If he doesn't perform it, he will have done nothing.
Two Tramps in Mudtime
Robert Frost
Yield who will to their separation
my object in living
is to unite my avocation and my vocation
as my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one
and work is play for mortal stakes
is the deed ever really done
for heaven and the future's sake.
Callings-at-the-movies
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Girl with the Pearl Earring (2003)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)
Inspirational Videos
This is a youtube video of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' 2005 Commencement speech at Stanford University, which touches significantly and powerfully on the theme of following callings and passions.
On September 8, 1986, the first national episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast into homes across America. Now, 25 years later, Oprah steps onto the stage for the last time to share her greatest lessons and hopes for her viewers. The importance of finding and following your calling is the essential message of this video.
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