{"id":8407,"date":"2024-04-16T19:22:29","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T23:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=8407"},"modified":"2024-04-16T19:22:29","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T23:22:29","slug":"questions-about-vocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=8407","title":{"rendered":"Questions about Vocation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading Parker Palmer: Let Your Life Speak<\/a>.\u00a0 In some ways it’s a continuation of what I did with Stephen Cope’s book<\/a>. \u00a0<\/span>Parker Palmer talks about vocation.\u00a0 <\/span>How do you know what your vocation is?\u00a0 Not from ego, not to be important or famous or make a lot of money. \u00a0Something your have to listen for, a calling from the soul. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My book, The\u00a0Feminine of History is Mystery<\/a>,\u00a0developed out of a dream class, taught by Charles Ponc\u00e9<\/a>. \u00a0He was a Jungian and looked at our dreams in terms of archetypes. \u00a0I began to see a polarity: Sun-Moon, Male-Female, Righthand-Lefthand, the two hemispheres of the brain \u2014 so I decided to write a book with left-hand pages and right-hand pages. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I also developed a fade-dissolve slide show which involved two projectors and a device that allowed me to fade from one to the other. \u00a0The pictures were mostly ones I had taken on several trips to England and France to see megalithic monuments. \u00a0Later I found someone who had the expertise to turn it into a video<\/a> on a DVD which made the presentation much easier. \u00a0I had imagined I would get opportunities to do the show for audiences and could sell books at the same time. \u00a0But, alas, this clever idea was derailed by depression rooted in trauma.<\/p>\n

Journey Into Courage<\/a>.\u00a0 Remembering how Beverly & I said we would do street theater around childhood sexual abuse.\u00a0 And then I saw we weren\u2019t doing it, so I said to God \u201cIf you want this to happen, somebody else has to do it.\u201d\u00a0 Only a few weeks later Lynelle told me there was a drama class for victims of domestic violence at Umbrella<\/a> in St. J.\u00a0 So I went, and that became Journey Into Courage.\u00a0 <\/span>Telling the truth about my life<\/a> on stage.\u00a0 <\/span>Changing, expanding, people\u2019s understanding of domestic violence.<\/p>\n

It changed people\u2019s lives.\u00a0 Perhaps my vocation is to change people\u2019s lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

I discovered folk dance on New Year’s Eve 1964-65. \u00a0I was in Paris with some Greek friends, and we went to a party where they were doing Greek folk dance. \u00a0When I moved to Brunswick Maine, I started going to a regular folk dance class. \u00a0When I moved to Franconia, I brought a tape of my favorites and taught a small group. \u00a0Then I heard about Sacred Circle Dance, based in the old folk dances but with the understanding that they had a sacred dimension. The man I was married to at the time was teaching Aikido, a martial art that has a spiritual dimension. Eventually we decided to build a building for sacred movement arts, and that was Neskaya Movement Arts Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But now what? \u00a0Having moved away from Franconia I no longer teach dance at Neskaya. Does Jenny still have a vocation? \u00a0If I don\u2019t have a vocation, what\u2019s the point? \u00a0Having a vocation gives meaning to my life. \u00a0I’ve been looking at some things I have done with my life, wondering if there is a common thread that could be my vocation.<\/p>\n

What if your life has meaning just as it is?<\/p>\n

I got this far on April 6, and haven’t written anything since. \u00a0In work with Erica, what happened was I remembered all the people who told me “When you said …. it changed my life.” \u00a0What I said was something ordinary for me, not an attempt to educate.\u00a0 I think of one story. \u00a0I was at Kripalu, returning from a walk with a friend. \u00a0I saw a wasp walking across the sidewalk. \u00a0It was too cold for him to fly. \u00a0I was afraid he would get stepped on, so I picked him up by one leg and put him on the base of a statue that stood by the door. \u00a0My friend was astonished to see me do this, and said something like “WOW! \u00a0How can you do that!” \u00a0I said “I’m a member in good standing of the insect rescue league.” \u00a0“Well, you just changed my life.”<\/p>\n

I think of Angela saying, after I talked about Neskaya to a therapy group she was holding in the building itself \u201cYou are way outside the boxes those women live in.\u201d\u00a0 She’s the one who thought that the building was a “healing sanctuary.” \u00a0<\/span>I remember thinking, maybe even setting an intention, that Neskaya should affect everyone who came in by lifting their consciousness one level above where it was when they came in.<\/p>\n

I think it may very well be true that my vocation is just to be myself, and just being myself I change people’s lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading Parker Palmer: Let Your Life Speak.\u00a0 In some ways it’s a continuation of what I did with Stephen Cope’s book. \u00a0Parker Palmer talks about vocation.\u00a0 How do you know what your vocation is?\u00a0 Not from ego, not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-circle-dance","category-present-day","category-vocation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}