I use extra time in July and December to learn, organize and deepen my spiritual direction skills. A recent worship service I conducted at the First Unitarian Church of Orlando where I am a member focused on” “Questions of Purpose” with a children’s book by Amanda Gordon and a YouTube Video by Adam Leipzig supporting the ideas. I painted the cover picture in oil of a sunflower my son, Joel, photographed in Georgia.
Here are some of the ideas I included:
David Brooks, an author and writer for decades, has said that he revisits his own life purpose every five years. Think about that. Five years ago we were in the middle of a pandemic. Five years before that, Ted and I were still living in Northern Virginia and had no idea we would be moving to Orlando and we didn’t know what a blessing you and 1U would be to us.
Not all five year increments will have such significant changes to life circumstances, but there are changes, sometimes primarily within ourselves, sometimes determined by world, community or family events.
Today I am inviting us to take a deep dive into our own purpose in life and to contemplate how our 1U community supports our endeavors.
Recently, my spiritual director asked me a question that broke my heart open:
“What is the spiritual significance of your birth?”
I had no answer. It was a very big question, even for a spiritual direction session. But it did prompt me to take “the spiritual significance of my birth” into my heart and spend some time wondering how the activities, jobs, relationships and way of being in the world have supported or detracted from my spiritual purpose in life.
As I contemplated this big question, I began to substitute my “spiritual significance” with my “life purpose,” which seemed a little bit easier to get my head and my heart around.
When we are lucky, or perhaps intentional, our life purpose can be carried out in our jobs as well as our roles in our families and communities. Yet, our jobs change, our families grow, and our communities face new challenges.
Sometimes these challenges can seem to knock us away from our soul’s purpose, yes, another substitute set of words for life purpose. Or, perhaps time and circumstances have changed slightly and we feel the need to revisit our spiritual paths and life journey.
I try to find my authentic self through the words I can use to live out my “spiritual significance”, because, quite frankly, like the author David Brooks tells us in a reel somewhere out there, I revisit my life purpose every few years, to see if my words and actions are being authentic to my life purpose and to see if new skills or interests might add to it.
Just checking, has anyone’s life not changed at all in the last five years?
We can benefit from a bit of focus on who we are and how we are living our lives in a way that is true to our authentic selves. I’d like to invite you into this process. Our service is titled “Questions of Purpose” so I will pose questions to you…but we won’t start with the big “What is the spiritual purpose of your birth.” We’ll work up to that.
I’d like to take you on a journey to explore some possible answers to “purpose questions.”
One of the ways I revisit my purpose is by regularly reviewing the TedTalk by Adam Leipzig. I’ve found his process instrumental in helping me revisit and shape my own spiritual path. Leipzig shares five questions he says were inspired by his 25th college reunion of Yale graduates. At his reunion, he recognized that everyone in this group had privilege and education. He also realized they all had big hopes and dreams as undergraduates. As he surveyed these grads, he found out that 80% of them were unsatisfied with how they were living their lives…too busy, too career oriented, and in today’s world, the survey might have added, they were too social media focused or too isolated. In college these Yale graduates had been inspired to live their best lives and change the world.
So Leipzig studied the 20% or so that were satisfied and he found that by asking just a few questions, the happiest people had found deep purpose in their lives. He asked them:
- Who they were
- What they did
- Who they did it for
- What they wanted or needed
- What changed as a result.
Their answers inspired him to formalize his questions, which are the ones I revisit every few years to help me live into my soul’s purpose, or life purpose, or maybe even the spiritual significance of my birth (that one still seems too big for me to answer).
I want to share Adam’s questions with you, since they have been so helpful to me. I hope you will play along by shouting out the very first answer that comes to mind when I ask his questions. As we did in the worship service, I hope you will speak aloud the first ideas that come to you for each of these questions:
Who are you?
Next I’m going to ask you: What do you love to do? Sing, write, teach, crunch numbers, work for justice… in fact, think of something you are such an expert in that you would share it with someone else with joy. Might be teaching about it but it could be showing someone or inviting someone to do the thing with you.
What do you love to do?
It gets easier, think about “Who do you do it for?”
Our next question needs a little more time: “What do they want or need?” Again, shout it out after the countdown:
“What do they want or need?”
How do they change or transform as a result of what you share with them?
By the way, this process is almost exactly as Adam Leipzig does it on his TedTalk video.
Think about your answers and string them together into a thought.
Please take a few calming breaths together before my last question.
- Breathe in to allow the spirit of life to fill you, and breathe out to let go of the things you worry will never be fixed.
- Breathe in to open your heart, Breathe out to let go of disappointments.
- Breathe in to feel purpose and breathe out to feel the pulse of this community.
And now, my final question: How does being in your Unitarian Universalist (or other) community support your purpose?”
No need to shout this out, just hold it in your heart.
I find that each time I return to my soul’s purpose, I get closer to answering that big question of what is the spiritual significance of my birth. And I know I can’t live into my life’s purpose–my soul’s purpose– without the support of you, of 1U, supporting me as I seek to live an authentic life.
Together we can encourage each other to listen for our own and our collective life purpose, the spiritual significance of being born. Let’s inspire each other to travel together on this spiritual journey as we all strive to live into our collective purpose of bringing more love into the world.
Now go out and live your life’s purpose!
