Find purpose in your work, Faith,
“And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.”
— Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”
When I first read Kahlil Gibran’s poem “On Work,” the line that spoke to my heart of hearts was, “Work is love made visible.” Even at this very moment, as I write these words, I find my heart smiling with love, joy
and immense gratitude to have been graced with a calling — a purpose in life that I love, and that allows me to serve people by inspiring them to explore and experience their innate potential and their life’s work.
As I reflect upon the five decades of my life, from my earliest childhood memories growing up in Uganda, what I remember the most is my love for the written and spoken word, and my passion for learning — be it through books that I read or sitting at the feet of my beloved grandmother as she read fables in Kutchi, her native language from India, and even from my own imagination as a curious child wandering aimlessly in the wild for hours upon hours.
Now here I am doing the same thing that I love, and the only difference is, I’m older and living in a different part of the world where I feel people are yearning to remember what their life’s work is,
and how they can practice living their purpose.
Through the years, I have become curious about the deeper meaning of one’s vocation and calling, and through my research, I have found a great deal of information in the Judeo-Christian tradition about this topic,
and wanted to know what has been written in the faith tradition and way of life that I practice — Islam
and Sufism — about this very subject that is near and dear to my heart.
Through my research, I came across a very interesting book, “Revisiting the Idea of Vocation: Theological Explorations,” Edited by John C. Haughey, and in this book there was a chapter titled, “Islamic Concepts of Vocation,” written by Marcia Hermansen, in which she writes, “A further idea of discerning one’s vocation in life can be extrapolated from the Quranic concept of discernment. The Quran repeatedly states that God has placed signs upon the horizons and in human beings themselves, which they should attempt to read and reflect upon. The key concepts of recognition (marifa) and remembrance (dhikr) exhort to self-knowledge, both as an end in itself and as a means to greater effectiveness in outward activity. A divine plan is certainly in place, but we must discern it in order to fulfill our role or vocation within it.”
When I read that paragraph, it reminded me of a challenging time in my life — a time when I chose to retreat from my worldly life and enter a cloistered life to contemplate and reflect upon the eternal questions life: who am I, what is my purpose in life, why am I here, where did I come from, where will I go after I die and what will be my legacy?
I would sit with these questions for hours at a time in prayer, meditation, whilst walking along the Pacific, hiking in the woods ... I wanted to know because life was too painful for me to live the way I had been living.
In hindsight, these were the best years of my life when I was spiritually stripped naked of everything I believed to be true about who and what I am, leaving me completely vulnerable and empty, and bringing me to a place of surrender, and in submission.
The 13th century poet, Jalaluddin Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks writes about surrender in the poem “A Necessary Autumn Inside Each:”
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. You’ve been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender.
As for me, I continue on my quest to submit to a daily practice, and surrender. My heartfelt prayer is: May I discern the will of God for my life’s purpose and may I be guided to honor and to live my calling in action with grace. Amen. Jihan Barakah inspires people to explore and experience their innate potential and life’s work as the founder of Quantum Shift Quest. Doing Good Together is compiled by Interfaith Action of Central Texas, interfaithtexas.org.