Soulful Destinations

I read a wonderful book while on vacation in California and it has inspired me to write about travel destinations for the soul. The book is “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer. The author speaks of the struggle to live a noble life based on internal and external expectations versus a more authentic life guided by the voice of the soul. Palmer writes: "It involves creating the kind of quiet, trusting conditions that allow a person's soul to speak its truth. It also means tuning out the noisy preconceived ideas about what a vocation should and shouldn't be so that we can better hear the call of our wild souls.” The book does not offer pithy ten point solutions but it does offer hope that through a long and sometimes painful process a person can arrive at a point of remarkable truth. Palmer’s book reminds me of Frederick Buechner’s “Sacred Journey” which helped inspire my radio buddy Bob Inskeep to enter the ministry. Buechner says that if we listen to our lives and are attentive to the quiet voice of the soul then we will find direction and happiness. In the coming weeks I will blog about some of my favorite places to go for silence and solitude – places where it is easier to shut down the ego and listen for that voice within. This is a personal struggle for me. Much of my day is spent talking about the busy rumblings of the world complete with all of the chaos and tragedies woven into the fabric of daily events. I am going to call these Soulful Destinations. I would like to hear about some of your favorites.