If you look around, you can find all kinds of diagrams to help you find your purpose in life, understand yourself, and know who you meant to be. They use words like passion, vocation, purpose. They use questions like Who? What? Why? But I felt none of them really captured the interplay between them all or the fluid relationship that flows through life. So I took a turn at creating a diagram to exemplify the who/why/why/how of life.
To understand what life is all about and why you’re here and what you may be called to do, you start with the i Am. Who am I? From this center, all else flows. Once you know yourself, your center, you can then begin to understand how you are in the world, in relationship to others and with others. The How is discovered in relationship to whose you are and how that relationship is lived out in vocation. The what is all the stuff that happens in these relationships. It is all held together by the great I Am, the Why, that created us to be who we are, driving us into relationship with one another and into action in the world.
I introduced this image during youth group without filling in the blanks. I asked them to spend time looking at the picture and add their reflections, change it as they saw fit, and make their own sense of it. I added my words in the diagram after. What came out of their reflections and the discussion made the activity much more meaningful than if I had just told them what I thought from the beginning. The Spirit works in collaboration and community. It’s always a gift when we have opportunity to recognize it together.
They saw a keyhole. They saw a person with arms outstretched. They saw something more than idea. They saw a daily relationship for their lives.
So how about you? What do you see? What would you add? What would you change? What are your responses to this activity?