The Echo Within: Notes on Calling and Vocation

“I can remember the words people said that meant so much to me and my own sense of who I was and who I might become…. You know you have heard such a sentence when you hear inside a corresponding Yes. The Yes is an echo of sorts, or at least it is the same voice as is the Echo that you have come to count on. Such a sentence takes your breath away…. It tells you something about yourself that you suspected or hoped, something you glimpsed but were too shy or uncertain to name aloud.”

To Hear and Live Your Calling

When one day a friend wondered if he was being called to a certain field of work, he asked Robert Benson, “Do you think I am?”

The Echo Within is Robert’s illuminating answer, a thoughtful, honest, profoundly-affecting account of his own search and failings and eventual discovery of the Yes he describes–what it is one truly is called to do and be. Written out of a lifelong search and response to the callings on his life, The Echo Within explores:

•how to love the work you do, and the process of doing it.

•ways to sense God’s pleasure in your pursuits, both in the pursuits and in you.

•whether you fall into your vocation as a destiny or you chart that course.

•how to begin living with added dimensions of meaning and purpose.

Through the ups and downs of the changes inherent in family life, professional choice, and spiritual experience, Robert shares with wisdom, humor, and heart what he’s learned–and how you can discover your calling too.

Robert Benson has written more than a dozen books about the discovery of the sacred in the midst of our ordinary lives, including Between the Dreaming and the Coming True, Home By Another Way, and Digging In. His work has been critically acclaimed in a wide range of publications from The New York Times and USA Today to Spirituality & Health and The Benedectine Review. He is an alumnus of The Upper Room’s Academy for Spiritual Formation and was recently named a Living Spiritual Teacher by Spirituality&Practice.com. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.