Mystics and contemplatives offer a perspective on resurrection that seems to mirror their own experiences of illumination and unity. They tell us that perhaps regeneration is effected through a profound state of self-reflection, possible only to those who have become transparent to transcendence and are coded by that experience with a quality of eternity that does not, cannot, die with death. This implies that a new order has been created within spirit, within nature, within the soul, within the meaning and matter of history. Here we move out beyond miracle into the heart of mystery, and consciousness grows into the capacity for co-creation with God. The world turns a corner, and true partnership between divine and human realms becomes possible.
We become better at something in ourselves—more skilled, more creative, more effective—when we work. We discover that, indeed, we are good for something. Good work is, at the time, its own kind of asceticism. It needs no symbolic rituals or contrived penances.
The very act of continuing something until we succeed at it is soul-searing, life-changing enough... It makes us equal partners with the rest of the human race in this one common endeavor to grow the globe to wholeness. Good work is our gift to the future. It is what we leave behind—our persistence, our precision, our commitment, our fidelity to the smallest and meanest of tasks that will change the mind of generations to come about our sacred obligation to bear our share of the holy-making enterprise that is work.