It is not easy to distinguish between doing what we are called to do and doing what we want to do.Our many wants can easily distract us from our true action.True action leads us to the fulfillment of our vocation. . . . Actions that lead to overwork, exhaustion, and burnout can't praise and glory God.What God calls us to do we can do and do well.When we listen in silence to God's voice and speak with our friends in trust we will know what we are called to do.We will do it with a grateful heart.
At a conference on the Iranian poet Hafez I attended recently, one of the older Persian speakers suddenly leaned forward to the audience and said, "Make your work The Face of the Beloved, and let what you create be her lashes, her mole, her lips." To do that would mean carrying all these gifts, letting the radiance of the World beyond the world shine into each cottage door you come to. Doing so requires both huge strength and the capacity for a kind of visible luminosity, an active principle that can only be born from a great stillness.