summer

Communication with God is a deep inner knowing that God is within you and around you. God "speaks" through the still, small voice within. When you have constant communion with God, a constant receiving from within, there is never any doubt; you know your way. You become an instrument through which a job is done, therefore you have no feeling of self-achievement... The main things, if you are to find inner peace, are to bring your life into harmony with the laws which govern this universe (these are the same for all of us), and to find and fit into your special work in this world -- your job in the divine plan.

To see our work as prayer and an opportunity to bring forth a flash of truth is a great gift. To know that even the busy world is a holy world is quite a change of heart.

Any type of work can be meaningful.It is the spirit in which you do it that makes the difference.

Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least they do when you LET them, when you work WITH circumstances instead of saying, "This isn't supposed to be happening this way", and trying hard to make it happen some other way. If you're in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on, you can lookback and say, "Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that THOSE could happen, and those had to happen in order for THIS to happen..." Then you realize that even if you'd tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn't have done better, and if you'd REALLY tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing.

May your feet ever lead you to where your heart is...
May your work and your heart's joy ever be as one.

Art arises from a spiritual longing that all people share: to make our mark on the world and to spend our life energy in a work that rises above the mundane, adding grace to existence. We respond to the light of the world around us by giving expression to our own inner light, and when the two are on the same wave-length, the world seems more brilliant and finely focused.

"All the stages of one's work have a poetic nature," he continued. "No one gets paid for keeping their own tools cleaned. It is an act of real art; otherwise you don't have a rapport with the tool; then it becomes a rebellious servant, not respected, not properly handled."

One day I confided to Ruth that I felt her house was a living thing. She recalled returning to her home after being aways for four months. "I waxed and shined desks and chairs, and these dead objects returned to life. Their wood almost sprouted new leaves and blossoms. I no longer felt desolate in the house."

Tino's relationship with his tools, and Ruth's care and tending of the objects in her home speak of their attitude to all things. I had to go away, to a foreign land in America, before I could see that the qualities I was looking for were here, practically in my own backyard.

When you take a dirty floor ... and make it spotlessly clean, and this polish it until it shines, it radiates back to you the love which you poured into it; the divinity of that floor has been drawn forth.

Good work that leaves the world softer and fuller and better than ever before is the stuff of which human satisfaction and spiritual value are made.

True service isn't an act, but an attitude. We can do things for other people with all kinds of self-serving motives. True service, however, stems from a feeling of humility, gratitude, and the essential recognition that we are in this together... Service is love in action -- as simple as a friendly smile or nod to a stranger -- or as all embracing as the life of Peace Pilgrim or Mother Teresa.

In all our activities we may be seeking God: in our work, on our social occasions, as we walk along the road, even when we are so busy that we have not time to think of anything except what we are doing... God can deal with us under a thousand forms for our spiritual hallowing. Behind all the strange puzzles of life there is the secret working of God, creating life, creating character, accepting service -- all sorts of spiritual shaping going on.