summer

"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.

The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.

We can be played by the wind, and what we speak will be the sound of the moment, bringing with the word the possibility of real change rather than the apparency of change. We all know this somewhere deep within ourselves, and although God gives us everything, it is up to us to be so finely tuned that the music that is played is of Truth itself.

The origins of music lie far back in time. It arises out of proportion and is rooted in the Great One ... That from which all beings arise and have their origin is the Great One ... When the world is at peace, when all things are at rest, then music can be brought to perfection.

At a certain pitch of religious experience, the heart just wants to sing; it breaks into song. Paradoxically, you could say when silence finds its fullness, it comes to word. As the Book of Wisdom says, "When night in its swift course had reached its halfway point and deep silence embraced everything" -- when night was at its darkest and deepest -- there "the eternal Word leaped from the Heavenly throne": silence burst into song.

We each listen to a different music within, one uniquely our own. A special joy is finding and refining the creative spark which leads us to follow in rhythm to the pace and tempo of our God-given talents.