summer

So long as space remains,
So long as sentient beings remain,
I will remain,
In order to help, in order to server,
In order to make my own contribution.

God is the silent Power behind all things,
always ready to pur int our experience that which we need.
God works for us by working through us as us.

A spirituality of work is based on a heightened sense of sacramentality, of the idea that everything that is, is holy and that our hands consecrate it to the service of God. A spirituality of work puts us in touch with our own creativity ... draws us out of ourselves and, at the same time, makes us more of what we are meant to be. A spirituality of work immerses me in the search for human community. I finally come to know that my work is God's work, unfinished by God because God meant it to be finished by me.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task;
but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks
as if they were great and noble.

The song that the world sings through us is to be sung into others:

Go into the world, go build cities, go discover cultures; go spread love, go give, go make magnificence, get and give light, save and join and piece together to form a whole. Gather the broken pieces, connect them; these are the things we have to work with.

Make like a map, a world where all things are linked together and murmur through each other -- a singing, a round, strong, clear song of total meaning, a language within language, responding each to each forever in the memory of each individual.

As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life,
life fails to flow through us ...
And if, as we work, we can transmit
life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us
to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.

Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life ...
It means kindling the life-quality
where it was not,
Even if it's only in the whiteness
of a washed pocket-handkerchief.

Wend your way through the corridors of time,
not as passengers on a free ride
watching the seasons pass;
Rather, steady mindfulness quickens
the spirit, awakens the soul,
and opens the Inner Gate that leads
to the great Work so needed in these times.
Discover the joy of helping humanity
to reverence all Creation,
of offering your healing hands
in the restoration of planet Earth.
Discernment and discipline will cut through
impediments to action.

Fr. Joe's retort in answser to some enthusiastic piety of mine about the sanctity of community and its high purpose: "Good gracious -- we're not silly old monks mumbling prayers all day. We've got a job to do!" I realized how like him this was, how down-to-earth encapsulating his generous view of the ordinary. Every word he spoke was drawn from a deep well of generosity. He hade built it up over decades of contemplating people and loving them all without reserve. His gentle power spring from a straightforward assessment of the world and his job in it. That job was love.

Each pereson, no matter how old, has an important work to do. This good work not only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in us. When it is finished a new work emerges that will help us make green a desert place, as well as to scale another mountain in ourselves. The work we do inthe world, when it is a true vocation, always will correspond in some mysterious way in the work that goes on within us.

Service is one of the two main levers of evolution: one is meditation, the other is service. Service, of whatever kind, gradually distances you from yourself. As your service grows, expands outwards from yourself, you do not lose touch with yourself but you become less and less concerned with your own ego, your personality expression. Service is the impulse of the soul, the carying out of soul purpose.