Whatever we do for the love of God benefits our souls and our lives in a way that ego-motivated actions never can. Whatever we do for the love of God is done with sincerity because it is not motivated by self-interest. We leave our concern for gain and loss, success and failure, in the hands of God. We stop considering ourselves as the sole cause of our actions and their results. Consequently, we become the instruments of a deep wisdom and love.
If your still alive your mission on earth is not yet complete. People are happiest when they are so completely engrossed in an activity that they lose track of time and go into what is called a flow state. For this to occur, the activity must be reasonably challenging, neither too easy or too hard. It must be something that is of value to others, and it must be something that you love, that you can be passionate about. Your passion for your work will get you out of bed and into the workplace' even when you don't really feel like it, even when you are discouraged about your progress.
Work is more than work. Work is a way of creating and contributing; It is giving to the world; it is sacramental, because It is serving. It is a yielding up and a showing, WHATEVER it is you did — The best-made bed, the best-written book, the best piece of pottery you had within you. It is good for the psyche and good for the soul.
The saints were not people with the greatest education or even the largest results. But they did have a couple traits in common which were almost invisible: ehat they SAID correlated almost one hundred percent with what they WERE and what they DID. An amazing and invisible power may be released when a person's words and inner self finally match.
Every person has a share in this world and a share in the world to come. We understand the concept of a share in the world to come, but what does it mean having a share in this world? Open your hearts. Having a share in this world means I know exactly what I have to do in this world. This is a very high level. If I know that if I don't do it, it just won't happen. Then I've just got to do it. This is my share in this world.
When I had my breakfast I would leave the door open in the summer and the birds would come right inside and pick up the crumbs around my feet. They had no fear of me at all. These birds also brought their families when ready. I later found out that this bird trust was because of my silence. Once I spoke to them, all went like the wind, and I praised God for such trust. Providing I remained silent they had no fear of me and I learned a great deal about their ways.
People talk about the silence of nature, but of course there is no such thing. What they mean is that OUR voices are still, OUR noises are absent.
Every human being has an obligation to return to this planet and to all its creatures the sound of beauty, the power of prayer, the sense of harmony. In O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather reminds us of our need to believe in the good soil of our lives, to do what we can to wake it up and then to wait.
"The land had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then all at once it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still."
We can learn the same lesson from sitting still with the land of the heart. It, too, has its little jokes. We think it is poor soil because we don't know how to work it. When we learn to do our inner work, it will wake up and work itself. All we need is a PATIENT WAITING and a TENDER ABIDING.