How long must I bear this pain in my soul,
and live with sorrow all the day?
How long will fear rule my life?
Notice my heart and answer me, O my Beloved;
enlighten me, lest I walk as one dead to life;
Lest my fears say, "We have won the day";
Lest they rejoice in their strength.
As I trust in your steadfast Love;
my heart will rejoice, for in You is freedom.
I shall sing to the Beloved,
who has answered my prayers a thousandfold!
Come, O Beloved, make your home in my heart.
~ Nan Merrill from "Psalm 13" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING
Conscious labor and intentional suffering are not so much separate practices as twin pillars of what amounts to essentially a single spiritual obligation.
Conscious labor is basically any intentional effort that moves against the grain of entropy, i.e., against that pervasive tendency of human consciousness to slip into autopilot. It means summoning the power of conscious attention (in our era perhaps more widely known as 'mindfulness') to swim upstream against that pervasive lunar undertow drawing us toward stale, repetitive, mechanical patterns, the siren call of World 96.
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good...
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
The winter is cold, is cold.
All's spent in keeping warm.
Has joy been frozen, too?
I blow upon my hands
Stiff from the biting wind.
My heart beats slow, beats slow.
What has become of joy?
If joy's gone from my heart
Then it is closed to You
Who made it, gave it life...
Help me forget the cold
That grips the grasping world.
Let me stretch out my hands
To purifying fire,
Clutching fingers uncurled.
Look! Here is melting joy.
My heart beats once again.
Do you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can't you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?...
I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting:
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy in A YEAR WITH RILKE
After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal
exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping
profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I
come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder,
and the whole world sparks and flames.
