I felt myself a steady, fixed point on the earth round which a whirling gathered and spun a center. Then it was that I seemed to be no one, to belong to no one, and suddenly beholding the russet light of the turning sumach tree in the pasture, I thought,
I am leaf and I am wind and I am light. Something in the world likes faces and leaves and rivers and woods and wind together and makes of them a string of medallions with all our faces on them, worn forever round our necks, kin.
Nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness in deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs . . . Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Barnaby was what I call "heart smart." While other dogs accompanied me in our intellectual journeys and listened while ideas came in, Barnaby just walked and walked with me, looking at the river or the woods and feeling deep feelings. Rarely have I had a walking companion who could just be silent, not having to make a talking point or a barking commentary. With Barnaby, one barked in silence in which much of a more contemplative nature was communicated -- peace, simplicity, the glory of the natural world, the presence of God.
The spiritual properties of the world are subtle . . . The whole earth breathes the divine spirit. When you know this it informs everything you do, every word you say, every act.
All things belonging to the earth will never change—the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff whose arms clash and tremble in the dark . . . all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth—these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever . . . Under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful coming into life again like April.
~ from YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN by Thomas Wolfe, quoted in An Almanac for the Soul by Marv and Nancy Hiles
No one else can know what work will make our hearts sing, but we ourselves in our own inner being. Two mystic poets can, however, help us with the essence of what our Work can aspire to be: Gibran – "Work is love made visible" and Rumi – "Let the beauty we love be what we do." Work as an offering of our Selves in love, with all our strengths and limitations, to the wider community becomes a mutual blessing that honors our very being. To know Work as a sacred vocation no matter how lofty or how humble it may seem becomes equal in the eyes of Love. For all good work contributes to the Whole ... nothing we do with love and kindness is too little.
In the silence we can ponder the ways we work in love, create or honor beauty, and bring blessing to others. What makes your heart sing?
I didn't know exactly how to go about helping others. But if I could remember that great acts are the small, quiet ones that no one hears about, that would be a start. I could look for ways myself to help people in need of a boost, to align myself with underdogs. I need to remember Ella's way with her leprosy ... her intent. Perhaps it didn't matter what I did to earn a living, as long as the motive was to help others and not just gain attention.
~ from IN THE SANCTUARY OF OUTCASTS, by Neil White
