There are great treasures in the soul: there's faith and love, there's awe and wisdom. All these things you can dig — but if you don't know where to dig, you dig up mud. If you want to get to the gold — awe before God, and the silver — the love, and the diamonds — the faith, then you have to find the geologist of the soul who tells you where to dig. But the digging you have to do yourself.
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 in the 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.
How can we prepare for the most important years of our lives, the latter years, by thinking that we are going to shut down our engines? What have we done by limiting those persons who have the most to offer our society?
The eastern cultures know the secret. Elder members of society have mujch wisdom to share. The truth is that as one approaches the years beyond seventy, the veils of heaven are particularly open to the soul. This means that the individual has the opportunity to be of special service to humanity and can begin his or her most important work:
When all the strings of my life will be tuned, then at every touch of Yours will come out the music of love. Tagore
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
The music of our hearts and souls reflects our inner being -- for are we not the singer, the singing, and the song of our lives? In the silence, we can listen to our unique melody -- the words and thones that arise, the harmonies and discords. Perhaps we are ready to sing a new song. Perhaps we dance to the rhythm of our heart with delight. Note: the silences within our life's symphony make all the differences!
When we surround ourselves with sounds of nature, we are soothed and healed, comforted by the songs of our mother, the Earth. And who is there to sing back to the Earth?
