At first her refusal to speak very often upset me, but over time I've grown used to it and now love her the better for it. Ivy May's silence can be a great comfort. There is nothing the matter with her head – she reads and writes well enough for a girl of seven, and her numbers are good. I asked her once why she said so little, and the dear replied, "When I do speak, you listen." It is surprising that someone so young should have worked that out for herself. I could have done with the lesson – I do go on and on from nerves to fill the silence.
Do not forget that the value and interest of life is no so much to do conspicuous things as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.
Sandy and Ginny knew what they wanted to create for their neighborhood. They started with three goals: to make a safe place for everyone; to offer nourishing meals affordable to all people; to offer job training and work experience.
"We talked to a lot of people, but I was struck that one of our future customers said: 'Create a place where I can barter my labor instead of my soul.'"
Villagers in AFrica are interested not in accumulation but in a sense of fullness. Abundance means a sense of fullness, which cannot be measured by the yardstick of the material goods we possess or the amount of money in a bank account. Abundance, in that sense of fullness, has a power that takes us way from worry. It is the kind of feeling you get when you are in communion with the natural, in communion with the source. There is some sense in which the work,, or the love of work, is the love of this kind of abundance. It is the kind of fullness you get by being with other people. Most work done in the village is done collectively. The purpose is not so much the desire to get the job done but to raise enough energy for people to feel nourished by what they do. The nourishment does not come AFTER the job, it comes BEFORE the job and DURING the job.
~ from THE HEALING WISDOM OF AFRICA by Malidoma Some with thanks to Fredi Brown
Rules for an icon painter: During work, pray in order to strengthen yourself physically and spiritually; avoid, above all, useless words, and keep silence.
God is absorbed in work, and hears the spacious hum of bees, not the din, and hears far-off our screams. Perhaps God listens for prayers in that wild solitude. And hurries on with weaving: till it's done, the garment woven, our voices, clear under the familiar blocked-out clamor of the task, can't stop their terrible beseeching. God imagines it sifting through, at last, to music in the astounded quietness, the loom idle, the weaver at rest.
I have one longing only: to grasp what is hidden behind appearances... What is my work? ... to let the mind fall silent that I may hear the Invisible calling.
True vocation joins self and service, as F. Buechner asserts when defining vocation as "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." Buechner's definition starts with the self and moves toward the needs of the world: it begins, wisely, where vocation begins – not in what the world needs (which is everything), but in the nature of the human self, in what brings the self joy, the deep joy of knowing that we are here on earth to be the gifts that God created.
Once God has become a living reality for us, we simply have to love others. We cannot do otherwise. And once we live in love, we are moved quite naturally and joyfully to serve others. God is love and if we live in union with God, we have the strength and longing to love others. Service is a spiritual activity, the natural fruit of love.
