True service isn't an act, but an attitude. We can do things for other people with all kinds of self-serving motives. True service, however, stems from a feeling of humility, gratitude, and the essential recognition that we are in this together... Service is love in action -- as simple as a friendly smile or nod to a stranger -- or as all embracing as the life of Peace Pilgrim or Mother Teresa.
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
A spirituality of work is based on a heightened sense of sacramentality, of the idea that everything that is, is holy and that our hands consecrate it to the service of God. . . when we care for everything we touch and touch it reverently, we become the creators of a new universe. Then we sanctify our work and our work sanctifies us.
A spirituality of work puts us in touch with our own creativity. . . Work enables us to put our personal stamp of approval . . . the autograph of our souls on the development of the world. . .
A spirituality of work draws us out of ourselves and, at the same time, makes us more of what we are meant to be. Good work . . . develops qualities of compassion and character in me.
~ Joan Chittister, in "Vision and Viewpoint,” an e-newsletter
Pavarotti retains a kind of religious, mystical, commitment to his "work.” And he insists on referring to it as "work,” claiming: "You can always love your work; your profession, at best, you can exercise.” Few people realize that the joyful tenor, the man who is always smiling, is almost a cloistered monk . . .
It puzzles people at first, to see how little the able leader actually does, and yet how much gets done. But the leader knows that is how things work. After all, Tao does nothing at all, yet everything gets done. When the leader gets too busy, the time has come to return to selfless silence.
Selflessness gives one center. Center creates order. When there is order, there is little to do.
~ "37. Doing Little” in THE TAO OF LEADERSHIP by John Heider
Your job in the scheme of things is unique and designed especially for you. Your job is something you will be happy doing . . . You can begin to do your job in life by doing all the good things you feel motivated toward, even though they are just little things. . . .
It is not easy to distinguish between doing what we are called to do and doing what we want to do. Our many wants can easily distract us from our true action. True action leads us to the fulfillment of our vocation. . . . Actions that lead to overwork, exhaustion, and burnout can't praise and glory God. What God calls us to do we can do and do well. When we listen in silence to God's voice and speak with our friends in trust we will know what we are called to do. We will do it with a grateful heart.
We can truly be successful only in the work to which we have been called. The work is not ours. It is God's, and we are privileged to be worked through by God . . . How foolish, then, for anyone to think and proclaim that he has a certain work to do for God. God may have a certain work to do through him, that is if he is sufficiently humble, but that is quite a different thing . . .
Each of us has something within us that needs to be expressed. It may be the desire to play an instrument, paint landscapes, climb mountains, or grow prize-winning chrysanthemums. Whatever that desire is, it comes from our heart and reflects our own unique gifts and abilities. . . .
Let us ponder over this basic truth till we are steeped in it, till it becomes as familiar to us as our awareness of shapes or our reading of words: God, at the most vitally active and most incarnate, is not remote from us, wholly apart from the sphere of the tangible; on the contrary, at every moment God awaits us in the activity, the work to be done, which every moment brings. God is, in a sense, at the point of my pen, my pick, my paint-brush, my needle – and my heart and my thought. It is by carrying to its natural completion the stroke, the line, the stitch I am working on that I shall lay hold on that ultimate end towards which my will at its deepest levels tends.
~ from HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.
~ from TALKING TO GOD: PORTRAIT OF A WORLD AT PRAYER by Terry Tempest Williams, thanks to Liz Stewart
Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you freedom to . . . find the many signs which point out the way to a new land. Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday morning or as a frame to surround mealtimes. Praying is living.
Prayer and meditation have an important part to play in opening up new ways and new horizons. If your prayer is the expression of a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life—and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar and "safe"—God will act in us and to prepare what we cannot yet imagine or understand. In this way our prayer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realized on earth.
~ from CONTEMPLATION IN A WORLD OF ACTION by Thomas Merton
Prayer has a life of its own. If we could define it today, that definition would have moved and changed by tomorrow. Prayer is a living relationship that can never be pinned down and analyzed; prayer is a breath of the soul that has passed before we can seize hold of it; prayer is a reaching out of all that is deepest within us towards all that lies infinitely beyond and around us.
To pray is not to use special language; it is the sound of a cry or a laugh rising from ordinary days. Formal or official words can often be lifeless. To pray we need to return like children to an elemental language of soul, to something close to song, to chant, to playground singing.
~ from ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE by Marv and Nancy Hiles
Summer Greetings, dear Friends! It is the season of vacation trips, bright summer colors, gardens in full growth preparing for a bountiful harvest, blue skies, sunshine, swimming and picnicking. In short, a busy, outward-oriented time of year. Where is there time for prayer in all this activity? We tend to think of prayer as a quiet, inward-looking pursuit, and it feels more natural to focus on it during deep winter months when nature herself draws inward into silence. But there are many ways to pray. As we eagerly look for new flowers in bloom, as we are stilled for a moment before a blazing sunset over the ocean, as we are humbled by the miracles of growth all around us . . . are these not prayers of gratitude?
Prayer is not sending in an order and expecting it to be fulfilled. Prayer is attuning yourself to the life of the world, to love, the force that moves the sun and the moon and the stars.
~ from THE MUSIC OF SILENCE by Br. David Steindl-Rast
I believe that God prays in us and through us, whether we are praying or not (and whether we believe in God or not). So, any prayer on my part is a conscious response to what God is already doing in my life.
Prayer is not a solo art form: for, we never pray alone; all prayers offered to the Beloved by whatever Name, whatever form, Meet in the Holy Tabernacle on high, lifting the hearts, needs, and hopes of myriad souls. . . . United in prayer and purpose, individuals from every nation sowing sacred seeds of peace, truth and love, Create the power to usher in the New Dawn. Let us move inexorably onward toward the divinization of planet Earth.
Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the window panes. . . . But sometimes a prayer comes that you have not thought to pray, yet suddenly there it is and you pray it. . . . Sometimes the bird finds that what looks like an opening is an opening, and it flies away.
My son opened my eyes to the unceasing nature of prayer in joyful moments which sometimes lie dormant in our hearts. I learn from him each day that God is in the little things — the things that can be found in the ordinary, here and now of life. Look in the minutiae of daily life in your everyday places, where Presence can be felt and where you can be submerged in unceasing prayer.
