You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth, for to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work, you are a flute, through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Do you recognize that sound?
Can you hear it?
Listen
The sounds of nature
There all around us
Can you figure it out?
It’s like life
Can you figure it out at times?
When you don’t understand
Can you trust?
Do you have faith?
Do you have the faith enough to know all is well?
To embrace each day, the gift of your life
To find the joy, happiness and the peace in solitude
Or out there amongst others
I hope you can hear the sound and recognize it
It’s all around us all the time
Do you sense?
As we age, and most people retire, many people tell me that they have nothing to do, they’re bored, and they have no clue how to spend the day. And then I meet others who are so busy, they’re busier retired than they ever were when they were working.
Let me call upon you now.
Every thought calls you.
Every breath calls you.
As the waves come upon the shore, so do I call you.
Let me feel you press upon me.
Do you stare upon me as I look to see you?
So much is unseen, unheard, unknown, yet surely there.
Lift my senses into the higher realms.
The waiting is over.
I ask for a drop, and you give me buckets, oceans.
Light my way.
Let it be easy and sure and powerful.
You all seem to talk in one voice.
This story I would like to tell is about friends of mine. Friends of my husband’s and mine, who recently got refugee visa’s from the Ukraine, and are now living in Oakville, CT.
Twenty something years ago, my husband is working in the shop, and the woman who was the engineer, she was crying. He said, “What is wrong Galina?” She said that my friend Irina in the Ukraine, she lost her husband at 28 years old of diabetes, because if the was money, there was no medicine, and if there was medicine, there was no money.
Hmmm a square peg going into a round hole?
Where do I fit in
Where do I fit in in life
It’s like
What’s my purpose
I don’t know
I just feel like I am
I’m not getting it
I don’t seem to be
You know just really creating what I want in my life
Or in the world
I just feel like
I am just existing
I am not doing my part
It is not about doing
It is about being
It is not what you can accomplish
It is really about how you feel
How you go about your day
How you view your self
Do you have to have everybody love you
If you listen very closely, the souvenirs that you gathered over your lifetimes and placed in your home might whisper their history to you.
Can you hear them?
I love that last GEM recorded by Phil, entitled Something Says You’re Home.
Artwork by Bruce Zboray www.bruce-zboray.artistwebsites.com
I am drawn to thin books. Books you can read in one or two sittings. With pictures or a fancy border – like an ancient manuscript – decorated. And a hard cover with cloth, where you can feel the weave.
Others may enjoy epic novels of a thousand pages – not I. Maybe it’s me wanting to “know” the whole book at once – no need of bookmarks for me.
Thank you for allowing me meaningful work.
Work I believe in, work I am interested in.
Work that is like play for me.
I appreciate my current job, my current situation.
Let me see it in a different way.
Please bless my frustration. Show me how to relax.
I know you hear my longing for better work,
More suited to my temperament, my gifts, my interests.
I feel good about this, knowing you are arranging my right livelihood.
Beyond my awareness, people and events are happening,
In summers, during most of high school and college, I worked in a summer camp. My assignment was, pretty much, to protect and entertain a cottage full of three-to-five-year-olds. It was such fun that I decided I’d like to teach children as a career.
After graduating from the university, our certificates covered: nursery, kindergarten, and grades 1-8.
As luck would have it, before graduation I was hired to teach in my hometown. The year was 1969, a year of many problems and few jobs. So this was a blessing.