So long as space remains,
So long as sentient beings remain,
I will remain,
In order to help, in order to server,
In order to make my own contribution.

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. A spirituality of work puts us in touch with our own creativity ... draws us out of ourselves and, at the same time, makes us more of what we are meant to be. A spirituality of work immerses me in the search for human community. I finally come to know that my work is God's work, unfinished by God because God meant it to be finished by me.

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.

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.

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.

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:

To contribute wisdom and experience to the young.

Pleasure is one thing; wisdom is another.  The first leads to sorrow, though pleasant at the time.  The latter, though at first unpleasant, leads to lasting joy.

Ignorance of spiritual laws is bondage; knowledge of spiritual laws is freedom; application of spiritual laws is wisdom.

Wisdom is the art of balancing the known with the unknown, the suffering with the joy; it is a way of linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity ... Wisdom is the art of living in rhythm with your soul, your life, and the divine.

Wisdom is a living stream, not an icon preserved in a museum.  Only when we find the spring of wisdom in our own life can it flow to future generations.

Wisdom is developed through spiritual practice; for in silence you learn what can never be taught.

Wisdom replaces ignorance in our minds when we realize that happiness does not lie in the accumulation of more and more pleasant feelings, that gratifying craving does not bring us a feeling of wholeness or completion.  It simply leads to more craving and more aversion.  When we realize in our own experience that happiness comes not from reaching out but from letting go, not from seeking pleasurable experience but from opening up in the moment to what is true, this transformation of understanding then frees the energy of compassion within us.  Our minds are no longer bound up in pushing away pain or holding on to pleasure.  Compassion becomes  the natural response of an open heart.

Wisdom means "to see" or "to know".  It does not mean knowing facts or having an opinion.  Wisdom is uncovered by being present enough to perceive the essence of your whole experience.  This wisdom will help you attend to what matters in your life and understand the meaning of your life's changes.  The practice of moment-to-moment PRESENCE is key.  Seeing essence; knowing wholeness.

Little by little, from a deep level, the Spirit of Wisdom is showing herself.  Sophia dwells in the hearts of those who seek new dreams and hope for a more wholesome world: the Dorothy Days, the Martin Luther Kings, the Archbishop Romeros ... [there are so many  now!].  Sophia rejoices in the visionaries and the peace-makers.  She fills them.  In a world which is hungry, tired and seeking, God's presence is shown in Sophia through people who are to experience, in our insecure world, God's wholesome vision and dream for the human race, born of both the masculine and the feminine Holy Energies.

Symphonies aim at healing the soul by taking human emotions and concerns and, through the alchemy of art, make us somehow feel better about all of life--and us.  Music touches something higher in us directly.  All of the arts touch something that is beyond the ordinary machinations of life.  And this "something higher and more" makes even the most homespun art somehow therapeutic.

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm.  If we strive to be happy by filling the silence of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.  If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music.  If we have no rest, God does not bless our work.  If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

When the world becomes repressive and ugly and mean, we need form and beauty and balance and music--that's when artists feel most pressed into service.

In the concert hall, each motionless listener is part of the performance.  The concentration of the player charges the electric tension in the auditorium and returns to the playLIer magnified.  I like the fact that "LISTEN" is an anagram of "SILENT".  Silence is not something that is there before the music begins and after it stops.  It is the essence of the music itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the music to exist at all.  It's wonderful when the audience is part of this productive silence.

If we do not keep pace with our companions, perhaps it is because we hear a different drummer.  Let us step to the music we hear, however measured or far away.

Gramma died 25 years after she stopped mothering me.  But she left me something special, and I hear it whenever the need occurs.  A tune wafts in unexpectedly when I am kneading bread or hanging laundry on the line.  The opening phrase of an old  hymn bursts from my mouth:
     "Are ye able," I suddenly sing out.
     "To believe that Spirit triumphs," I can hear Gramma picking up the next line.  The verses poses a great question about faith, but I am thinking about what Gramma gave me.
     "Lillian," I answer, "thank you for my voice."

 

I sit for a long time in the absolute silence.  All at once, there is barely a perceptible noise, a soft rumble as of thunder.  The sound dies without discovery of its nature or source.  It returns, seeming to come from all directions at once.  At last it emerges from its mystery, grows into a tremulous hum, and solidifies into chanting.  The music has no tempo.  There is no breathing audible in it.  No one voice stands out; it is the fusion of all that produces the effect.  Long held notes which at last modulate again and again in the calm rhythm of the heart.  I am suspended in the sound.  And charged. ... The chanting dies away as gently as it began.  Once again there is the unanimous voice of silence.