The true prophetic message always calls us to stretch our arms out wide and embrace the whole world. In holy boldness we cover the earth with the grace and mercy of God. This is a great task, a noble task... Helmut Thielicke writes, "The globe itself lives and is upheld as by Atlas arms through the prayers of those who love has not grown cold. The world lives by these uplifted hands, and by nothing else!"

We saw our good life not as a model for others, but as a pilgrimage, for us, to the best way we could conceive of living. We felt a glad responsibility in joining with the stream of onward life, with the whole magnificent enterprise. This was living a life of affirmation, of contribution, of making every act and every day purposeful. To live the good life, we found, was to do the best we were capable of in any set of circumstances.

Doing work which has to be done over and over again helps us recognize the natural cycles of growth and decay, of birth and death, and thus become aware of the dynamic order of the universe. "Ordinary" work, as the root meaning of the term indicates, is work that is in harmony with the order we perceive in the natural environment.

O God, that at all times You may find me as You desire me and where You would have me be, that You may lay hold on me fully, both by the Within and the Without of myself, grant that I may never break the double thread of my life.

As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. We become original because we become something specific: an origin from which work flows.

The universe is my way.
Love is my law.
Peace is my shelter.
Experience is my school.
Obstacle is my lesson.
Difficulty is my stimulant.
Pain is my warning.
Work is my blessing.
Balance is my attitude.
(The Voice of Silence is my guide.)

May you give me work till my life shall end
And life till my work is done.

We receive according to the emptiness of our hearts and hands.

When a young man in Uganda, a great soccer player, had his knee purposely blown out by someone in a soccer game, ending his professional career, he could have chosen bitterness. But instead, he began to help other young men who were aimless and without directions, who were on drugs, in gangs, doing nothing.

First he gave himself to building them up by teaching them to be soccer players. Once that relationship was established, he helped them develop skills and crafts, so that they could make a living and then become responsible fathers and community contributors...You could see how his own soul was nurtured by his desire to contribute, to focus outside himself.