Sacred Work Left To Do

At retirement, one can feel overwhelmed by everything to do because the list, “when I get time” is long. However, after a few years, the long list is completed, and there is still plenty of time left. It is then that one must have meaningful work to do, work that seems purposeful and needful to be done because there is no real incentive to work or labor. When one was employed, work was mandatory even if one didn't quite like it or think it had value. Now all incentives have been removed. One must find meaning in and by the quality of the work. I mean this in the highest form of the word. That is why I have changed the word quality for sacred. Sacred work calls forth not only our greatest efforts but our prolonged and diligent ones as well. Sacred work is that which combines the will of the Divine with your abilities that you love to do, those tasks you do because “you find God’s pleasure”* when you do them. Discovery is one of the greatest gifts to remaining competent, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically, and sacred work is the greatest gift of discovery.

*Eric Lydell’s statement on how he felt when he ran.

One of our Sacred Tasks is to build our family graveyard atop Brown Mountain.  We are now
gathering stone to build the wall around it and gathering moss
to seed it.

 

TRUTH

A walk in the woods is as good a medicine as there is for whatever ails you.  In the quietness, beauty, and abundant life found there, one can fully realize the ultimate TRUTH of all truths; there is One who loves and cares for you.  

 

A Two Page Love Note

Each evening I gift myself a goodness like that of red on a rose.  I build a fire stack complete with tinder underneath, so upon rising in the morning, I need only strike a match and the divine gift of fire enters our home.  I keep it going for a couple of hours, driving off the fall chill from our home, and then bank it up and by noon it is out.  It is a present that I hold like a two-page love note, waiting quietly in my thoughts until it is opened to warm my lover, my heart, my soul, and my ageing cold body.  

 

 

Some Poor, Struggling Seaman

Oh, the daylight comes on like a hopeful answered prayer of the greatest magnitude, but is often never acknowledged.  But suppose for a moment that dawn didn’t come and the morning hour nine came, then ten and eleven and by noon there was still darkness, dark as coal, dark night.  Would not all our hearts break asunder.  Would not the pray-er cry out, the politician stand silent, the rioter drop his rock in fear, the sinner and the saint clutch their breast.  But it did come on today.  I sat before a fire and watched it slowly, like a divine whisper, gloriously, miraculously, become day, the light again, the star obediently letting there be light.  Oh, my heart softens in gratefulness; I am a child again, feeling the security of the touch, the peace that passes by and leaves me dumbfounded in ways to say how I feel.   “Let the lower lights be burning, send the gleam across the waves.  Some poor struggling fainting seaman, you may rescue, you may save.”        

God is good!  God is great!  Let us thank Him!

The light burning away the fog
uncovering the island across the way.

 

Enjoying Minutes

Time is what God gives older people because we have at last learned to enjoy minutes.

Found this lichen in the woods while hiking up 
Mount Brown, Sunday morning.

 

Turning Down the Bed

This is the perfect week: cool mornings, warm afternoons, vast blue skies, the quiet of the earth turning down the covers. 

 

The Best Wine Served Last

Weak and worn, shuffling along, head filled with old dreams stuffed in cotton, joints hurt, body sore, a Jag in the barn, the prime gone, the steel hulk all that's left.  There are periods, stretched-out time like used elastic, good only for reminding me of the taunt me I used to be.  It doesn't hurt me as much as it hurts my feelings (pun intended), but it surprises me in its wholeness, all cells in me feeling the ancientness of having been around 68 years.  There is a great joy, though, the joy of feeling all the cells that used to go unnoticed, knowing there is a lot of me that I am now aware of.  There is a lot of me left, and I like to imagine it is the best left for last, as the quest said, “the best wine served last.”