My father was an accomplished stonemason. I often watched him building walls. Frequently, he would choose a stone that was completely round. A round stone is useless because it cannot be bound into the structure of the wall. Yet with a little tip of the hammer, my father could transform the stone. Something that looked unformed and awkward would fit into the wall as if it had been made specially for it. I love, too, that image of Michelangelo finding in every stone, no matter how dumb, awkward, or blunt, a secret shape waiting to emerge. Michelangelo’s wonderful Prisoners in Stone illustrates this. The human figures have almost emerged from the stone, yet from the waist down, they are still trapped in the dull unformed stone. It is an incredible image of arrested release. Very often in difficult work projects, there is a secret shape waiting to emerge. If you concentrate on releasing the hidden possibility within your project, you will find a satisfaction that will surprise you. Meister Eckhart speaks beautifully about the way one should be toward what one does. If you work with a creative and kind eye, you will bring forth beauty.
HEARTFUL WORK BRINGS BEAUTY
When you consider it, the world of your action and activity is a very precious world. What you do should be worthy of you; it should be worthy of your attention and dignity, and conform to your respect for yourself. If you can love what you do, then you will do it beautifully. You might not love your work at the beginning; yet the deeper side of your soul can help you bring the light of love to what you do. Then, regardless of what you do, you will do it in a creative and transforming way.
There is an apposite story about a Zen monk in Japan. The emperor had an absolutely magnificent vase that was ancient and intricately beautiful. One day someone let the vase fall, and it split into millions of fragments. The fragments were gathered up, and the best potter in the land was called to reassemble the vase. He came but failed. He paid for his failure by losing his head. The emperor ordered the next-best potter, and he also failed. This continued for weeks until, finally, all the best artists in the land had died, having failed to reassemble the broken, beautiful vase. There was only one artist left, an old Zen monk who lived in a cave in the mountains. He had a young apprentice. The monk came and collected all the fragments himself and brought them back to his work shed. For weeks and weeks he worked until finally the vase was there again. The apprentice looked at it and thought how beautiful it was. The two of them made the journey to the city and brought the vase into the palace. The emperor and all his courtesans beamed in admiration at the beauty of the reassembled vase. The old Zen monk was graciously rewarded. He and his young apprentice went back to their cave in the mountains. Then, one day, the young apprentice was looking for something and unexpectedly came upon the fragments of the vase. He ran in to his master: “Look at all the fragments of the vase, you never assembled them all. How did you make a vase as beautiful as the ancient one that was broken?” The old master said, “If you do the work that you do from a loving heart, then you will always be able to make something beautiful.”
A Blessing
May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected.
May your soul calm, console, and renew you.
FIVE AGING: THE BEAUTY OF THE INNER HARVEST
TIME AS A CIRCLE
The human eye adores gazing; it feasts on the wild beauty of new landscapes, the dignity of trees, the tenderness of a human face, or the white sphere of the moon blessing the earth in a circle of light. The eye is always drawn to the shape of a thing. It finds some deep consolation and sense of home in special shapes. Deep within the human mind, there is a fascination with the circle because it satisfies some longing within us. It is one of the most universal and ancient shapes in the universe. Reality often seems to express itself in this form. The earth is a circle; and even time itself seems to have a circular nature. The Celtic world was always fascinated with circles; they are prevalent in so much of its artwork. The Celts even transfigured the cross by surrounding it with a circle. The Celtic cross is a beautiful symbol. The circle around the beams of the cross rescues the loneliness where the two lines of pain intersect and seems to calm and console their forsaken linearity.
For the Celtic people the world of nature had different domains. First, there was the underworld of nature below the surface of landscape. Here the Tuatha Dé Danann—the fairy people, or the good people—lived. The human world was the middle kingdom between the underworld and the heavenly world. There was no closed or sealed frontier between each of these three worlds. Above, there was the supersensual, or upper, world of the heavens. Each of these three dimensions flowed in and out of each other. Indeed, they participated in each other. It is no wonder, then, that time could be understood as an inclusive and all-embracing circle.
The year is a circle. There is the winter season, which gives away to the spring; then summer grows out of spring until, finally, the year completes itself in the autumn. The circle of time is never broken. This rhythm is even mirrored in the day; it, too, is a circle. First, the new dawn comes out of the darkness, strengthening toward noon, falling away toward evening until night returns again. Because we live in time, the life of each person is also a circle. We come out of the unknown. We appear on the earth, live here, feed off the earth, and eventually return back into the unknown again. The oceans move in this rhythm, too; the tide comes in, turns, and goes back out again. It resembles the rhythm of human breath, which comes in, fills, and then recedes and goes back out again.
The circle brings perspective to the process of aging. As you age, time affects your body, your experience, and above all your soul. There is a great poignancy in aging. When your body ages, you begin to lose the natural and spontaneous vigor of your youthfulness. Time, like a bleak tide, begins to indent the membrane of your strength. It will continue doing that until gradually it empties your life completely. This is one of the most vital questions that affects every person. Can we transfigure the damage that time does to us? Let us pursue this question by first exploring our kinship with nature. Because we are formed from clay, the rhythm of the seasons outside in nature is also active within our own hearts. We can learn much, therefore, from the people who constructed and articulated their spirituality in sisterhood with nature, namely, the Celtic people. They experienced the year as a circle of seasons. Though the Celts had no explicit psychology, they had implicit intuition and great wisdom about the deeper rhythms of human belonging, vulnerability, growth, and diminishment.