The DAILY SPARK Blog

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a misfortune.But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.And what is it to work with love?It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,And to know that all the blessed are standing about you and watching.Work is love made visible.Poem by Kahlil Gibran - He was a Lebanese- American writer, poet, visual artist and philosopher best known for his book The Prophet (1883 -1931)REFLECTION:Do you love your work?Or, do you view your work as a curse or a misfortune?How can you weave, build, sow love into your work?

When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety.  If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without any pain.From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me.There is a great secret in this for anyone who can grasp it.Sufi Mystic, Persian poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi - 1207-1273REFLECTION:Do you have patience?Is there something you are running after - wanting now?Can you wait, trusting that what is looking for you will come to you?

 "Questo Muro"You will come at a turning of the trail to a wall of flame After the hard climb and the exhausted dreaming you will come to a place where he with whom you have walked this far will stop will stand beside you on the treacherous steep pathand stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flamethat blocks your vision of what comes after.And that one who you thought would accompany you always, who held your face tenderly a little while in his hands— who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass and washed from your cheeks, the tear-tracks — he is telling you now that all that stands between you and everything you have known since the beginning is this: this wall.  Between yourself and the beloved, between yourself and your joy, the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft of sunlight on the rock, the song.  Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume whatever solidness this is you call your life, and send you out, a tremor of heat, a radiance, a changed flickering thing?"Questo Muro" is a poem written by Anita Burrows from her book of poems:  WE ARE THE HUNGER  Anita Barrows lives in Berkley, California where she works as a clinical psychologist in private practice and as a professor of psychology at The Wright Institute.REFLECTION:What "wall of fire" are you standing in front of?To walk through the fire will require courage and you must go alone.Are you ready... are you willing to take that step?Who do you need to BE to persist?What do you need to DO to take that step?