This morning, I spent some time writing about how my rages and my fears and my sadness are the things that help me to discover my Work in the world, my Soul Purpose.  I’ve been thinking about how to better integrate those uncomfortable emotions rather than to sweep them under the rug, where the tend to either burn things or start to mildew and rot.

I was raging and tearful after reading about the recent slaughter of the last 15 surviving white rhinos of Mozambique.  I was going into the red tunnel of fury.  And then it hit me that this was a message.  This is one of the clues to my Work.  And I don’t just mean my vocation, I mean the work I do in the world.  It may be activism, it may be writing letters or poems, it may be prayers and magic spells.  But the things which I love so deeply that  to lose them drives me into that red tunnel, those are the things which are my Soul Purpose.

“What are my tasks?” I wrote.  “What is my Work?  I think the place to start is in contemplation and meditation, connecting myself to the Deep Well of Love that makes me want to protect, to heal.  Prayer, magic spells, weaving and shifting energies.  Behind the scenes work.  I don’t think I can stop there.  I think prayer and contemplation need voices, need fingers.”

Later in the morning, a friend shared this Wendell Berry quote that says it more eloquently than I think I can: “What can turn us from this deserted future, back into the sphere of our being, the great dance that joins us to our home, to each other and to other creatures, to the dead and unborn? I think it is love. I am perforce aware how baldly and embarrassingly that word now lies on the page—for we have learned at once to overuse it, abuse it, and hold it in suspicion. But I do not mean any kind of abstract love (adolescent, romantic, or “religious”), which is probably a contradiction in terms, but particular love for particular things, places, creatures, and people, requiring stands, acts, showing its successes and failures in practical or tangible effects. And it implies a responsibility just as particular, not grim or merely dutiful, but rising out of generosity. I think that this sort of love defines the effective range of human intelligence, the range within its works can be dependably beneficent. Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows.” ~Wendell Berry

Gratitude List:
1.  Much as I loved having babies, and proud as I am of that part of my journey, I am grateful that I am here contemplating and writing tonight instead of walking the labyrinth of labor that I was experiencing this night seven years ago (I was nearing my 24th hour of labor at this point).
2.  I am grateful for that baby, for the boy he has become, for the ways in which he becomes himself more and more every day.
3.  Frogs and creeks and glorious cousins.
4.  8 1/2 hours of healing sleep last night.  I can hardly believe that my children and my cat and my own head let me manage that one.
5.  The Columbia Re-Uzit Shop.  I bought a new dress and summer shoes and some colorful plates.

May we walk in Beauty.  All the days of our lives.