Labor of Love!
My sabbatical completes this Labor Day weekend and then I’m back to work! It’s been an amazing experience to travel by myself, spend time with my family, start writing my book, and then have a joy-filled vacation with my beloved. And yes, while I was disciplined about staying off any type of digital communication, I did still manage to work for a week at the CSL Conference in Switzerland and for a weekend at the San Diego Campus of our ministerial training.
I am so grateful to be coming home and back to work refreshed, rejuvenated, and renewed. What a difference taking time away makes, both to rest but also to take the time to focus on a project I’ve long wanted to get started. As I look forward to returning to my regular life and the work that comes from my deep desire to share spiritual living and be of service, I am reminded that a balanced life, with time for myself, makes work a labor of love.
I am once again inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s insights into work when he writes in the “The Prophet”
…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 in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
…You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness, you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is an urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
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…
..Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
I look forward, once again, to making my love for Life, for Truth, for possibility and for YOU visible through my work, teaching, speaking, writing, and sharing the profound message of the Science of Mind and spiritual living with everyone who is seeking a new idea or wants to go deeper into the practice.
I want to thank my beloved, Rev Karen Fry, our leadership and staff, and the community at CSLDallas for so wholeheartedly supporting me and CSLDallas while I’ve been on my journey. I continually seek to be a better model of spiritual living, so that as I am loving my life and my work as an expression of Spirit AS ME, you too will be inspired to do the same.
Wishing you each a joyous Labor Day weekend, as you celebrate your work, your contribution to the whole, and the rest you need to keep your work a labor of love. And my labor of love, the Daily Words, will start up again on Tuesday, September 4th.
with love
Dr. Petra