Stealing from My Friends

As blogging has declined over the last few years, I have been left with a handful of friends who still take to the web to share what's on their mind in more than once sentence. In recent weeks, three of these friends have posted profound pieces of literature that caught my attention. Coincidentally, they all relate to a subject that is constantly in my thoughts: vocation. In what I hope will be interpreted as the sincerest form of flattery, I'm going to go ahead and blatantly steal what they posted and publish it here. If you find these pieces as moving as I did, you should follow the blogs they came from (ok, and maybe Wendell Berry too).

From Michael Costa:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry, "The Real Work"

From Austin Grigg:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.

Sir Francis Drake, prayer

From Winn Collier:

I go by a field where once
I cultivated a few poor crops.
It is now covered with young trees,
for the forest that belongs here
has come back and reclaimed its own.
And I think of all the effort
I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took
in that failed work and how much
it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself, and now
I welcome back the trees.

Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2007, no. 9

Image: malweth