Journal of Sacred Work

The following meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

Work\ n: an opportunity for discovering and shaping; the place where the self meets the world." (From David Whyte's Crossing the Unknown Sea. Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity.

     We have given thought this week about watching – watching nature’s mysterious changes of the season or noting the mysterious images of our dreams, reflecting on what has been, is, and might yet be.  A poet and guide to Fortune 500 organizations, David Whyte reminds us, however, that to “see” requires more than just our eyes and minds; seeing Love asks that our hearts be active and alert as well. In his book Crossing the Unknown Sea, Whyte reflects on the words of another remarkable poet, Derek Mahon who wrote the following lines, titled ‘Everything is Going to be All Right:’

 How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling.

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.

– Derek Mahon

David Whyte comments with deep insight “Derek Mahon’s arrival at this astonishing…frontier arises from the fact that he is all attention; he has a tremendously watchful heart…”  It is in the morning, asserts Whyte, when we come to know ourselves in the world again. But then the day unfolds in meetings, conversations, papers, and doings and the essential intimate engagement with ourselves is lost. It takes a watchful heart to “see” and know Love. Great treasure lies in the unseen of what we call work. How does your watchful heart make visible the treasures within you?