Parker Palmer argues in Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation," for the inner fulfillment that results from engaging in "work" that is our deepest truth and calling. I think Gibran captures this truth beautifully, expressing the love which can be in "labor," and how it can foster intimacy with self and life...how each being has a place of value and contribution to Life through their work-and the unfolding of Life work.
"You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the season, and to step out of life's
procession, that marches in majesty and
proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work, you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all things sing together in unison?
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 labour, you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret."
"You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the season, and to step out of life's
procession, that marches in majesty and
proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work, you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all things sing together in unison?
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 labour, you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret."
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