work. thought. dance?

“The requirements of a work to be done can be understood as a will of God. If I am to hoe a garden or make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself with God’s will in my work.

Unnatural, frantic, anxious work, work done under pressure of greed or fear or any other inordinate passion, cannot properly speaking be dedicated to God, because God never wills such work directly.” Thomas Merton – New Seeds of Contemplation pg. 19

I have read and re-read this page about a dozen times. I have handwritten it in my journal and now I am writing it electronically. Someone must be trying to tell me something about the thing I put my hand to or as we would say today, what kind of work do I do?

Contemplation is a big word, thirteen letters in all. A simple working definition for me might be how I think about things. Now to take that one step further is to say that if I really want to experience the most intimate relationship with the Original Thinker, then I must open my thought life to Him, but that isn’t exactly the way it works. I think that I must open myself to the concept that He is present in my thought life. It isn’t like my thought life is some area that is off limits to the Creator of all Thoughts, rather it is me being honest to acknowledge that my thoughts are not off limits but are a place where I can join the incredible dream realm where anything is possible.

Most of the time my thoughts are not an incredible dream world. Many times they are full of doubts, fears, and unsatisfied frustration about the way my physical world hasn’t worked out the way my dreamed world thought it should. I would be embarrassed and ashamed if God knew what my real thoughts were. But maybe that is just it; maybe He knows the frustration - He is just wondering why am I not sharing it with Him.

If my thoughts were like a dance, why would I want to dance alone? I don’t know about you, but my thoughts occupy most of my time. They continue even while I am asleep. Maybe the thought-dream-dance-with-God is the crossing over into a life of contemplation, or what others might call a life of prayer. In that context, it is not some concept I am trying to apply, but it is something that I naturally practice out of self-discipline because it is who I am. I dream and dance in my thoughts everywhere I am.