A BLESSING

A BLESSING

May the light of your soul guide you.

May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.

May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.

May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.

May your work never weary you.

May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement.

May you be present in what you do.

May you never become lost in the bland absences.

May the day never burden.

May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises.

May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.

May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected.

May your soul calm, console and renew you.

HEARTFUL WORK BRINGS BEAUTY

HEARTFUL WORK BRINGS BEAUTY

When you consider it, the world of your action and activity is a very precious world. What you do should be worthy of you; it should be worthy of your attention and dignity and conform to your respect for yourself. If you can love what you do, then you will do it beautifully. You might not love your work at the beginning; yet the deeper side of your soul can help you bring the light of love to what you do. Then, regardless of what you do, you will do it in a creative and transforming way.

There is an apposite story about a Zen monk in Japan. The Emperor had an absolutely magnificent vase which was ancient and intricately beautiful. One day someone let the vase fall and it split into millions of fragments. The fragments were gathered up and the best potter in the land was called to reassemble the vase. He came but failed. He paid for his failure by losing his head. The Emperor ordered the next best potter and he also failed. This continued for weeks until, finally, all the best artists in the land had died, having failed to reassemble the broken beautiful vase. There was only one artist left, an old Zen monk who lived in a cave in the mountains. He had a young apprentice. He came and collected all the fragments himself and brought them back to his work shed. For weeks and weeks he had worked until, finally, the vase was there again. The apprentice looked at it and thought how beautiful it was. The two of them made the journey to the city and brought the vase into the palace. The Emperor and all his courtesans beamed in admiration at the beauty of the reassembled vase. The old Zen monk was graciously rewarded. He and his young apprentice went back to their cave in the mountains. Then, one day the young apprentice was looking for something and unexpectedly came upon the fragments of the vase. He ran in to his master: 'Look at all the fragments of the vase, you never assembled them all. How did you make a vase as beautiful as the ancient one that was broken?' The old master said: 'If you do the work that you do from a loving heart, then you will always be able to make something beautiful.'

THE KING AND THE BEGGAR'S GIFT

THE KING AND THE BEGGAR'S GIFT

A difficult or unwanted thing can turn out to be a great gift. Frequently, we receive unknown gifts in disguise. There is a wonderful old story told of a young king who took over a kingdom. He was loved before he became a king and his subjects were delighted when he was finally crowned. They brought him many different gifts. After the coronation, the new king was at supper in the palace. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. The servants went out to discover an old man shabbily dressed, looking like a beggar. He wanted to see the king. The servants did their best to dissuade him but to no avail. The king came out to meet him. The old man praised the king, saying how delighted everyone in the kingdom was to have him as king. He had brought the king the gift of a melon. The king hated melons. Being kind to the old man, he took the melon, thanked him, and the old man went away happy. The king went indoors and gave the melon to his servants to throw out in the back garden. The next week at the same time, there was another knock at the door. The king was summoned again and the old man praised the king and offered him another melon. The king took the melon and said goodbye to the old man. Once again, he threw the melon out the back door. This continued for several weeks. The king was too kind to confront the old man or belittle the generosity of the gift that he brought. Then, one evening, just as the old man was about to hand the melon to the king, a monkey jumped down from a portico in the palace and knocked the melon from the old man's hand. The melon shattered into pieces all over the front of the palace. When the king looked, he saw a shower of diamonds flying from the heart of the melon. Eagerly, he checked the garden at the back of the palace. There, all the melons had melted around a little hillock of jewels. The moral of this story is that sometimes in awkward situations, in problems or in difficulties, all that is awkward is the disguise. Very often at the heart of the difficulty, there is the light of a great jewel. It is wise to learn to embrace with hospitality that which is awkward and difficult.

My father was an accomplished stonemason. I often watched him building walls. Frequently, he would choose a stone that was completely round. A round stone is useless because is cannot be bound into the structure of the wall. Yet with a little tap of the hammer, my father could transform the stone. Something that looked unformed and awkward would fit into the wall as if it had been made specially for it. I love, too, that image of Michelangelo's: that in every stone no matter how dumb, awkward or blunt there is a secret shape waiting to emerge. Michelangelo's wonderful Prisoners in Stone illustrates this. The human figures have almost emerged from the stone, yet from the waist down they are still trapped in the dull unformed stone. It is an incredible image of release which is arrested. Very often in difficult work projects there is a secret shape waiting to emerge. If you concentrate on releasing the hidden possibility within your project, you will find a satisfaction that will surprise you. Meister Eckhart speaks beautifully about the way one should be towards what one does. If you work with a creative and kind eye, you will bring forth beauty.

THE FALSE IMAGE CAN PARALYSE

THE FALSE IMAGE CAN PARALYSE

Perception is crucial to understanding. How you see, and what you see, determine how you will be. Your perception, or your view of reality, is the lens through which you see things. Your perception determines the way that things will behave for you and towards you. We tend to perceive difficulty as disturbance. Ironically, difficulty can be a great friend of creativity. I love the lines from Paul Valéry: 'Une difficulté est une lumiére / Une difficulté insurmontable est un soleil,' i.e. A difficulty is a light; an insurmountable difficulty is a sun. This is a completely different way of considering the awkward, the uneven and the difficult. Deep within us, there is a terrible impulse and drive towards perfection. We want everything flattened into the one shape. We do not like unexpected shapes. One of the essential aspects of beginning to reimagine the workplace is to awaken the ability to welcome that which is difficult and awkward. Frequently the actual work itself if fine, rather it is our image of it which is difficult and awkward. Frequently the actual work itself is fine, rather it is our image of it which makes it appear difficult and awkward.

During a phase of my study in Germany, I became acutely aware of the impossibility of my task. I was working on the Phenomenology of Spirit. Anyone who knows Hegel will readily admit that this long text is magical but difficult to penetrate. My sense of the difficulty of the project began to mirror itself in my presence towards the work. I began to paralyse myself and soon I was not able to work at all. As the German so beautifully says of such blockage: 'Ich stehe mir im Weg,' i.e. I am standing in my own way. I would go to my desk with great commitment, believing that I was going to break through this barrier, but I could not concentrate. The image that kept haunting my mind was the impossibility of my task. Each day I would try anew, but I was paralysed.

One day, I went for a long walk in the forest near Tübingen. In the forest it suddenly occurred to me that Hegel was not the problem, rather it was my image of the task that obstructed me. I came back home immediately, and sat down and scribbled quickly on the page the image of my work that I had constructed. I recognized the power that the image had. When this became clear to me, I was able to distance the image from the actual work itself. After a couple of days, the image had faded and I was back into the rhythm of the work.

Some people have a lot of difficulty at work, even though the work is a genuine expression of their nature, giftedness and potential. The difficulty is not with the work, but rather with their image of the work. The image is not merely a surface; it also becomes a lens through which we behold a thing. We are partly responsible for the construction of our own images and completely responsible for how we use them. To recognize that the image is not the person or the thing is liberating.

THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE

THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE

Surprisingly, there is often great irony in the way the soul behaves. Sometimes in the work world a person with analytic, linear vision can miss out totally on the harvest and fruits of work. The imagination has a particular rhythm of vision which never sees directly in a linear way. The eye of the imagination follows the rhythm of the circle. If your vision is confined to linear purpose, you may miss out on the secret destiny that a form of activity can bring you. There is a lovely Celtic story about Fionn and the salmon of knowledge. Fionn wanted to become a poet. In Celtic Ireland to be a poet was a sacred vocation. The poet summed up in himself a supernatural power, the power of the Druid and the power of creativity. Poets had special access to mysteries which were not available to the common masses.

There was a salmon in the River Slane in County Meath. Whoever caught this salmon and ate it would become the greatest and most gifted poet in Ireland and would also receive the gift of second sight. There was a man called Fionn the Seer who had spent seven years pursuing this salmon. Young Fionn mac Cumhaill came to him to learn the craft of poetry. One day Fionn the Seer came back, having caught the salmon of knowledge. He started a fire and put the salmon on a spit. The salmon had to be turned very carefully and could not be burnt or the gift would be ruined. After a while the fire went low and the salmon could no longer be cooked properly. He had no-one to gather more wood for the fire. Just then his protege, Fionn, came out of the wood and he left him to turn the salmon slowly on the spit. Young Fionn mac Cumhaill began to turn the salmon but he was a dreamer and he allowed his mind to wander. When he looked, a blister had appeared on the side of the salmon. He grew very anxious, knowing that Fionn the Seer would be furious with him for having ruined the salmon. With his thumb he tried to press the blister back in. As soon as he did, he burnt his thumb, then put it in his mouth to relieve the pain. There was some of the oil of the salmon on his thumb and as soon as he tasted the salmon oil, he received th wisdom, the gift of second sight and the vocation of poet. Old Fionn came back with the wood. As soon as he looked at young Fionn's eyes, he knew what had happened. He sat there disappointed that the destiny he had pursued so deliberately had at the last moment turned away from him to be received by an innocent young man who had never even dreamed of such a gift.

This is a good story to illustrate how the linear mind, despite its sincerity and commitment, can totally miss the gift. The imagination in its loyalty to possibility often takes the curved path rather than the linear way. Such risk and openness inherits the harvest of creativity, beauty and spirit.

Sometimes a person has difficulty with work, not because the work is unsuited to them, or they to it, but because their image of the work is blurred and defective. Frequently, such a person lacks a focus. They have allowed the tender presence of their experience to become divided and split. Their sense of their work as expression and imagination has been replaced by an image of work as endurance and entrapment.

SISYPHUS

SISYPHUS

When weariness becomes gravity, it destroys your natural soul protection. It is reminiscent of the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was condemned for his sin. In the underworld, his task was to roll a huge boulder up a hill. He would painstakingly roll the boulder slowly up and up almost to the summit, then the rock would roll out of his grasp and crash right to the bottom. If Sisyphus could stop and decide never to roll the stone again, he would have peace. He is the prisoner of the futile, condemned eternho ally to begin the same task but never complete it. He has to roll the boulder up the hill eternally in the sure knowledge that he can never get it over the summit. Anyone in the business or corporate work world who remains on the surface of the role, and practises only the linear side of the mind, is like Sisyphus. They are in great danger of a breakdown. A breakdown is often a desperate attempt by the soul to break through the weary facade of role politics. There is a profundity to the human soul that the linear surface of the work world cannot accommodate. When you remain in the rut, you become caged behind one window of the mind. You are then not able to turn around towards the balcony of the soul and enjoy the different views through the other windows of wonder and possibility.

Rapidity is another force causing massive stress in the workplace. Baudrillard, the French philosopher, speaks of the exponential speed of modern life. Where things are moving too quickly, nothing can stabilize, gather or grow. There is a lovely story of a man exploring Africa. He was in a desperate hurry on a journey through the jungle. He had three or four African people helping him to carry his equipment. They raced onwards for about three days. At the end of the third day, the Africans sat down and would not move. He urged them to get up, telling them of the pressure he was under to reach his destination before a certain date. They refused to move. He could not understand this; after much persuasion, they still refused to move. Finally, he got one of them to admit the reason. This African said: 'We have moved too quickly to reach here; now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us.' Many people who are secretly weary of work have never given themselves time, or taken time out or away from work, to allow their spirits to catch up. It is a simple but vital reflective exercise to give yourself plenty of time: leave all agendas behind you. Let the neglected presence of your soul come to meet and engage you again. It can be a lovely re-acquaintance with your forgotten mystery.

The Celtic imagination testifies to a different concept and experience of time. The recognition of presence and the celebration of nature was only possible because time was window on the eternal. Time was never reduced to achievement. Time was time for wonder. This is still one of the charming things about Ireland. People here still have time. In contrast to many areas in the Western world, people here inhabit a more flexible and open time rhythm. The ideology of rapidity and clinical efficiency has not gained a grip here, yet.

THE ROLE CAN SMOTHER

THE ROLE CAN SMOTHER

If you only awakent you will and intellect, then you work can become your identity. This is summed up in the rather humorous epitaph on a gravestone somewhere in London: 'Here lies Jeremy Brown born a man and died a grocer.' Often a person's identity, that wild inner complexity of soul and colour of spirit, becomes shrunken into their work identity. They become prisoners of their role. They limit and reduce their lives. They become seduced by the practice of self-absence. They move further and further away from their own lives. They are forced backwards into hidden areas on the ledges of their hearts. When you encounter them you meet only the role. You look for the person, but you never meet him. To practise only the linear external side of your mind is very dangerous. Thus, the corporate and work world now recognizes how desperately they need the turbulance, anarchy and growth possibilities from the unpredictable world of the imagination. These are so vital for the passion and force of a person's life. If you engage only the external side of yourself, and stay on this mechanical surface, you become secretly weary. Gradually, years of this practice make you desperate.

SPONTANEITY AND BLOCKAGE

SPONTANEITY AND BLOCKAGE

When the workplace is run in a deliberate, forced way, nothing new can happen there. If you try to force the soul, you never succeed. When I was in Germany my consciousness became intensified and relentlessly active. Consequently, I began to develop a sleep problem. If you are doing physical work during the day, you can survive with very little sleep. If you are doing precise and difficult mental work, you need sleep. I began to have major insomnia problems. After rising, I could work for about an hour, then I was suddenly tired and frustrated. I hated goint to bed at night, and every night I made furious attempts to get to sleep. I tried everything. I remember one night being particularly exhausted and I said to myself: face it, now you will never sleep properly again. You will never have a night of complete rest. You are going to have this problem for the rest of your life. The strange thing was that as soon as I admitted that to myself, withing five minutes I was fast asleep. Over the next few nights my rhythm of sleep returned. What prevented me from sleeping was the deliberate commitment to try to get to sleep. As soon as I let go of the desire to sleep, sleep came naturally.

When the will and the intellect are brought as deliberate forces into the workplace, this only makes that bland similarity even more entrenched. When the imagination, the force of illumination in the soul, is allowed to stir, it opens up the workplace in a completely new way. No-one should be neutral or indifferent to his work or workplace. It is very important for a person to have a careful look at the kind of work he does. He should try to establish whether the work he does and his workplace is actually expressive of his identity, dignity and giftedness. If not, difficult choices may need to be made. If you sell your soul, you ultimately buy a life of misery.

Respectability and security are subtle traps on life's journey. Those who are drawn to extremes are often nearer to renewal and self-discovery. Those trapped in the bland middle region of respectability are lost without ever realizing it. This can be a trap for those addicted to the business world. Many people in business operate only with one sid of their mind: the strategic, tactical, mechanical side, day-in day-out. This becomes a mental habit which they apply to everything, including their inner life. Even though they are powerful people in the theatre of work, outside of the workplace they look forlorn and lost. You cannot repress the presence of your soul and not pay the price. If you sin against your soul, it is always at a great cost. Work can be an attractive way of sinning deeply against the wildness and creativity of your own soul. Work comes to dominate your identity. One of the most disturbing stories in twentieth-century literature portrays the surrealistic destiny of an utterly meticulous and faithful functionary. This is Kafka's Metamorphosis which has the uncanny opening sentence: 'As
Gregor Samsa awoke one morning out of troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.' With deft anonymity, surrealistic detail detail and black humour, Kafka is unequalled in his ability to portray system and functionary.

WORK AND IMAGINATION

WORK AND IMAGINATION

One of the encouraging aspects of modern work, particularly in the corporate world, is the increasing recognition of the imagination as a vital and essential force. This is not because the corporate world loves the imagination. Corporate appreciation of the imagination has happened for other reasons, namely, the markets are now volatile and the pace of change so rapid that the old patterns of work control are unproductive. There is a recognition dawning that the repetitive linear system which controls the work and the worker is no longer profitable. Consequently, the presence of the soul is now welcome in the workplace. The soul is welcome because it is the place where the imagination lives.

The imagination is the creative force in the individual. It always negotiates different thresholds and releases possibilities of recognition and creativity which the linear, controlling, external mind will never even glimpse. The imagination works on the threshold that runs between light and dark, visible and invisible, quest and question, possibility and fact. The imagination is the great friend of possibility. Where the imagination is awake and alive fact never hardens or closes but remains open, inviting you to new thresholds of possibility and creativity.

When I was doing my postgraduate work in Germany, I had the good fortune to share a house in Berlin with a wonderful philosopher of science from India who has written some amazing books on the growth of scientific knowledge. As this man had directed many postgraduate students, I asked him what advice he would give me as I was about to engage in research on Hegel. He said that most research endeavours to establish a conclusion or reach verification that no-one can successfully criticize or undermine. Everyone attempts that, there is nothing new in it. I should take a different approach. He said, try to discover a few questions in this area that no-one has thought of asking, then you will have discovered something truly original and important. This advice was an invitation to novelty, an inspiration to perceive a given situation in a completely new way.

Even though much effort is put into the workplace, the actual application of fresh imagination is rare. Usually a bland sameness is allowed to dominate work. Even the patterns of criticism from workers become predictable and entrenched. Often a new person coming in can bring a new art of questioning and thinkin. Suddenléy a dead situation coheres itself in a fresh and exciting way. Possibilities which had slept there, under the surface of the old bland similarity, now awaken. People become empowered and engaged; the whole project of that particular workplace comes alive with a new energy. The person who can approach the workplace not with linear analysis, which is so predictable and repetitive, but with imaginative possibility, can reimagine the workplace for its participants and open it up in an engaging and inspiring way. For this reason, the poet, or the artist of soul, has become such an important presence in the contemporary corporate world. He can bring a freshness that it severely lacks, opening doors and windows in places that up to then had had impenetrable walls. This approach to the workplace ensures that creativity and spontaneity become major energizing forces there.

THE TRAP OF FALSE BELONGING

THE TRAP OF FALSE BELONGING

This reimaging of the workplace would help fulfil one of the crucial needs that every individual has: the need to belong. Everyone loves to belong. We went to belong to a group, to a family and particularly to the place in which we work. Here is the point at which an immense creativity could be released in the workplace. Imagine how lovely it would be if you could be yourself at work and express your true nature, giftedness and imagination. There need be no separation between your home, your private life and your actual world of work. One could flow into the other in a creative and mutually enriching way. Instead, too many people belong to the system because they are forced to and controlled.

People are often exceptionally careless in their style of belonging. Too many people belong too naively to the systems in which they are involved. When they are suddenly laid off, or the system collapses, or someone else is promoted, they feel broken, wounded and demeaned. In nearly every corporation or workplace you will find many disappointed individuals. Initially, they brought the energy and innocence of their belonging to their work, but they were let down, disappointed, and treated as functionaries. Their energy was claimed and used, but their souls were never engaged.

The heart of the matter is, you should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself. It is very important to find a balance in your belonging. You should never belong totally to any cause or system. Frequently, people need to belong to an external system because they are afraid to belong to their own lives. If your soul is awakened then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. Your longing is safe there. Belonging is related to longing. If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth: be-your-longing. Longing is a precious instinct in the soul. Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity. You should belong first in your own interiority. If you belong there, and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized or taken away. You will still be able to stand on your own ground, the ground of your soul where you are not a tenant, where you are at home. Your interiority is the ground from which nobody can distance, exclude or exile you. This is your treasure. As the New Testament says, 'Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.'

WEAKNESS AND POWER

WEAKNESS AND POWER

Frequently people in power are not as strong as they might wish to appear. Many people who desperately hunger for power are weak. They seek power positions to compensate for their own fragility and vulnerability. A weak person in power can never be generous with power because they see questions or alternative possibilities as threatening their own supremacy and dominance. If you are going to be creatively confrontational with such a person, you need to approach very gently in a non-direct manner. This is the only way to reach the heart of such a frightened, powerful person with the word of truth.

The workplace as a place of power can also be a place of control. Control is destructive because it reduces your own independence and autonomy. You are placed back in an infantile role where you are dealing with an authority figure. Because of our untransfigured relationship to our parents we sometimes turn authority figures into giants. There is a crucial distinction here between power and authority. When you are awake to the integrity of you inner power, then you are your own authority. The word authority signifies your authorship of your ideas and actions. The world functions through power structures. Consequently, it is desirable that genuine people of refined sensibility, imagination and compassion leave themselves available to take up positions of power. A charismatic person in a powerful position can be an agent of far-reaching and positive change.

When you are being controlled, you are treated as an object rather than a subject. Often people in power have an uncanny instinct for working the system against you. I know a millionaire who made his money in the clothes trade. The women working for him were paid poorly. Every so often, he would sense the tension building up amongst them. One day he turned the radio on really loud. Then all the workers began to complain. He watched the aggression building up until finally a group came to him and asked that the volume be lowered. He refused. They became more militant and threatened to go on strike. He insisted on keeping the volume loud. When they were almost out on the street, he lowered the volume. His strategy was to let them have the impression that they had the power. Then they returned to work, feeling they had won a victory over the boss, even though he had staged the conflict from the very beginning. This happened forty years ago. In the modern workplace unionization and the development of workers's rights means that employers can no longer get awas with such obvious manipulation. Still the work situation continues to exploit people. Management is now more subtle in its strategies of control and alienation.

The workplace can be a place of great competition. Management sometimes plays the workers against each other. Consequently, when you go into work you are in solo combat with your colleague in terms of productivity. Your colleagues begin to appear as a threat. Where productivity becomes God, each individual is reduced to a function. It would be wonderful if the workplace were a place of real inspiration with the work engaging your creativity. Your gift would be welcomed there; your contribution seen. Everyone has a special gift. Your life becomes happier when your gift can grow and come to expression in your place of work. You are freed to receive inspiration from others. Furthermore, because the gift of each person in relation to the overall work is unique, there need be no competition between the workers. This makes the workplace hospitable to the energies, rhythms and gifts of the soul. There is no reason why every workplace could not begin to develop such creativity.

Work should not serve the owners and the employers alone. Work should also serve the workers and the community. Structures should be developed whereby workers are able to share in the profits. The entry of imagination and the awakening of soul demands that work be understood as contributing to the creativity and improvement of the larger community. A firm or corporation which has large profits should assist and support the poor and the underprivileged. To create optimal conditions of work should become a priority. Furthermore, awkward but hones questions should be engaged. Where work creates products which endanger people or nature, it should be critiqued and changed.

One of the most powerful and prophetic analysts of work was Karl Marx. He showed how work can alienate a person from their nature and potential. Certain work can dull and darken human presence. In our century some of the most prophetic, trenchant and illuminating critical thought has come from this tradition. The school of critical theory has delivered a penetrating and critical evaluation of industrial society. It has revealed that history and society internally influence the structure of human identity. The nature of work and consumerism diminish and oppress the self. Critical theory has made a great contribution to the recovery of soul by identifying the subtlety and pervasiveness of these alienating forces. It cuts through the colourful but fictitious surface-image which conceals the quiet suffocation of individuality. Contemporary society worships at the altar of functionalism. Concepts such as process, method, model and project have come to infiltrate our language and determine how we describe our relation to the world. The recovery of soul means a rediscovery of Otherness; this would awaken again the sense of mystery, possibility and compassion. The deadening force of function would diminish and a new vitality infuse our activities. Stated philosophically, being could find expression in doing. The recovery of the sense of Otherness is the deepest mystical task of modern society. Celtic spirituality has an immense contribution to make in fostering this sense of Otherness. In its metaphysic of friendship there is a profound acknowledgement of the Otherness of nature, the self and the Divine. However, our modern conversation with Celtic tradition must be critical and reflective. Otherwise Celtic spirituality is in danger of becoming another fashionable and exotic spiritual programme in our sensation-driven culture.

In the world of negative work, where you are controlled, where power prevails and you are a mere functionary, everything is determined by an ethic of competition. In the world of creative work, where your gift is engaged, there is no competition. The soul transfigures the need for competition. In contrast, the world of quantity is always haunted by competition: if I have less, you have more. In the world of soul, the more you have, the more everyone has. The rhythm of soul is the surprise of endless enrichment.

PRESENCE AS SOUL TEXTURE

PRESENCE AS SOUL TEXTURE

In the modern workplace such a negative atmosphere can be very destructive. When we speak of an individual, we speak of his presence. Presence is the way a person's individuality comes towards you. Presence is the soul texture of the person. When we speak of this presence in relation to a group of people, we refer to it as atmosphere or ethos. The ethos of a workplace is a very subtle group presence. It is difficult to describe or analyse an ethos; yet you immediately sense its power and effect. Where the ethos is positive, wonderful things can happen. It is a joy to come to work because the atmosphere comes out to meet you, and it is a happy atmosphere. It is caring, kind and creative. Where the ethos of the workplace is negative and destructive, people wake up in the morning and the first thought of going to work literally makes them ill. It is sad that so many people have to spend so much of their short time in the world in a negative and destructive work ethos. The workplace can be quite hostile; it is often an environment of power. You are working for people who have power over you. They have the power to sack you, criticize you and bully you, or compromise your dignity. This is not a welcoming atmosphere. People have power over us because we give our power away to them.

It is an interesting exercise to ask yourself what image you have of the people who have power over you. A friend of mine works in a school which has an insecure principal. He is weak and defensive. He uses his power in a very negative way. Recently at a meeting to start the school term, he berated the staff. The next day my friend met this man in town with his wife. She was shocked to recognize that outside of his power context he looked totally insignificant. This startled her because she had projected such power onto him as school principal.

Sometimes we allow people to exercise destructive power over us simply because we never question them. When falsity masquerades as power, there is no force that can unmask it as swiftly as a question. We are all familiar with the story of the Emperor's new clothes. The Emperor paraded through town in his new suit; in reality he was stark naked. Everyone cheered and said what a wonderful suit the Emperor wore. They were all in complicit agreement until a little child blurted out the truth. The word of truth is completely powerful. In the New Testament Jesus says, 'If you continue in my word you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.' This maxim is relevant to every situation. Gentle, non-confrontational questions which pursue the truth, as you see it, can prevent a person from taking over all the power in a situation. This will save complex and gentle people from being reduced to the function of an external controlled role.

PISREOGA

PISREOGA

For many people, the workplace is unsatisfactory and permits neither growth nor creativity. More often than not, it is an anonymous place where function and image have control. Since work demands such labour and effort, it has always made the worker vulnerable. Even in the ancient Celtic tradition negativity could be harnessed to make nature work against the worker. When people disliked each other or wanted to damage each other, they often did it through destroying the neighbour's harvest. This is the world of pisreoga. Maybe one neighbour was jealous of another and planted eggs in his garden of potatoes. When the neighbour goes to dig up the potatoes at harvest time, the potatoes have decayed. The destructive wish of the neighbour is realized through a ritual of negative invocation and the symbol of an egg. This then robs the power and the fruitfulness of the garden.

In the Celtic tradition, the first of May was a precarious date. The Celts guarded their wells at this time; negative or destructive spirits might want to destroy, poison or damage them. Such negativity is illustrated in a story my uncle used to tell of a neighbouring village. One May morning a farmer was out herding his animals. He met a strange woman pulling a rope along the meadow. He greeted her with a blessing. 'Dia dhuit,' he said, but she did not answer. Rather, she turned and disappeared, leaving the rope behind her. It was a fine rope. He coiled it and brought it back to the house and threw it into a barrel in one of the outhouses where it lay forgotten. The following harvest the neighbours were helping him bring hay home from the meadows with the horse and cart and they needed an extra rope to tie the load of hay. Someone asked if he had any other rope. He said, 'Níl aon rópa agam ach rópa an t-sean cailleach,' i.e. I have no rope but the rope of the old hag. He went to the shed to find the rope but when he came to the barrel, it was full of butter. The old woman was no innocent visitor, she had stolen the cream and strength of the land on May morning. When she dropped the rope, the power remained in the rope and the cream of the land filled up the barrel. This story shows how sometimes the harvest and the reward of work could be stolen at the precarious threshold of May morning.

THE SOUL DESIRES EXPRESSION

THE SOUL DESIRES EXPRESSION

The human person deeply desires expression. One of the most beutiful ways the soul is present is through thought. Thoughts are the forms of the soul's inner swiftness. In a certain sense, there is nothing in the world as swift as a thought. It can fly anywhere, and be with anyone. Our feelings too can move swiftly; yet even though they are precious to our own identity, thoughts and feelings still remain largely invisible. In order to feel real, we need to bring that inner invisible world to expression. Every life needs the possibilitey of expression. When we perform an action, the invisible within us finds a form, and comes to expression. Therefore, our work should be the place where the soul can enjoy becoming visible and present. The rich unknown, reserved and precious within us, can emerge into visible form. Our nature longs deeply for the possibility of expression which we call work.

I was raised on a farm. We were poor and each of us had to do our share of chores. I am always grateful that I was taught how to work. Ever since, I have found satisfaction in being able to do a day's work. I find it frustrating when a day goes astray, and at evening I sense that many of the possibilities that slept in that day remained unmet. On a farm, work has a clear and visible effect. When you are digging potatoes, you see the results of your harvesting; the garden yields its buried, nurtured fruit. When you build a wall in a field, you are introducing a new presence into the landscape. If you are out footing turf on the bog, in the evening you see all the grogáin of turf standing up ready to dry. There is great satisfaction in farm work. Even though it is difficult, you still see a great return for your work. When I left home, I entered the world of thought, writing and poetry. This work is in the invisible realm. When you work in the territory of the mind, you see nothing. Only sometimes are you given the slightest little glimpse of the ripples from your effort. You need great patience and self-trust to sense the invisible harvest in the territory of the mind. You need to train the inner eye for the invisible realms where thoughts can grow, and where feelings put down their roots.

THE CELTIC REVERENCE FOR THE DAY

THE CELTIC REVERENCE FOR THE DAY

Celtic spirituality has a great sense of the significance of each day, how the new day is sacred. The Celts never entered the day with a repetitious deadening perspective; they took each day as a new beginning. There is a lovely Celtic prayer which articulates this sense of the day as a gift from God. The metaphor of vision suffuses the poem. There is an invocation that the human eye may 'bless all it sees' and that God's vision may guard and guide the day. The day is understood as a time of reflexive blessing which embraces God, self, others and nature.

God bless to me the new day

never vouchsafed to me before

it is to bless thy own presnce thou has

given triumph God.

Bless though to me

mine yes

may mine eye bless all it sees

I will bless my neighbour

my my neighbour bless me,

God give me a clean heart

let me not from sight of thine ey

bless to me my children and my wife

and bless to me my means and cattle.

(trans. A. Carmichael)

For the Celtic person the new day was lived amidst nature. It is easy to have a creative sense of the day when you live in the presence of the great divinity called nature. For the Celtic people, nature was not matter, rather it was a luminous and numinous presence which had depth, possibility and beauty.

There is also a beutiful invocation of the day in the ancient poem called 'The Deer's Cry':

I arise today

Through God's strength to direct me:

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak to me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's hosts to save me from snares of devils,

From temptation of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone and in a multitude.

(trans. Kunoy Meyer)

This poem articulates the Celtic recognition of the omnipresence of God. The very act of awakening is recognized as a gift. At the threshold of a new day there is no arrogance; rather a longing to praise. God is pictured in sensuous detail as the divine anam cara. At every moment and in every situation God is the intimate, attentive and encouraging friend.

This notion of the day as a sacred place offers a lovely frame for the creativity which a day can bring. Your life becomes the shape of the days you inhabit. Days enter us. Sadly, in modern life, the day is often a cage. Here a person loses his youthfulness, energy and strength. The day is often experienced as a cage precisely because it is spent in the workplace. So many of our days and so much of our time is spent doing work which remains outside the territories of creativity and feeling. The workplace can be complex and very difficult. Most of us work for someone else and lose so much of our energy. As a matter of fact, one of the definitions of energy is the ability to do work. Days spent caged make us tired and weary. In a city all the morning traffic jams hold people who are barely out of the night and are sleepy, anxious and frustrated. Pressure and stress have already stolen their day. In the evening, the same people are weary after a long workday. By the time they get home, they have no energy left to attend to the desires, thoughts and feelings which were neglected all day.

It is very difficult, at first consideration, to bring the world of work and the world of soul together. Most of us work in order to survive. We need to make money; we have no choice. On the other hand, those who are unemployed feel frustrated and demeaned and suffer a great loss of dignity. Yet those of us who work are often caught within a grid of predictability and repetition. It is the same every day. There is such an anonymous side to work. All that is demanded of us is the input of our energy. We move through the workplace, and as soon as we are gone in the evening, we are forgotten. We have the feeling that our contribution, while it is required and demanded, is merely functional and in reality hardly appreciated. Work should not be like that at all; it should be an arena of possibility and real expression.

TO GROW IS TO CHANGE

TO GROW IS TO CHANGE

In a peotics of growth it is important to explore how possibility and change remain so faithful to us. They open us to new depths within. Their continual, inner movement makes us aware of the eternity that hides behind the outer facade of our lives. Deep within every life, no matter how dull or ineffectual it may seem from the outside, there is something eternal happening. This is the secret way that chane and possibility conspire with growth. John Henry Newman summed this up beautifully with the idea that to grow is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often . Change, therefore, need not be threatening; it can in fact bring our lives to perfection. Perfection is not cold completion. Neither is it avoidance of risk and danger in order to keep the soul pure or the conscience unclouded. When you are faithful to the risk ambivalence of growth, you are engaging your life. The soul loves risk; it is only through the door of risk that growth can enter . Hölderlin wrote: 'Nah ist / Und schwer zu fassen der Gott. Wo aber Gefahr ist, wachst / Das Rettende aus,' i.e. Near is and difficult to understand, the God. But where danger is the Redemptive grows. Perfection is the fulfilment of the fully lived and inhabited life.

Possibility and change become growth within the shape of time that we call a day. Days are where we live. This rhythm shapes our lives. Your life takes the form of each new day that is given to you. The wonderful Polish poet Tadeusz Rózewicz describes the difficulty of writing good poetry . A writer writes and writes and writes, and yet the harvest is so minimal. Nonetheless, Rózewicz quotes and old dictum which says that is is to write a book. A day is precious because each day is essentially the microcosm of your whzole life. Each new day offers possibilities and promises that were never seen before. To engage with honour the full possibility of your life is to engage in a worthy way way the possibility of your new day. Each day is different. In the Book of Revelation, God said, 'The world of the past has gone... Behold I am making all of creation new.' The new day deepens what has already happened and unfolds what is surprising, unpredictable and creative. You may wish to change your life, you may be in therapy or religion, but your new vison remains merely talk until it enters the practice of your day.

THE EYE CELEBRATES MOTION

CHAPTER 4

WORK AS A POETICS OF GROWTH

THE EYE CELEBRATES MOTION

The human eye adores movement and is alert to the slightest flicker. It enjoys great moments of celebration when it beholds the ocean as the tide comes in, and tide upon tide repeats its dance against the shore. The eye also loves the way lifght moves, summer light behind a clound crawling over a meadow. The eye follows the way the wind shovels leaves and sway trees. The human person is always attracted to motion. As a little baby you wanted to crawl, then to walk, and as an adult you feel the continuous desire to walk into independence and freedom.

Everything alive is in movement. This movement we call growth. The most exciting form of growth is not mere physical growth, but the inner growth of one's soul and life. It is here that the holy longing without the heart brings one's life into motion. The deepest wish of the heart is that this motion does not remain broken or jagged, but develops sufficient fluency to become the rhythm of one's life.

The secret heart of time is change and growth. Each new experience which awakens in you adds to your soul and deepens your memory. The person is always a nomad, journeying from threshold to threshold, into ever different experiences. In each new experience, another dimension of the soul unfolds. It is no wonder that from ancient times the human person has been understood as a wanderer. Traditionally, these wanderers traversed foreign territories and unknown places. Yet, Stanislavsky, the Russian dramatist and thinker, wrote: 'The longest and most exciting journey is the journey inwards.'

There is a beautiful complexity of growth within the human soul. In order to glimpse this, it is helpful to visualise the mind as a tower of windows. Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that await you gaze. Through thses different windows, you can see new vistas of possibility, presence and creativity. Complacency, habit and blindness often prevent you from feeling your life. So much depends on the frame of vision – the window through which we look.