Dear Friends ~ To everything there is a season— a time to work and a time to play, a time to strive and a time to rest, a time to set one's "eyes on the prize" and a time to pause and notice the wildflowers and others along the way. In our culture, achievement and productivity are valued as the benchmarks of success. If the answer to the question, "What do you do?" cannot be summed up in a job title or a listing of accomplishments, you are left feeling somehow hollow or having been dismissed as insignificant. Yet one can be just as negligent or distracted or untransformed in the busyness of work as in mundane pursuits or the ordinary activities of daily life. If the magic of music lies partly in the silent spaces between notes, the gift of grace may lie in the Sabbath moments between long hours of work and activity. Perhaps the way to find balance in this frenetic, compulsive culture is to perceive our lives not as straining to keep up with the tyranny of the marching drumbeat but attuning ourselves to the rhythm of the heartbeat— to focus not so much on making a living as composing a life and finding joy in its unfolding.
Each of us is born with an inner acorn encoded with our destiny. That acorn already knows; all we need to do is allow it to guide our growth and we will become as majestic as the oak. Experience convinces me that saying yes to your intuition (your inner voice) is saying yes to your greatness, whatever form that might take. And your greatness is not just a gift for yourself; it graces everyone that loves you, the community you live in, and the larger world that surrounds you. You, the real you, is the gift.