As long as I respond, God can continue to shape my own individual path in me. God is forever introducing me to new and exciting challenges. God only asks that I respond. I need to be flexible and open to the new creation and the new call that is forming within me. God can form a huge pitcher out of me and fill it with water to pour on the dry stones. I must wait to be renewed and reshaped. The more clay is worked, the more pliable it becomes in the experienced hands of the potter. I must remember that I, too, am called to be a potter, creator of love. I feel a deep peace and sense of something being created, or being brought to birth. Perhaps the Mother God will show me her face and show me how the clay becomes the potter.

Anyone who has tried to live in community with others knows how beset with pain and difficulties such a life is! Perhaps that is why the pews in our churches are row on row, and why in less obvious ways we have put distance between ourselves and others. We have not wanted to suffer in any serious way the encountering of one another, all unaware that avoidance deprives us of community.

The rat race. The fast track. The old grind. The same ol' same ol'--whatever you call it, a lot of people are looking for a way out. Many today have a sense that their lives are not their own, that they have few choices and little power over their own destinies. They sense their lives getting away from them, moving at a frantic pace they feel powerless to control. They feel trapped in the rat race--forcing themselves, day after day, to do work they find neither meaningful nor fulfilling.

We have been told that the rat race is the road to success. Yet many today have an idea of success different from those of previous generations. For these people, success is not defined exclusively in economic terms but includes the opportunity to express their innate talents and abilities, to be creatively engaged (not simply to show up), to feel as though they are making a meaningful difference, and to integrate their spiritual values with the everyday business of working and making a living. Moreover, today there is a growing realization that an unhappy experience at work has profound psychological and social costs....

A growing number of people are expecting to find a place for their heart and soul in their work, a place to express their unique talents and abilities. They want a greater sense of joy and meaning in their work. While growing rapidly, this group is, to be sure, still a minority of workers. Yet all great social movements begin with minorities, courageous pioneers who blaze trails that the less adventurous are later able to tread....

The redefinition of work will be one of the great tests of human creativity in the 21st century. It has been estimated that 75 percent of all jobs involve the kind of repetitive functions that can be replaced by computers or machines. In the economically developed nations, new technologies and the exportation of jobs to the "developing nations" have meant the elimination of millions of jobs. In the Third World, the introduction of large-scale farming has pushed and will likely continue to push billions into the cities, where there are too few jobs and inadequate infrastructure and housing to absorb them humanely.

Unless we are to face global unemployment on a truly horrific scale or the prospect of a virtual slave class of low-paid workers, new kinds of work must be created. This new work will not be created by the government, but neither will it come from the private sector, if we mean by that the massive global corporations. It will be created, if at all, by individuals. It will be born of their inspirations, compassion and natural talents. The problem is not so much one of "putting people to work" as it is of empowering them to work--unleashing and not repressing their innate creative powers.

Laurence Boldt is a writer and career consultant.

A candle of the Lord is the soul of man, but the soul can become a holocaust, a fury, a rage. The only cure is to discover that, over and above the anonymous stillness in the world, there is a Name and a waiting. Many people suffer from a fear of the self. They do not feel at home in their own selves. The inner life is a place of dereliction, a no-man's-land, inconsolate, weird. The self has become a place from which to flee.

Faithfulness is consecration in overalls. It is the steady acceptance and performance of the common duty and immediate task without any reference to personal preferences--because it is there to be done, and so is a manifestation of the Will of God.... The fruits of the Spirit get less and less showy as we go on. Faithfulness means continuing quietly with the job we have been given, in the situation where we have been placed; not yielding to the restless desire for change. It means tending the lamp quietly for God without wondering how much longer it has got to go on. Steady, unsensational driving, taking good care of the car. A lot of the road to heaven has to be taken at 30 miles per hour.

One of the most crucial dimensions of letting go is the recognition that there is no need to change an event or person. This is extremely rare and demands a respect and reverence beyond most of us.

But, we argue, shouldn't we want to change an undesirable happening, or to change a person who obviously needs changing? The answer is, no. We can be there, and God's presence can be there in us and through us, and that's all we can do. Whatever changes are appropriate will occur. But that is quite different from our struggling to change people and trying to change events.

There will be very little celebration and transcendence and lifting of another's burdens when we're hoping to change them and "clean them up."  I have discovered through the years that it is very heavy work to get another cleaned up. And it's even heavier to get a community cleaned up.

The task, I think, is to enjoy the other more. To experience the wonder of the person, to be more open, more attentive, to learn from the person or the community, and to revel in the surprises that are given. If the person or community changes, good. If not, you've celebrated who they are. You've lived in the Now.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

That look, we all know it, when someone nods his head up and down and you think he might as well be nodding off for all the true listening that's going on. I think we pull away from honest listening when we're living lives that leave us frayed, when we too have such a call to be listened to. We need to share our stories to discover and then integrate their significance and for personal and cultural change to take place. Through telling and listening, we become more a part of each other, and we can move the stories out of the small 'me' into the large 'me,' the 'usness' of the collective.

All this preoccupation with your own imperfection is not humility, but an insidious form of spiritual pride. What do you expect to be? A saint? There are desperately few of them; and even they found their faults, which are the raw material of sanctity remember.

You know best when and how you fall into these various pitfalls. Try and control yourself when you see the temptation coming. Pull yourself up and make an act of contrition when you catch yourself doing any of the things.

Never allow yourself to be pessimistic about your own state. Look outward instead of inward; and when you are inclined to be depressed and think you are getting on badly, make an act of thanksgiving instead because others are getting on well.

The object of your salvation is God's Glory, not your happiness. So, be content to help, remaining yourself in the lowest place. Merge yourself in the great life of the Christian family. You have tied yourself up so tight in that accursed individualism of yours--the source of all your difficulties--that it is a marvel you can breathe at all.

Do not speak unless you can improve upon the silence.

All animals who lift their voices at dawn sing to God. The volcanoes and the clouds and the trees cry to us about God. The whole creation cries to us penetratingly with a great joy about the existence and the beauty and the love of God. The music roars it into our ears, the landscape calls it into our eyes. In all of nature we find God's initials, and all God's creatures are God's love letters to us.

All of nature burns with love created through love to light love in us. Nature is like a shadow of God, a reflection of God's beauty. The still, blue lake is a reflection of God. In every atom lives an image of the trinity, a figure of the trinitarian God. And also my own body is created to love God. Each of my cells is a hymn about the Creator and an ongoing declaration of love.