The Truth of Work Itself

One of my dear Amy friends (and I'm lucky enough to have two of them) sent me the following quote from Thomas Merton:

"Do not depend on the hope of results.  You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.  As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.  You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for a specific people.  In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
Zowie, that scratches an itch!

Ebb

"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships.  We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb.  We are afraid it will never return.  We insist on permanence, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.  The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now."  – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea.

I've been wanting to write about this quote for some time now.  I'd even planned to photograph a shoreline at low-tide during a late April trip to Florida with girlfriends.  Alas, my photography skills are sorely lacking, in part because I seldom get around to actually taking the pictures.

Interestingly, this quote appeared to me again as today's Celtic Daily Prayer reading.  This week, I am lamenting a new ebb.  Lamenting.  And trying to celebrate.  Relationships so rich and true  -->– such a high tide experience --> – naturally must ebb.  The sadness of the ebb highlights the absolute goodness of the flow.  The ebb aches because it should.  It was worth it.  

I've been here before, in the aftermath of rich experiences, wanting to cling to the memories and relationships.  Some relationships will continue, flourish, ebb and flow.  Some will not.  Over the years, I think I've learned to hold these relationships loosely, to give people space to engage or to drift away.  The holding loosely is unsettling, but the ongoing relationships are all the better for it.

Meanwhile, the ocean shore even now at low-tide, is still beautiful, uncertain, full.  Life continues in all its mundane routine and mustachioed-robin goodness, in its ebbs and flows.  Laundry to fold, toilets to clean, meals to plan.  Lego creations to admire, teenage dramas to hear, friends to laugh with.  Despite the lamenting, I am trying to be present here because here is good.  And because one day I will look back on this time which feels so much like an ebb and I will lament its passing as well.