Preparing the Ground: On Naming Our Work

I’ve found a reading that helps me get things done – work I don’t want to do. And work that frequently, in the past, hasn’t gotten done. My task is too big. The distance between me and what I wish to accomplish (finishing my next book) is too great. Not working can take over my life!

But now – Now!!

If we have been aware of the process of our lives,
including moments that we hate,
and are just aware of our hating—

“I don’t want to do it, but I’ll do it anyway”—
that very awareness is life itself.
When we stay with that awareness,
We don’t have that reactive feeling about it;

we’re just doing it.
Then for a second we begin to see,

“Oh, this is terrible—

and at the same time, it’s really quite enjoyable.”

We just keep going, preparing the ground. That’s enough.

Joko Beck, Zen teacher
Margaret J. Wheatley, Perseverance, BK, 2010, p122.

And Margaret Wheatley tells us:

“If we’ve returned again and again to our work, if we’ve taken on challenges rather than avoiding them, if we’ve known when to give up, when to change, when to open up, when to love. . .

Well I, for one, will feel very successful.” –

Margaret J Wheatley, Perseverance, B-K Publishers, 2010, p 123.

Funny how naming what I do makes my work easier.

Now I just keep going: Preparing the Ground.

More help to keep us going comes from Helen Nearing, Loving and Leaving the Good Life, Chelsea Green Publishing Company 1992. She died at 91, still living in the house she and Scott built.

Helen Nearing tells us: “Richard Bach gives a test in his Reluctant Messiah “to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you’re still alive, it isn’t,” p 192.

I am in my 90s, I’m still here. Still preparing the ground. Still writing.

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