Busy Birds Being

The person who sent me the quote about joy in last night’s posting sent me one about hopelessness today. It is from Dorothy Day and says: “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much work to do.” If by work she means ‘living fully’ I understand and appreciate the quote. But if “work” just means keeping busy, I think, it will make us more hopeless.

Keeping busy certainly covers up a feeling of hopelessness but eventually we must stop and face the hopelessness and still find joy. Contemplating and reflecting on our experiences gives us strength and hope when we are feeling sad and desolate.

Keeping this balance between action, activity, and contemplation is the way to keep peace of mind. As Thomas Merton says: “ To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.” Yet as Merton, Dorothy Day and Gandhi realized passivity or indifference is not the answer. St. Ignatius of Loyola says we must be “Contemplatives in Action.”

This is something I find it hard to do except working in the garden. Working in the garden you are in a very contemplative environment while you are busy doing something. Working in the garden brings together the paradox of ‘being’ and ‘doing’.

Perhaps we need to look on life as a garden. We work hard on it yet take the time to smell the roses. Working in my office at home I often take a look out the windows of the office and sun room to the backyard garden. Today I saw some small birds keeping busy with a plant in the Mary circle in the garden. I do not know if this plant is a flower or a weed but the tiny yellow birds, like children playing with dandelions, do enjoy it. Are the birds just being who they are or are they doing something? Likely. like a child, they make no distinction between being and doing.

Maybe this is what Dorothy is saying about no right to feel hopeless since there is much work to do. If we can be like the birds of the field, just do what we can do in a peacefully way, we can enjoy life to the fullest.

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