Time to Cross the Bridge at Work - Part 4

We're now approaching the final quarter of that bridge that spans the week before Labor Day through the week after. The end is in sight. 

As we've noted, these two weeks have traditionally been less busy at work. Many of us take off the week before Labor Day, some the week after. Add to this an early Rosh Hoshanah - the day after Labor Day this year. Our Jewish neighbors and friends eased off their work for that "Jewish New Year's" holiday.

In the past, when I regularly took the NYC subway into work, you'd notice the lighter crowds during these two weeks. On Jewish holidays, lighter still. I've stayed away from the subway since the Mess began in March 2020. It's not the safest place to be these days. Manhattan, my old destination, has been gutted of much of its commercial enterprise. Will it "come back" to what it once was? Who knows? At this point, I'm standing aside.

Standing aside or not, as we've seen, the C-Virus Mess has begun to poke it's devilish camel's nose under our tents yet again. In that light, we've been spending some time with spiritual passages that might help us regain our peace and stability in the face of the Mess. 

As a reminder, our best work will be done when we are - to use an old phrase - cool, calm, and collected. That's why peace and stability needs to be restored in our lives, if it's been rattled lately. If we read today's spiritual passage slowly, of we linger on those words or phrases that somehow move or impact us (and those will vary from individual to individual), we will gain the greatest benefit from our reading. As we linger, allow the "message" to come through. 

Think of it this way: It's one way to "bathe" in the blessings of our Catholic Religion. We certainly want to study and ultimately understand the teachings of Holy Mother Church. We want to adhere to those teachings. But we don't want to stop there. We want to allow them to penetrate our hearts and minds. We want our souls to be nourished by them. Reading good spiritual works is one way to facilitate that process. That's what we're going to do now...

“Though I should walk in the valley of darkness, yet will I fear no evil: for Thou art with me. There are times when, even though normally speaking we have achieved some measure of the sense of God’s presence, He seems very remote from us; we seem to be out alone in the dark. It is then above all that we need to have trained ourselves to think of events in terms of His will, and to love and accept that will whatever may fall out. And in times like these in which we live, how much we need that loving awareness of His watchfulness: we can see only the evil, the suffering, the despair, of the world, and it is hard to believe that out of all that evil any good can come; it is hard not to doubt, hard to trust. But that is just the value of these small and personal beginnings. To be accustomed to see the hand of God, the loving hand of God, in all the small events of one’s own life, and therefore to go out to meet them, to accept them gladly, or at least with loving determination, because they are God’s will: that is the way to prepare to meet the great things in the same spirit and so to find confidence and peace and happiness in spite of all that can come to disturb and upset us…The Lord is our Shepherd: whom shall we fear?”

As is common to our efforts at work, we make progress by attending to the little things first and foremost. These come daily, either by design or by surprise. For example, working on client projects is a planned endeavor. We lay out the steps and work on them in an orderly, timely fashion. But when a client has a question, or at times a crisis, we need to attend to the particulars right away. Generally these are not big issues that require heroic effort. They just need our attention and input - just as our completing a major project requires attention to the details of each step along the way.

In a similar way, our spiritual life benefits from a plan. We decide to read this or that for so much time each day. That's our project. Once we've decided on our plan, it requires daily attention to particulars. Attend to the little things and the big progress we seek will come - eventually, in God's good time. But we must start with our own efforts, our own attention to detail. And in that light, our writer provides clear instructions: "To be accustomed to see the hand of God, the loving hand of God, in all the small events of one’s own life, and therefore to go out to meet them, to accept them gladly, or at least with loving determination, because they are God’s will..."

And just as taking care of the little things can yield big results in our work, so too we find the same in our spiritual lives: "...that is the way to prepare to meet the great things in the same spirit and so to find confidence and peace and happiness in spite of all that can come to disturb and upset us..."

We hope you found this two-week bridge span of spiritual meditations helpful as you gear up for a more busy time at work through the rest of the year.