Planting Seeds

Sometimes you need to read your own ‘sh*t’. ‘Know what I mean?

I’m in a period where I feel more fear (money related) after an extended period of being in grad school and without professional work… While I know the practical steps to finding a job, nothing is working. I applied to about 20 jobs yesterday, from senior manager, project architect, office manager, to receptionist. This flurry of applications has not been successful. I am not on top of my best self, but struggling to keep above the flood.  So just going back over my post about joy… you know, ‘Your joy, no man taketh from you’ helped remind me of the real goal: expressing good, finding more of God reflecting in and around me.

Sitting at a communal table with the ‘laptop-set’ at JoLa Café here in Portland, I am overhearing two women. They are in circumstances similar to me. Older, laid off, one in tears because the way ahead seems so dark.  The other leading the conversation with some tips for setting up a consultancy. It’s obviously a great example of networking.  I am not alone.  It seems that many older workers have become too expensive to hire, unhip, and too uncool. Waves of gray – hitting the wall!

What to do? What to do?

Seek refuge. Seek safety. Seek God. (If you are one who doesn’t naturally think in terms of a power outside yourself, stay with me).

Take a virtual breath. Look up and around yourself. What’s going on here? What’s percolating? What’s trying to emerge? It’s ok.

I have to remind myself how ‘this’ works… first the grain, then the fruit.

The ‘work’ is to see God clearly, love good dearly, … (I know, I know, amazingly similar to the song  ‘Day by Day’ in Godspell, the Stephen Schwartz  musical.) Finding ourselves– spiritually, lays the groundwork to find ourselves a job too. Somewhere, and I can’t find the quote… but it says something to the effect: ‘What God has fixed in heaven, shall be fixed on earth’. I DO know Christ Jesus asked us to pray/think: ‘As in heaven, so on earth.’ Our work is complete, whole, fun, perfectly suited to us WHEN we find it in heaven first.

Our practice may be architecture, law, engineering, education or business…. but the work begins by first turning humbly to God for inspiration. Making meditation and prayer a priority in our lives will create a shift. A shift which moves circumstances into place so that everyone benefits. Trust this.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering (patience), gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law”. GALLATIONS 5:22-23.

 

 

 

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman