This week's reflection is taken from Alistair Maclean's Hebridean Altars (Grant & Murray Ltd, 1937) and is entitled 'What is happiness?':
"Labour and rest, work and ease, the busy hand, and then the stilled thought: this blending of opposites is not merely the great law of being; it is the secret of joy as well. For, after all, what is happiness but the balance between toil and quiet. The heart pauses in its beat. The pendulum, too, on the completion of its stroke. But the heart must beat; the pendulum move with absolute precision through the arc of distance.
I listened to two men as they lay upon muran, the rough bent-grass of the Isles, and them watching the sun go down. Like a torch red-burning, held by unseen fingers, it flamed and flamed and flamed, encrimsoning the West. The sea beneath us was a mirror broken only by spears of amber light. Far off a speck of gold that was a bird flew toward the sun, like some belated angel winging upward to the Immortal Gate. Mystery and silence! We saw them lift imperious hands as daring us to speak. Yet the younger spoke at last. 'The sea,' he whispered, 'lies under a spell.' But the other would not have it so. 'The sea,' said he, 'is a living creature like you and me. And now it rests.'
****
Reveal to me the benediction that is mine in having work to do. Help me, each day, to do it with good-will and pride, as being the work Thou meanest me to do. And sometimes, and most of all when the day is overcast and my courage faints, may I hear Thy voice saying, 'Thou art my beloved one in whom I am well pleased."
"Labour and rest, work and ease, the busy hand, and then the stilled thought: this blending of opposites is not merely the great law of being; it is the secret of joy as well. For, after all, what is happiness but the balance between toil and quiet. The heart pauses in its beat. The pendulum, too, on the completion of its stroke. But the heart must beat; the pendulum move with absolute precision through the arc of distance.
I listened to two men as they lay upon muran, the rough bent-grass of the Isles, and them watching the sun go down. Like a torch red-burning, held by unseen fingers, it flamed and flamed and flamed, encrimsoning the West. The sea beneath us was a mirror broken only by spears of amber light. Far off a speck of gold that was a bird flew toward the sun, like some belated angel winging upward to the Immortal Gate. Mystery and silence! We saw them lift imperious hands as daring us to speak. Yet the younger spoke at last. 'The sea,' he whispered, 'lies under a spell.' But the other would not have it so. 'The sea,' said he, 'is a living creature like you and me. And now it rests.'
****
Reveal to me the benediction that is mine in having work to do. Help me, each day, to do it with good-will and pride, as being the work Thou meanest me to do. And sometimes, and most of all when the day is overcast and my courage faints, may I hear Thy voice saying, 'Thou art my beloved one in whom I am well pleased."
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