Kahlil Gibran's exquisite depiction of work as "love made visible" succinctly expresses the relationship between being and doing, between essence and action, as the manifestation of love. It speaks to a view I have long held, that work is best approached not as something we have to do but something we are able to bring our whole being to, as a contribution to the world.
Kristopher Roller
A rich and personally resonant perspective on the topic is provided by clinical psychologist, Will Adams, of Duquesne University, in his article entitled Living life, Practicing Psychology: Personal and transpersonal musings on something (not so) obvious. Adams writes eloquently of the idea that in living life as it arises, we bring love through our work and into the world. “When I work" he says, "I am bringing my very life into being with others and for others” (Adams, p. 350). Describing this flow of life into being as an ongoing “call and response conversation”, in which, he writes:
life ceaselessly summons me to respond to the immense beauty and suffering it sends my way. My very be-ing ... is formed, reformed and transformed via my response to these calls.
(Adams, p. 351)
For me, there's depth, delight and personal resonance in Adams’ writings on the various ways we are all interconnected and responding to life as it emerges through and around us. I agree that the “question” of my own life-time “is intrinsically an ethical, responsive, responsible one” in which it is entirely clear that I “never exist separately from others” (Adams p. 351). Like Adams I know I am here to be with others and also for them with as much “awareness, understanding, love, compassion, and justice as I can muster” (p. 351).
Most of all, what I appreciate about Adams’ musings is the bit that should be obvious, but isn’t, at least not in this world. That from the perspective of our spirit, or soul or authentic beingness, our work is simply one stream of expression, or manifestation, of us, in the world, and as love, we are summoned to this, as to everything, in the same way. Adams writes:
My singular self, and thereby my practice of psychology, spring forth as a distinctive gesture of this one seamless participatory life, a life that appears ceaselessly as the particular relational calls and responses that are transpiring right here and now, yet ever infinitely and eternally. This life includes my irreplaceably unique participation in, and gift to, the sheer presencing of each encounter.
(Adams, p. 354)
Once we are able to see ourselves as interconnected, energetic beings it becomes possible to appreciate that everything we say and do has some kind of an effect on others and on this world. From there, it’s a short hop to realising that only we can be responsible for the ways in which we meet what life presents us; for what we give to what we get.
In this way, in my work as a therapist, facilitator and coach, I am responsible, first and foremost, for fully being me; bringing wholeness, openness and love, as far as I am able, to my encounters and interactions with others, in work as in life. In being me, I give permission for others to likewise be themselves, to know themselves and to find a depth of quietude within from which to respond, as love, to life, as they experience it.
For me, work is love made visible because love is what we are and work is a powerful means of expression in this world. We might just as truly say, that life is love made visible, but then the clever counterpoint—of work as toil and love as intimacy—is lost. Gibran’s phrase speaks to me of the profound response-ability that is ours to embody in our lives on this planet. It inspires me to do all I am able to allow love to flow through me into this world.
Gibran’s own illumination of the meaning of his words emerges later from the same passage. He writes:
And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, And to know that the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
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