Sunset over the Pacific – June 20, 2014
Offered with respect and admiration for my son who, at 14 years old, worked his first day as a tax-paying employee yesterday. Motivated by the chance to put some cash in his pocket and the free jump time benefit of working for a new trampoline “park” he’ll be spending five summer afternoons each week twirling signs to draw attraction to his employer’s new venue.
As he officially begins his working life I pray that he always finds joy in his work; that he is nurtured, engaged and challenged by thoughtful peers and leaders; that he recognizes and embraces opportunities to work with others to create something larger and more meaningful than anyone can do alone; and that his energy, creativity and initiative will be richly rewarded and inspire others to make an equally significant contribution to a world so desperately in need of it.
Most of all, I pray for the awareness that meaning and possibility will continue to stretch out before him as long as he is willing to move toward new edges and experience the powerful forces ready to meet his courageous steps toward the unknown.
Working Together
We shape our self to fit this world
and by the world are shaped again.
The visible and the invisible
working together in common cause,
to produce the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way the intangible air
traveled at speed round a shaped wing
easily holds our weight.
So may we, in this life trust
to those elements we have yet to see
or imagine, and look for the true
shape of our own self, by forming it well
to the great intangibles about us.
David Whyte
Sunset over the Pacific – June 20, 2014
In memory of my stepfather and my son’s namesake, Duncan McKellar, who would have been 90 years old today.
