With cardboard boxes over their heads and two holes punched out for their arms, they began with wet clay, and without any other idea than to see what came by handling it. What they arrived at was not a sculpture, but a way to begin. The possibility to destroy and remake was always there: it was just a means of getting to the thing.
On a wet and windy day, they journeyed out to Tigh na Cailleach, home of the Old Woman of the Glen, just before she withdrew into her shelter for winter. They were not sure what they might find, or what to do when they got there. They were walking a path that had been walked for thousands of years. They were hopeful that they would make their destination on time, and fearful of regret, lest they should have to turn back. It was not that time or nature were against them; it was simply that the elements continued, and would continue interminably, before them, after them and in spite of them. The night was drawing closer with every step further into the heart of the glen. Colours were changing to soft and rusty ochres, greens and bluey-greys. The form of the land was becoming gentler and more rounded. The deep, broad loch had now tapered off into a trickling stream; yet the wind raged on, and the rain beat with a stinging patter against against their faces.
They were looking for the very beginnings of meaning and making: to connect thousands of years ago with today. They wanted to find it, but when they arrived, they still didn’t know what to do. Not there at the shrine, nor in the studio with the clay.
St Joseph sleeping and a prayer for work 2015-08-14
Pray to which patron saint for work?
Can any of you steer me in the right direction?
St. Joseph.
Yeah, St. Joseph the worker.
St. Joseph the Worker-----but there are patron saints for all kinds of work---what kind of work are you looking for? I was a lab tech & the patron of lab techs is st. albert
Hey,
We have exchanged posts before so I feel like I know you. Can I be honest with you?
This is what I have learned. I went from $60,000 a year, got laid off and now I am a bagboy at the grocery store. Happens to lots of people. After a year of struggle and prayer I discovered the Bible says "be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove". In other words, God expects you and me use our own wisdom and knowledge to make our way in the world. The Bible also says "work out your salvation in fear and trembling". To me it also means "work out your career in fear and trembling." St Paul says there is profit to be made in any career, so not to worry.
Prayer to St Joeseph is wonderful and worthwhile and Jesus may respond to you thru St Joeseph. But don't ever stop trying as hard as you can using you God given skills.
This too will pass. Good luck
St. Cajetan whose feast we just celebrated August 7th is considered a patron saint of job seekers. we use him at work as the patron saint of our Human Resources department.
St. Joseph is a great intercessor, and so many more...St Rita, St. Jude, St Anthony, St. Theresa, St Padre Pio, all have been known to help out in difficult situations. St. Anthony may be the Saint of missing things, but he is also well know for performing miracles through Jesus for near anything. And the very best thing you can do for yourself? Eucharistic Adoration and stay close to the sacraments. If you find you have some extra time, seek out daily mass.
God Bless you and give you relief soon.
Take a look at your biggest need in your life right now=--and pray to God he might lead you to the patron saint for you. HE will. Look at the Catholic Bookstore, and you'll undoubtedly find them! It sure worked for me----and totally coincidentally my patron saint that I found after prayer--turns out has my same birthday as her feast day--unbelievable! God surely works in miraculous ways friend~~
ST. Anthony has helped with many lost things, even lost jobs (lay off, union problems) and lost computer files. He got so fed up with me bugging him I think he appointed a special angel to keep track of my keys. But in all the years I have relied on him, I am not sure if I am praying to St. Anthony of Egypt or Padua. One was a hermit, one was a Franciscan. Seeker, St. Jude truly is the one to turn to when things seem totally hopeless.
I got laid off 3 years ago and haven't been able to find permanent work since. Salaried jobs, or "adult jobs" as I call them, I've had no luck finding, especially as I have a very peculiar set of skills and am useless and uninterested in anything else. And I really have no desire to change fields, especially since there's very little I'm good at.
But the "teenager jobs," the dead-end, low-wage, hourly jobs that I've wasted most of my life doing, won't hire me either. They say I'm overqualified and overeducated, that they know I'd be bored by the work and would leave the minute I found something better. All that IS true, but nevertheless....
I have no credit because I've always paid for things in cash. The only thing that's kept me off the streets is help from my mom, and even she is running out of money now. Plus I feel like less than a man having to get parental support at the age of 40. At least I don't have a wife or kids to support.
This spring my apartment complex burned in the second-worst fire in my city's history, and though my apartment was spared even smoke or water damage, I had to make an expensive move elsewhere in town.
The on-going problem has made me a ball of stress. Friends and relatives keep their distance because I'm so depressing to be around. This problem has taken a major toll on my physical and mental health. Medication hasn't really helped, and now my doctor tells me he wants me to get an MRI this week. Obviously, with no insurance, a procedure like this costing thousands is gonna be a killer.
And yes, I've tried every conceivable method of finding work, including many techniques you'd not have heard of. I've pretty much given up hope of finding anything, at least that will pay me adequately. And at the age of 40 I am painfully aware of how much time has been wasted and how little time I have left. It just seems a crime I can't exercise the talents God has so graciously granted me.
Sorry to be such a whiner.
I can appreciate the way you feel because I've been through something very similar myself. After I went back to school to qualify for the field where I always wanted to work, I was unable to find a full-time job in it and settled for something else. While I have a decent job now in a related area, it's still not my vocation and I would gladly give it up tomorrow if I won the Powerball. Therefore, one valuable thing I've learned is to look at my job as a means of survival & not what defines me as a person - we Americans have a really skewed attitude in this respect. I've learned from my friends & family in Italy, who look at work as something that needs to be done to eat & pay bills and not the sum & substance of one's existence. It helps...
As for a patron saint, I can only add St. Joseph. I know there's another specifically for people seeking employment but I can't name him or her offhand. I also prayed to St. Jude when I was feeling really frustrated with myself. Be patient and things will get better
Pray to your father in heaven and have faith that a certain job is yours. Read all of Hebrews 11.
thanks
Thanks to everyone for the encouragement. Maybe we can all pray for each other.
Most things still remain to be done.
A glorious future!
The feeling of having finished something is an effective sleeping pill. A person who retires feeling that he has done his bit will quickly wither away. A company which feels that it has reached its goal will quickly stagnate and lose its vitality. Happiness is not reaching your goal. Happiness is being on the way. It is our wonderful fate to be just at the beginning. In all areas. We will
move ahead only by constantly asking ourselves how what we are doing today can be done better tomorrow. The positive joy of discovery must be our inspiration in the future too. The word impossible has been deleted from our dictionary and must
remain so... Bear in mind that time is your most important resource. You can do so much in 10 minutes. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. You can never get them back. Ten minutes are not just a sixth of your hourly pay. Ten minutes are a piece of yourself. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.
Most of the job remains to be done. Let us continue to be a group of positive fanatics who stubbornly and persistently refuse to accept the impossible, the negative. What we want to do, we can do and will do together. A glorious future!
The Testament of a Furniture Dealer, A Little ΙΚΕΑ Dictionary, Ingvar Kamprad
He would lie in wait for monks grown weary with working in the oppressive heat, seizing a moment of weakness to force an entrance into their hearts. And once installed there, what havoc he wrought! For suddenly it would seem to the poor victim that the day was intolerably long and life desolatingly empty. He would go to the door of his cell and look up at the sun and ask himself if a new Joshua had arrested it midway up the heavens. Then he would go back into the shade and wonder what good he was doing in that cell or if there was any object in existence. Then he would look at the sun again and find it indubitably stationary, and the hour of the communal repast of the evening as remote as ever. And he would go back to his meditations, to sink, sink through disgust and lassitude into the black depths of despair and hopeless unbelief. When that happened the demon smiled and took his departure, conscious that he had done a good morning’s work.
Collage with Bulgari advertisement Octo, Eternal Values (2014) and a bookmark from the National Gallery, London (An Allegory to the Vanities of Human Life, detail, circa 1736 Jan van Huysum)
"fire, […] in the history of the medieval trail by ordeal, is a basic technology of truth. Burned, things of the world reveal their essential nature. The scriptural basis for this notion is iffy (Lot surviving the flames of Sodom? Moses' encounter with the burning bush?). The physics of the proposition, however, proves to be spot-on: everything that burns speaks with tongues of flame that cannot lie. This is called spectroscopy."
Fire and Truth, D. Graham Burnett, Issue 32, Winter 2008, Cabinet
Ivan Gutierrez, a 37-year-old artist who lives in the nearby village, stood before the pyramid and blew a low, sonorous blast on a conch horn. "It has already arrived, we are already in it" he said of the new era. "We are in a frequency of love, we are in a new vibration."
R. Murray Schafer … the earth forms the body of an instrument across which strings are stretched and are tuned by a divine hand. We must try once again to find the secret of that tuning.”
Nikolai Astrup, St. Hansbal.
Astrup sitt eige notat, udatert brev til borgermester Aslaksen , Arendal, etter 1905 / Kunst og kultur 1928, s. 227-230.
"Hun matte slik som jeg selv og mange andre barn her pa Vestlandet lide under den fanatiske religiositet som en tid herjet blant de eldre her. Alt var synd - like til det a renne pa kjelke. Og St. Hansnatten, nar balene brente rundt i fjellene og menneskene myldret som sorte punkter oppover fjellsidene og de rodkledde jenter med de hvite skjorteermerne ringet seg som lyse prikker og gnister om blussene, da var det synd for kristne folk a vaere med, da matte den lille jentungen og jeg sta pa avstand bak gjerdet og se og hore, hvordan de andre danset om balet og hujede av glede. Den siste rest av urreligion som ubevisst blusset opp.
Jeg fikk en forestilling om at dette med balet var noe syndig, noe stygt, som ble bedrevet i det gronne halvmorket – noe hedensk. Og dette ble enda mer forsterket ved sjalusien som grov i brystet nar de andre barna fikk vaere med, og jeg matte sta utenfor. Og slik sa jeg min lille lidelsesfell e – og den stygge, gule ilden, som ikke lyste i sommernatten, men som lokket og drog meg nettopp fordi den var omgitt med mystikk, ugudelighet, og ra hedenskap. Og til sist turte jeg meg inn blant de ugudelige. Men den lille piken stod igjen og sa pa med det bleke ansiktet og de store, sorte oynene som suget ilden i seg.
Slik er det jeg opprinnelig har bildet inne i meg."
