Excellence In Work

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Ecclesiastes 9: 10.

During the winter months the women of Highland households are up late and early at Calanas – the whole process of wool working from the raw material to the finished cloth. The industry of these women is wonderful, performed lovingly, uncomplainingly, day after day, year after year, till the sands of life run down. The life in a Highland home of the crofter class is well described in the following lines`:

In the long winter night
All are engaged.
Teaching the young
Is the grey-haired sage
The daughter at her carding
The mother at her wheel
While the fisher mends his net
With his needle and his reel.
Alexander Carmichael

Spring is the time of sap rising, business ventures, creative enterprise, new productivity targets, fresh fashions. All these things are like seeds, and we are like priests, and each of these labours can become a liturgy.

If Jesus built a ship
She would travel trim
If Jesus roofed a house
No leaks would be left by him
If Jesus planted a garden
He would make it like paradise
If Jesus did my day’s work
It would delight his Father’s eyes.
DMK

Lord, give me love and common sense
And standards that are high
Give me calm and confidence
And – please- a twinkle in the eye