Three Sacred Callings: A Meditation on Work Without Wealth

In the cathedral of possibility,
where money dissolves like morning mist
and the soul speaks its truest dialect,
I place my hands upon the altar of dreams
and feel the pulse of three ancient longings—
each one a river carved deep
into the bedrock of my being.

I.

The first calling whispers like wind through prayer flags:
'Healer of broken earth.'

I would kneel in fields where concrete has forgotten
how to breathe, where asphalt suffocates
the sacred geometry of seeds.
My fingers would learn the lost language
of soil rehabilitation, coaxing life
from the wounded womb of industrial scars.

This is not mere gardening—
this is resurrection work,
the tender alchemy of transformation
where poisoned ground becomes
a testament to patience.

I see myself walking among abandoned lots
in Detroit's hollow ribs, in Mumbai's forgotten corners,
carrying packets of native seeds
like a modern-day Johnny Appleseed,
but planting hope instead of orchards,
oxygen instead of fruit.

Each restored wetland would be
a cathedral service, each urban forest
a hymn sung in chlorophyll and shadow.
The mycorrhizal networks beneath my feet
would pulse like neural pathways,
connecting tree to tree, dream to dream,
in the vast underground internet of healing.

My hands would be perpetually stained
with the sacred dirt of possibility,
fingernails harboring crescent moons
of composted futures. I would know
the secret names of earthworms,
the shy courtship rituals of beneficial bacteria,
the way morning dew collects prayers
from grass blades reaching toward light.

This work would require the patience
of geological time, the faith
of seeds sleeping through winter,
the intuitive wisdom to know
when to intervene and when
to simply witness the earth's
own profound capacity for renewal.

II.

The second calling arrives like candlelight
flickering across ancient texts:
'Keeper of dying languages.'

I would become a linguistic archaeologist,
traveling to remote villages where
the last three speakers of Jedek
gather at dusk to share stories
their grandchildren will never hear
in their mother's tongue.

My mission: to catch falling words
before they shatter on the ground of forgetting,
to record the final conjugations
of verbs that describe
how snow speaks to caribou,
how desert wind carries messages
between distant oases,
how certain emotions exist
only in the throats of people
whose ancestors named every star.

I would sit cross-legged on woven mats,
my digital recorder a small shrine
between weathered hands that gesture
toward concepts English cannot hold.
Each conversation would be
a rescue mission into the collapsing
architecture of human consciousness.

In the Kichwa word *sumak kawsay*—
good living, but more than that:
the philosophy of existing in harmony
with all relations, a way of being
that recognizes the sacred reciprocity
between human breath and mountain breath,
between individual healing and collective wholeness.

How many ways of seeing
vanish with each silenced tongue?
How many technologies of the heart,
methods of reading weather patterns
in the flight of birds,
protocols for speaking with ancestors
through the arrangement of stones?

I would learn to think in languages
where time moves in spirals,
where grandmother and granddaughter
are the same word, where the future
lives in the past tense because
tomorrow has already happened
in the realm of dreams.

My work would be creating bridges
across the chasm of cultural amnesia,
translating not just words but entire
cosmologies, preserving the diverse ways
human consciousness has learned
to dance with mystery.

III.

The third calling descends like grace
through the crown of my skull:
'Companion to the dying.'

I would sit vigil in the liminal spaces
where breath grows thin as tissue paper,
where the veil between worlds
becomes gossamer, translucent,
revealing glimpses of whatever waits
beyond the final exhalation.

This is the most sacred profession:
midwife to transition, translator
of the soul's final vocabulary,
witness to the mysterious alchemy
that transforms a body into memory,
a presence into story.

I would learn the art of listening
to silences, reading the morse code
of labored breathing, interpreting
the languages spoken by eyes
when mouths can no longer form words.
Each bedside would become
a monastery where I practice
the deepest meditation:
staying present with impermanence.

My presence would be permission—
permission to grieve, to rage,
to whisper confessions that have waited
decades for the right ear,
to forgive or refuse forgiveness,
to name the demons and angels
that have shared the journey
of an unrepeatable lifetime.

I would hold space for the stories
that emerge only when death
sits down at the table,
uninvited but strangely welcome,
clarifying what matters and what was
merely noise in the symphony
of days we mistake for forever.

Some deaths would be like autumn leaves
releasing their grip with grace,
others like storms tearing branches
from unwilling trees. My role:
to be the steady earth
that receives whatever falls,
without judgment, with infinite
capacity for holding.

In hospice rooms and family homes,
in hospital corridors fluorescent-bright
and sacred groves where some choose
to complete their circle
under familiar constellations,
I would practice the deepest love:
loving without clinging,
being present without fixing,
honoring the sovereignty
of each soul's unique departure.

Convergence

These three callings intersect
in the geography of my deepest knowing:
they are all forms of tending,
all practices of presence,
all ways of serving the sacred
that flows through broken earth,
forgotten words, and failing bodies
with equal tenderness.

If money were no master,
if survival were guaranteed,
if the only currency that mattered
was the coin of authentic service,
I would give my life to these
three forms of love:
healing the earth's trauma,
preserving the wisdom of ancestors,
and accompanying souls
across the threshold
that we all must cross
alone but not abandoned.

This is my trinity of calling,
my triptych of devotion,
the three rivers that would carry
my days toward the ocean
of meaning, where work becomes worship
and service becomes the highest form
of prayer ever offered
by human hands to the mystery
that holds us all.

In a world without economic hunger,
these would be my sacred hungers:
to heal, to preserve, to accompany—
three verbs that conjugate
in the eternal tense
of love made manifest
through the willing vessel
of a life lived in service
to what matters most
when everything else
falls away.

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