Holy Energy

 I once worked as a volunteer in a Welfare Hotel, all single rooms with poor, elderly, debilitated residents.  Someone volunteered me.  So I was way over my head in this work, with little enthusiasm once I saw the misery that I could not "fix."  The social workers all seemed to be under-enthused.  It was a depressing scene.  I had no particular spiritual life at the time.  No real prayer practice or steps to growth.  At  the end of the day I just wanted a drink.  Escape.  But I have come to experience volunteers who never seemed to lose their enthusiasm or at least their decision to act on behalf of the poor.  What was their secret?   Their secret was in plain site.  They had a religion, a spiritual practice on a daily basis that sustained them.  They did not rely on initial ideals, or a false sense that they would fix the world by sheer effort.  When they walked away, it was not for a drink, but for meditation or adoration or spiritual reading.  No oblivion for them.