"Doing much good."

Hmmm. :-) It is another one of those common sayings that is just now hitting me with its incredibly profound importance. It joins the list of "be an Angel," and the desperately important "ALL EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY."

Very, very soon I expect to be leaving a nice warm, congenial, food filled environment for the Park and the Darfur round the clock vigil. Why?

I'm no longer "doing much good here." No one is complaining. In fact, within the last 60 seconds, out of the blue as I was here typing I was told, "People around here are saying very good things about Jay McGinley!" Rarely have I been received so many, heart-felt expressions of appreciation for my contributions.

For most of the last 4 weeks there has been a cornucopia of opportunities to serve, for "doing much good" in - construction, homless service, blessed-community, anti-war activism and Darfur activism - sufficient in combination to position me for "doing much good."

"Doing much good" is a phrase we usually use when talking about windshield wipers or a door stop. "Those wipers aren't 'doing much good,'" for example.

But today as I wrestled with a profound feeling of dissatisfaction with how I feel inside for the last several days, what came to me is - Jay, you are not "doing much good" here anymore. What is the fault? We are all doing the best we can - an inescapable fact of human existance.

p89 "My food is to do the will of Him who gave me life, and to fulfill that which He intrusted to me," Jesus told us ("The Gospel in Brief," Leo Tolstoy).

What I am particularly happy about is for the one millionth time to be brought face to face with this fact of psychological health highlighted in Jesus' quote above. It is! "Doing much good" is my food. I just don't know how else to describe how it has felt to me for decades.

It seems I can stand an aweful lot of negative stuff, but what I just can't stand is NOT "doing much good."

Dr. King said it this way, "Life's most persistant and urgent question is what are you doing for others?"

"Man's Search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a 'secondary rationalization' of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning... Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!" Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist Dr. Victor Frankl (Man's Search For Meaning)

I'm reminded of something that occured to me about 4 years ago that captures much of what I had learned about life by then, and it still seems to capture most of the truth for me, and for all of us I suspect:

"Life is as Good as the Good that we spend it on," brother jay