사랑으로 일한다는 것은 무엇인가

[북스저널=송광택 목사] 사랑으로 일한다는 것은 무엇인가 – Kahlil Gibran »

사랑으로 일한다는 것은 무엇인가?

그것은 너의 심장에서 실을 뽑아 옷을 짜는 일과 같다. 마치 네가 사랑하는 이가 그 옷을 입기라도 할 것처럼.

그것은 애정으로 집을 짓는 것이다. 마치 사랑하는 이가 그 집에 살 것처럼.

그것은 정성으로 씨를 뿌려 기쁨으로 거두는 것이다. 마치 사랑하는 이가 그 열매를 먹기라도 할 것처럼.

그것은 네가 만드는 모든 것들 속에 너의 혼의 숨을 불어넣는 것.

그리하여 모든 축복받은 죽은 자들이 언제나 너의 곁에서 너를 지켜보고 있음을 아는 것이다.

출처: 예언자 (칼릴 지브란)

Sorrow and pain

Sorrow carves out our being, says the prophet, but the space it makes provides room for more joy in another season of life. In one of his outstanding lines, he remarks, “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” Try to marvel at your pain as another experience of precious life. If you can do this, you can be more serene about your emotions, like the passing of the seasons.

Few realize, the prophet says, that suffering is the means to heal ourselves, “the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.” The next time you feel sorrow, consider that it may have been self-chosen at some level of your being, to bring about an enlargement of your self. Without struggles we would learn nothing about life.

Kahlil Gibran

Born in 1883 in northern Ottoman Lebanon, Gibran received no schooling, but was given informal religious and language lessons by a priest. His father’s gambling brought the family to financial ruin, which prompted his mother to emigrate with her children (and without Gibran Sr.) to the United States. A registration error on arrival in Boston created the name “Kahlil” instead of the correct Khalil.

At school, Kahlil showed talent at drawing and found a mentor in the artist and photographer Fred Holland Day, but he returned to Lebanon to complete his secondary schooling. At 19 he went back to Boston, but his mother, brother, and one of his sisters tragically died from tuberculosis. He found another mentor in Mary Haskell, a headmistress with an interest in orphans who supported Gibran’s painting career, and he began to have his prose poetry, short stories, and essays published in Arabic.

In 1908 Gibran began a two-year stay in Paris, studying art, and in 1912 he moved permanently to New York, where he was able to exhibit his paintings and have more work published, including Al-Ajniha Al-Mutakassirah (“The Broken Wings”) and The Madman. In 1920 he established a society of Arab writers, and continued his writing in Arabic in support of Lebanon and Syria’s emancipation from Ottoman rule.

The Prophet, published in 1923, received largely unfavorable reviews, but word of mouth made it a bestseller. After Gibran’s death in 1931, associates completed and published the two sequels he had begun: The Garden of the Prophet and Death of the Prophet. ◙ Now&Here©유크digitalNEWS

글/ 송광택 목사  songrex@daum.net