One shared promptly. Five unedited minutes. That’s the challenge of an online writing group I have discovered. This is my first five minutes, unedited submission on the topic of Work.

My work. My life’s work. What is the legacy of my life’s contribution? I photograph and write and love and pray. I sing and play guitar for prayer services and Masses. Encouraging others, sharing my God-given gifts. This is what I do.

I can’t keep from thinking about Dmitri. He’s the subject of a documentary. A minister, if I remember correctly, who was sent to prison in Russia for some silly little something. Perhaps sharing his faith. Or speaking out against injustice. Like Nelson Mandela, he spent way too many years there unnecessarily. Yet God uses everything and tests us sometimes. I don’t know which this was, if not both, but Dmitri spent seventeen years in prison. And this is how he spent them: he prayed every day. In song. The fellow prisoners jeered at him. Threw excrement at him. Made fun of him. He persevered.

When the guards came to execute him, over one thousand prisoners sang his prayer song. The guards stopped. “Who are you?” they asked.

That is the work I want us all to do.

Photo by h.koppdelaney

Here is the full story on Dmitri and its happy ending.