The Work of Our Hands
Copyright Chamie Delkeskamp, June 2010
Work.
I often feel I’m terrible at it. For example, be it personally or
professionally, I repeatedly fail at the task of sending a card or
letter. I write the message. I address the envelope. But then I can’t
seem to find a stamp. Or the note falls in the crack between the desk
and the wall. I recently found three letters in that sneaky little
hide-out.
 Or
take work at home… let’s look at laundry. I manage to get the clothes
into the washer. I then forget about said articles. Two days later, I
open the washer and am met with the smell of basement. I feel guilty as
I run the cycle again, knowing in a water-parched world that I have
wasted a few gallons of water. So for the immediate next time I move
clothes to the dryer; I even fold them. But then the laundry sits in a
pile for three days before I finally manage to put it all away in its
proper place.
Or take work at church… let’s
look at filing. I have always managed to have a “needs to be filed”
basket. The thing is that I struggle at getting papers from said basket
to the filing cabinet that has set approximately four feet from my
desktop. Amazing how long that distance can become.
Work. What exactly is work,
anyway? We most typically jump to work that is outside of the home. We
use words such as “job” or “profession” or “place of employment.” It is
why we ask the question upon meeting someone new, “So, what do you do?”
We assume that work is all about what we are paid to do at some
business or organization outside of our home.
I do no want to exlclude this
kind of work from or discussion. But I would like to look at work in a
bigger and broader way. Let’s go back to Genesis. In the beginning, God
works for six days and then God rests for one day.
What if we define work as what we
do to make a life for ourselves? What if work is how we co-create with
God for six days of the week?
This would mean, then, that work
includes not only our paid job as a teacher or clerk or mechanic or
reporter, but also the work of mowing the lawn, cooking dinner,
changing diapers, cleaning our rooms, and doing laundry. It means that
whether we are employed or not, we all still work. Our work may be
entering in data, mopping a floor, or searching for a paid position.
Work, therefore, encompasses what we do to make order in our lives and make living possible.
For some, this might beg the
questions, “Is work drudgery or pleasure? Is it invigorating or tiring?
Is it paid or unpaid? Should I like it or not?”
Yes.
What if most importantly, the
work of our hands is a discipline, a spiritual practice, a means that
brings us closer to God? What if work – be it preaching a sermon or
scrubbing a toilet – is somehow “holy”? By this I mean sacred, beautiful, from and of God.
The monastic tradition has long valued work.
Throughout the ages, monks and nuns have committed to the work of the
monastery – the cooking, the cleaning – as well as to the work God has
called them to do in the world. Last summer when staying at St.
Martin’s Monastery in Rapid City, SD, we conversed with nuns who had
worked as teachers and nurses in the secular community as well as cooks
and cleaners for their order.
So why might this monastic
tradition of work as a godly discipline matter to a family? Why might a
churchy word like “holy” be connected to “work?”
Maybe, perhaps, because how we
view “work” might make our days richer, more contented, more ordered,
more life-giving. Maybe a little tweak can offer us a fresh
perspective. When talking about the word “vocation,” pastor and author
Barbara Brown Taylor says that our vocation, our calling, our work is
to “understand ourselves as God’s person in and for the world.”
This June, students will graduate
from institutes of higher learning and enter the “work force.” Though
my own children are several years away from such a passage, I already
question if I want them to live this modern day story that work is just
about the job you land after graduation.
I remember my own graduation from
seminary. During our final days of school, the presiding United
Methodist bishop spoke with a group of students over lunch. He gave us
some “graduation advice.” He told us not to lose sight of the ministry
we love. He said we get to enjoy an apartment because we the pay the
rent. Likewise, we get to enjoy things like preaching and teaching
because we “pay the rent” of church meetings, budget preparation, and
handling conflicts.
At the time, I thought this was great advice. “Oh, yes,” I
thought, “This is a helpful reminder to get through all the matters I
dislike so I can enjoy my work.”
At the time, I thought
this was great advice. “Oh, yes,” I thought, “This is a helpful
reminder to get through all the matters I dislike so I can enjoy my
work.”
Today, however, I think his
advice was quite poor and theologically inadequate. First, it means we
treat certain work with a lack of respect, honor, and dignity. It is
why stay-at-home parents often feel “less than” their paid companions.
It is why we give the lowest pay to the “rent-like” jobs of social
worker, custodian, tomato picker, food server, maid, and gardener.
Secondly, the bishop’s advice means that we don’t find the joy and
blessing in the mundane daily tasks of co-creating with the Creator.
The Celtic Christians didn’t seem to have so much of a struggle. God was in their everyday work. In her book Every Earthly Blessing,
Esther de Waal notes the prayer life of everyday Celtic Christians who
saw their work as a connection to God. Immerse yourself in this woman’s
work and prayer:
A woman kneels on the earth floor in her small hut in the Outer Hebrides and light her fire with this prayer:
I will kindle my fire this morning
In the presence of the holy angels of heaven.
She started the day by splashing her face with three palmfuls of water in the name of the Trinity:
The palmful of God of Life
The palmful of the Christ of Love
The palmful of the Spirit of Peace
Triune
Of grace.
Then
as she makes her bed she had made this a prayerful invocation to the
Trinity and a prayerful reflection on the span of life itself.
I make this bed
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
In the name of the nigh we were conceived,
In the name of the night that we were born,
In the name pf the day were baptized,
In the name of each night, each day,
Each angel that is in the heavens.
When I first stumbled across
these words, I was both captivated and convicted. I can tell you that
when my “work” somehow becomes a prayer… a conversation with God… an
acknowledgement of the bigness of life… a realization that I’m working
alongside the Creator… my attitude is different. I won’t lie and say I
never grumble when I walk into the children’s bathroom to find
toothpaste smeared on the cabinet, the toilet unflushed, and dirty
underwear on the floor. But if I can take a breath and pause and do a
little tweaking, somehow a prayer is formed.
Dear God, thank
you for strong teeth and bones. Help us brush and take care. Thank you
for good sanitation. Help those who are not so blessed with a toilet.
Thank you for our clothes, from our shirts to our pants to our
underwear. May all the world be clothed and fed.
P.S. Please, God, may your Holy Spirit inspire my children to clean up their mess.
What are your prayers? Your hopes? What sort of attitude do you want your children to have about work?
And what sort of spirit might we
instill in our homes around the discipline of work? I hear time and
time again the struggles that families have to maintain order in a
household. Chores become burdens. Parents are tired of nagging.
Summer is the season we tend to
focus on the rhythm of “rest” versus the rhythm of “work.” But what if
this summer, we took some time to develop a richer work life in our
homes? What if we looked at our paid jobs, too, and tweaked our mindset
and discovered a deeper connection to the God who created us as workers?
Last June, we spent a week in the
ecumenical monastic community of Taizé, France. Thousands of young
people flock to Taizé each year. During our stay, there were over 3,000
people under the age of 35. Each of those young people had to commit to
some kind of work during their stay. Their work might be cooking,
serving food, doing dishes, cleaning toilets, caring for young
children, making tea, welcoming guests, mopping floors. When writing
about the Taizé experience, Jason Brian Santos noted the following:
The
young people I interviewed were very positive about the shared communal
work of Taizé. Not only did they see it as necessary for practical
reasons, but they also genuinely enjoyed participating in the communal
life this way. I got a general sense that many of them truly believed
the brothers trusted them. This genuine expression of trust gave these
young people a feeling of significance in the community, a significance
that wasn’t derived from feeling like they were special and that the
whole community would collapse if they failed to do their job, but
rather from understanding that they were a small part of a larger
mechanism that relied heavily upon everyone fulfilling their role.
Might there be a way to make a
tweak in your own home where work becomes a route of building trust and
confidence in one another? Might chores be more than a “to do list” and
rather a way of seeing that we all need each other to make living and
loving possible? As we work in our homes, caring and serving one
another, might it better equip us to be God’s hands and feet in the
world?
Let us know how your “work” is
going. This summer, we are trying “an experiment in monasticism” and
work is one of the disciplines. You can stay tuned to the journey and
add your own insights on the blog at www.raisingmicah.blogspot.com.
For now, may you be blessed as
you work. May you give thanks for enough work to sustain you. May you
find hope and possibility if you are searching for a work, a paid
position, in this economic time. In the midst of your work, both home
and away, paid and unpaid, may you never get so caught up in work that
your forget to rest. As you dance from work to rest, may you know that
you are hand-in-hand with God and humanity. Blessed summer to you!
Mulling Questions
1. How do you view "work?"
2. How might you make little tweaks in your view of work so the work can be more fulfilling?
3. How might you live the discipline of work at home?
Action Opportunities
1. Throw a party and offer wisdom on work to new graduates.
2. Support a group or ministry or
person or persons who are struggling to find paid work and make ends
meet during tough economic times.
For Further Growth
For further reflections of work, you may want to check out R. Paul Stevens' book The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective. To learn more about monastic rhythms, including work, for the everyday person, you may want to read Brother Benet Tvedten's How to Be a Monastic and Not Leave Your Day Job. For more Celtic Christian prayers, read Esther de Waal's Every Earthly Blessing.
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