"A Spirituality of Work" preached February 21, 2016
"The pitcher cries for water to carry, and a person for work that is real." Marge Piercy
Our Responsive Reading today ended with the words:
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Amen to that.
This entire sermon could be summed up in that last line,
a person cries for work that is real.
Thinking about a spirituality of work, that is the essence of it: Work that feels real to us.
Work that instills a sense of usefulness. Work that honors the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Which work that you do feels real in that way?
While some careers or professions lend themselves more easily to calling the work itself “spiritual;”
like ministry, or teaching, or art, can any type of work engender that feeling?
Or is that only some kind of romantic, feel-good hope of a more privileged, educated middle class?
As I was prepping for this sermon, I was also reading a book that January Nordman gave me.
The book, The Painted House, is set in 1950s Arkansas, and in part it tells of the migration of poor farmers from the south - my people;
to the north - January’s people - for better paying, stable factory jobs.
The scenes in that book mirror tales I’ve heard all my life from my family.
The protagonist is a 7 year old boy. In the summertime and the fall, he’s up at dawn
to spend long, hot days in the cotton field, dragging his sack across his shoulder,
gradually filling it with fluffy white fiber.
His goal by the end of the day: 100 pounds.
His fingers bleed each day from being pricked by the cotton boils, and no matter how hot it was outside -
and eastern Arkansas in the summer is not a comfortable place to be -
there he was, knee deep in the fields.
His work was most definitely of use.
As Cotton Incorporated reminds us in their commercials,
“It’s the fabric of our lives.”
Used for our clothing, our bedding, our window shades.
The biggest industrial user of cotton is medical supplies.
So all that toiling in the fields eventually clothed people
and even helped with the healing of others.
But the author was careful to never let sentimentality erase away the harsh realities of this incredibly hard labor
that sustained this poor farming family.
This story stuck with me because it also the story of my grandmother.
She grew up on a small, rural farm in the 30s and 40s.
My grandmother could - and did! - talk endlessly about the hard, hot, dirty work of being in the cotton fields all day.
For her trouble, she earned one dollar each day.
She hated it, and she never forgot it.
She did everything she could to ensure my life - and Adrian’s - would be different.
That work of that 7 year old boy, the work of my grandmother, of so many other small farmers,
in the United States, all over the world - was real -
but were their labors a spiritual endeavor?
Does your work feel like a spiritual vocation? Is it work that is real?
Or is it only something you do for the money you get in return?
Is it time to breathe new life into your work?
The idea that our work can and should be somehow divinely inspired
isn’t a new idea. The concept that our work is sacred has been around for a long time.
As told in the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve weren’t vacationing in the Garden of Eden,
eating their fill of apples and taking long walks.
The scriptures say that God put them in the Garden to “tend it and keep it.”
Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, we read about work and labor as holy endeavors.
The three Hebrew patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were herdsmen and worked the land.
Manual labor is often praised, and idleness condemned.
Jesus’ first apostles were commercial fisherman, Jesus was a carpenter,
and most of his parables were set within the context of work and industry:
laborers in the vineyard, a woman making bread, the farmer sowing seed, are just a few. (1)
This belief continues into contemporary times.
Today we heard the words of Kahlil Gibran, Marge Piercy, and Sister Joan Chittister
praising the goodness and spirit of work well done.
From many different religious perspectives, we hear common threads that identify
work that is real:
- to give glory to God - or for some Unitarian Universalists
we would say to give glory to the great mystery of the universe;
- to provide for basic needs for oneself and one's family;
- and to serve the needs of neighbors,
the world, all of Creation.
The great religious teachers remind us it is through our work that we are able to love life
and to know the holy.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, in his book Being God’s Partner,
shares a story about finding purpose in any job.
One night he struck up a conversation with his taxi driver.
Learning he was a rabbi, the driver asked:
“What do you say to someone like me, Rabbi, who has not set foot in a synagogue since I was Bar Mitzvah,
who is not religious?”
Rabbi Salkin replied,
“We could talk about how you serve God in your work.”
“What are you talking about? What does my job have to do with religion?”
the driver asked.
“Do you realize that you are one of the tissues that connects humanity?”
The taxi driver replied: “Huh? What are you talking about? I just drive a taxi.”
“Is that so? Well, right now you’re taking me to the airport. Thanks to your efforts and skill,
I’ll make my flight and hopefully get to my destination on time.
“There I will be giving a couple of lectures which may touch or even change somebody who hears me.
If so, you will have helped to make the connection between me and that person happen.
“And after you drop me off, you may take home someone from the hospital...
You will be a small part of her healing process. You will be an agent that will help
smooth her re-entry into normal life again.
“And then, who knows? You may take someone to see a dying parent,or to the house of the person
he or she is about to propose to.
“So, you see, you’re a connector, a bridge-builder ...
“You are one of the many unnoticed people who make the world work as well as it does.
That is holy work, my friend. You may not realize that it is, but your work is just as sacred as mine is any day.”(2)
A beautiful example of work that is real, that enables us to earn a living,
serve the needs of others, and give glory to the universe
And even so, I still get stuck when I think of that 7 year old or my grandmother on the farm.
And it seems to me that in order for work to take on an aspect of real spirituality for us,
there are at least two other dimensions.
One, it needs to be somewhat of our choosing. It doesn’t need to be the perfect job,
(those don’t exist anyway). But we need to feel that there is some sense of agency involved.
And two, that our work doesn’t become an addiction or obsession.
Debra touched on this in her reflection earlier.
That it doesn’t get in the way of our families, our friends, our connection with Creation.
One of the things I love about you all is that that many of you are earnestly searching
for work in your life that is real.
You’ve taken chances, given up a job with financial security
in order to pursue a career that allows you to embrace what you love in your work life.
The 7 year old cotton picker did not stay on the farm forever. He became a writer,
inspiring others and making meaning out of life.
My grandmother finally got off the farm, and she made a good life for herself in one of those northern factories.
Did she ever connect that work with her spiritual life?
I don’t think so.
It’s up to each one of us to decide how we will frame and understand the work we do.
If your work is monotonous and uninspiring is there some way for you add an element
to it that helps you take it deeper?
Create a beautiful vignette on your desk or bulletin board, offer pastoral listening to a co-worker,
take a walk outside on your lunch break to remind yourself of this incredible world we live in.
Or even, start each day with a short intention, paraphrased from our chalice lighting words:
May my work today
feel real,
allow me to love life,
and connect me to the holy.
Notes
1. Jose H. Gomez, All You Who Labor: Towards a Spirituality of Work for the 21st Century, 20 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 791 (2006).Available at: h p://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndjlepp/vol20/iss2/11
2. Taken from a sermon at - http://www.templetulsa.com/rabbi-emeritus-sermons-1/2015/11/16/who-cleans-up-in-your-house. Accessed on February 20, 2016.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Amen to that.
This entire sermon could be summed up in that last line,
a person cries for work that is real.
Thinking about a spirituality of work, that is the essence of it: Work that feels real to us.
Work that instills a sense of usefulness. Work that honors the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
Which work that you do feels real in that way?
While some careers or professions lend themselves more easily to calling the work itself “spiritual;”
like ministry, or teaching, or art, can any type of work engender that feeling?
Or is that only some kind of romantic, feel-good hope of a more privileged, educated middle class?
As I was prepping for this sermon, I was also reading a book that January Nordman gave me.
The book, The Painted House, is set in 1950s Arkansas, and in part it tells of the migration of poor farmers from the south - my people;
to the north - January’s people - for better paying, stable factory jobs.
The scenes in that book mirror tales I’ve heard all my life from my family.
The protagonist is a 7 year old boy. In the summertime and the fall, he’s up at dawn
to spend long, hot days in the cotton field, dragging his sack across his shoulder,
gradually filling it with fluffy white fiber.
His goal by the end of the day: 100 pounds.
His fingers bleed each day from being pricked by the cotton boils, and no matter how hot it was outside -
and eastern Arkansas in the summer is not a comfortable place to be -
there he was, knee deep in the fields.
His work was most definitely of use.
As Cotton Incorporated reminds us in their commercials,
“It’s the fabric of our lives.”
Used for our clothing, our bedding, our window shades.
The biggest industrial user of cotton is medical supplies.
So all that toiling in the fields eventually clothed people
and even helped with the healing of others.
But the author was careful to never let sentimentality erase away the harsh realities of this incredibly hard labor
that sustained this poor farming family.
This story stuck with me because it also the story of my grandmother.
She grew up on a small, rural farm in the 30s and 40s.
My grandmother could - and did! - talk endlessly about the hard, hot, dirty work of being in the cotton fields all day.
For her trouble, she earned one dollar each day.
She hated it, and she never forgot it.
She did everything she could to ensure my life - and Adrian’s - would be different.
That work of that 7 year old boy, the work of my grandmother, of so many other small farmers,
in the United States, all over the world - was real -
but were their labors a spiritual endeavor?
Does your work feel like a spiritual vocation? Is it work that is real?
Or is it only something you do for the money you get in return?
Is it time to breathe new life into your work?
The idea that our work can and should be somehow divinely inspired
isn’t a new idea. The concept that our work is sacred has been around for a long time.
As told in the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve weren’t vacationing in the Garden of Eden,
eating their fill of apples and taking long walks.
The scriptures say that God put them in the Garden to “tend it and keep it.”
Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, we read about work and labor as holy endeavors.
The three Hebrew patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were herdsmen and worked the land.
Manual labor is often praised, and idleness condemned.
Jesus’ first apostles were commercial fisherman, Jesus was a carpenter,
and most of his parables were set within the context of work and industry:
laborers in the vineyard, a woman making bread, the farmer sowing seed, are just a few. (1)
This belief continues into contemporary times.
Today we heard the words of Kahlil Gibran, Marge Piercy, and Sister Joan Chittister
praising the goodness and spirit of work well done.
From many different religious perspectives, we hear common threads that identify
work that is real:
- to give glory to God - or for some Unitarian Universalists
we would say to give glory to the great mystery of the universe;
- to provide for basic needs for oneself and one's family;
- and to serve the needs of neighbors,
the world, all of Creation.
The great religious teachers remind us it is through our work that we are able to love life
and to know the holy.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, in his book Being God’s Partner,
shares a story about finding purpose in any job.
One night he struck up a conversation with his taxi driver.
Learning he was a rabbi, the driver asked:
“What do you say to someone like me, Rabbi, who has not set foot in a synagogue since I was Bar Mitzvah,
who is not religious?”
Rabbi Salkin replied,
“We could talk about how you serve God in your work.”
“What are you talking about? What does my job have to do with religion?”
the driver asked.
“Do you realize that you are one of the tissues that connects humanity?”
The taxi driver replied: “Huh? What are you talking about? I just drive a taxi.”
“Is that so? Well, right now you’re taking me to the airport. Thanks to your efforts and skill,
I’ll make my flight and hopefully get to my destination on time.
“There I will be giving a couple of lectures which may touch or even change somebody who hears me.
If so, you will have helped to make the connection between me and that person happen.
“And after you drop me off, you may take home someone from the hospital...
You will be a small part of her healing process. You will be an agent that will help
smooth her re-entry into normal life again.
“And then, who knows? You may take someone to see a dying parent,or to the house of the person
he or she is about to propose to.
“So, you see, you’re a connector, a bridge-builder ...
“You are one of the many unnoticed people who make the world work as well as it does.
That is holy work, my friend. You may not realize that it is, but your work is just as sacred as mine is any day.”(2)
A beautiful example of work that is real, that enables us to earn a living,
serve the needs of others, and give glory to the universe
And even so, I still get stuck when I think of that 7 year old or my grandmother on the farm.
And it seems to me that in order for work to take on an aspect of real spirituality for us,
there are at least two other dimensions.
One, it needs to be somewhat of our choosing. It doesn’t need to be the perfect job,
(those don’t exist anyway). But we need to feel that there is some sense of agency involved.
And two, that our work doesn’t become an addiction or obsession.
Debra touched on this in her reflection earlier.
That it doesn’t get in the way of our families, our friends, our connection with Creation.
One of the things I love about you all is that that many of you are earnestly searching
for work in your life that is real.
You’ve taken chances, given up a job with financial security
in order to pursue a career that allows you to embrace what you love in your work life.
The 7 year old cotton picker did not stay on the farm forever. He became a writer,
inspiring others and making meaning out of life.
My grandmother finally got off the farm, and she made a good life for herself in one of those northern factories.
Did she ever connect that work with her spiritual life?
I don’t think so.
It’s up to each one of us to decide how we will frame and understand the work we do.
If your work is monotonous and uninspiring is there some way for you add an element
to it that helps you take it deeper?
Create a beautiful vignette on your desk or bulletin board, offer pastoral listening to a co-worker,
take a walk outside on your lunch break to remind yourself of this incredible world we live in.
Or even, start each day with a short intention, paraphrased from our chalice lighting words:
May my work today
feel real,
allow me to love life,
and connect me to the holy.
Notes
1. Jose H. Gomez, All You Who Labor: Towards a Spirituality of Work for the 21st Century, 20 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 791 (2006).Available at: h p://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndjlepp/vol20/iss2/11
2. Taken from a sermon at - http://www.templetulsa.com/rabbi-emeritus-sermons-1/2015/11/16/who-cleans-up-in-your-house. Accessed on February 20, 2016.