“May your work bring order where there was chaos, wisdom where there was ignorance, brightness where there was obscurity, purpose where there was confusion, warmth were there was harshness, laughter where there was pain, challenge where there was boredom, and God’s holy peace where there was hate. May you create in the name of God who creates, be wise in the name of God’s revealing word and loving in the cause of God’s spirit who serves.” – Andrew Greeley
“I am counting the days until I can quit working!”
“I am just going to keep working – what else would I do?”
I spend a fair bit of time coaching people who are looking forward to, pondering, or completely opposed to any possibility of ending their present work.
What I have learned from walking with people who find themselves in this place, and folks in general, is that there are a myriad of different perspectives about work.
Work is primarily a means to an end: to pay the bills, to purchase things or to do activities one wants. It may or not come with a level of reward beyond financial such as a sense of accomplishment.
Work is a vocation, a passion, a calling and often comes with a deep sense of identity. For some, the financial remuneration is important but for others this is secondary to the reward that comes from doing what you love and or feel called to do.
Many assume a clear delineation of what is often classified as working class and professional with regards to their perspective about work. Interestingly, in my experience, this is not the case.
Farmers, plumbers, valets, even the guys who install and repair septic systems have been individuals I know who have a real love and passion for their work. Likewise, I have known highly educated, well paid people who loath their work. Doctors, lawyers, bankers all who pine for a different life.
I have always found theologian Fredrick Buechner’s words to be a good North Star with respect to work / vocation. “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Whatever the season or circumstance we find ourselves in, the hope is that we can embrace the words Dorthy Sayer writes in her book, Why Work. “Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do.”
To Be of Use:
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for
work that is real. – Marge Piercy
BP