Meditation: by Jan Beatty, a poem entitled “My Father Teaches Me to Dream”
You want to know what work is?
I’ll tell you what work is:
Work is work.
You get up. You get on the bus.
You don’t look from side to side.
You keep your eyes straight ahead.
That way nobody bothers you—see?
You get off the bus. You work all day.
You get back on the bus at night. Same thing.
You go to sleep. You get up.
You do the same thing again.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
There’s no handouts in this life.
All this other stuff you’re looking for—
it ain’t there.
Work is work.
Reading: by William Zinsser, from On Writing Well (p. 3-4).
About ten years ago a school in Connecticut held “a day devoted to the arts,” and I was asked if I would come and talk about writing as a vocation. When I arrived I found that a second speaker had been invited - Dr. Brock (as I’ll call him), a surgeon who had recently begun to write and had sold some stories to national magazines. He was going to talk about writing as an avocation. That made us a panel, and we sat down to face a crowd of student newspaper editors, English teachers and parents, all eager to learn the secrets of our glamorous work.
Mr. Brock was dressed in a bright red jacket, looking vaguely bohemian, as authors are supposed to look, and the first question went to him. What was it like to be a writer?
He said it was tremendous fun. Coming home from an arduous day at the hospital, he would go straight to his yellow pad and write his tensions away. The words just flowed. It was easy.
I then said that writing wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom flowed.
Next Dr. Brock was asked if it was important to rewrite. Absolutely not, he said. “Let it all hang out,” and whatever form the sentences take will reflect the writer at his most natural.
I then said that rewriting is the essence of writing. I pointed out that professional writers rewrite their sentences repeatedly and then rewrite what they have rewritten. I mentioned that E. B. White and James Thurber rewrote their pieces eight or nine times.
“What do you do on days when it isn’t going well?” Dr. Brock was asked. He said he just stopped writing and put the work aside for a day when it would go better.
I then said that the professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke.
“What if you’re feeling depressed or unhappy?” a student asked. “Won’t that affect your writing?”
Probably it will, Dr. Brock replied. Go fishing. Take a walk.
Probably it won’t, I said. If your job is to write every day, you learn to do it like any other job…
“Do you put symbolism in your writing?” a student asked me.
“Not if I can help it,” I replied. I have an unbroken record of missing the deeper meaning in any story, play or movie, and as for dance and mime, I have never had even a remote notion of what is being conveyed.
“I love symbols!” Dr. Brock exclaimed, and he described with gusto the joys of weaving them through his work.
So the morning went, and it was a revelation to all of us.
Reading: by the Jewish scholar Martin Buber, from a book entitled Chinese Tales (p. 67), which was first published in 1910. The book consists of a collection of Taoist stories drawn from the writings of the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, who live in the 4th century BCE. This story is called “The Stand for Chimes.”
Qing, the master carpenter, was carving a wooden stand for a set of chimes. When he was done, everyone who say it thought it had been fashioned by supernatural beings. The prince of Lu asked the mast, “What is the secret of your art?”
“Your subject is only an artisan,” replied Qing. “What secrets could he have? Yet there is something. When starting out to make the stand, I guarded myself against any loss of vital energy. I collected myself in order to subdue my spirit to an absolute calm. After three days I became oblivious to whatever reward I might receive. After five days I became oblivious to whatever fame I might be accorded. After seven days I forgot my limbs and the rest of my physical self. Even the thought of your court, for which I was supposed to work, was gone. Then I got down to my art, undisturbed by anything outside. I went to the forest and looked at the shapes of trees. When I caught sight of one that had the right shape, the stand for the set of chimes appeared to me, and I went to work. If I had not found this tree, I would have had to cancel the job. My divinely inspired capability and the divinely inspired shape of the tree coincided. What is credited to the supernatural in my work, is due entirely to this coincidence.”
Getting To Work
A Sermon Delivered on September 4, 2011
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
This summer I have been exploring new dimensions of parenthood. These experiments have been prompted by the fact that my infant son, Noah, suddenly and inexplicably has become a high school senior. And though it seems like yesterday that I was showing him how to tie his shoelaces, and teaching him how to ride a bike, I realize he is now less than a year away from high school graduation and legal adulthood - and hopefully one big step closer to a life of adult responsibility and financial independence.
It’s the “financial independence” that my fatherly brain latched onto. And all my parental instincts, loving concern, and wise counsel boiled down to a six word mantra that I found myself reciting to Noah with increasing frequency. The six words are: “You need to get a job.”
I freely admit, there is more to growing up than getting a job - there are high school grades, for instance, and college visits and applications, and any number of practical and social skills, all of which contribute to the maturation of a young adult. Luckily, Noah has a mother who can help him with those things.
For reasons I myself don’t fully understand, my own parental ambitions grew surprisingly narrow. Soon I was left wondering whether my new mantra, which initially seemed so inspiring, was turning into an annoying, nagging litany. Perpetually prodding Noah to read the classified ads and to set up job interviews - I began to suspect - was perhaps not necessarily creating the warm-and-fuzzy father-and-son bonding experience I had hoped.
But it did teach me something about myself, and some of the hidden circuits buried deeply within my brain that link adulthood, security, health and happiness with attaining gainful employment. The questions and concerns that arise along these lines in my parental mind, I realized, are very different than the questions I remember mulling over when I was seventeen. My seventeen-year-old concerns felt much bigger and deeper than simply getting a job. When I was seventeen I was wondering: What do I want to be when I grow up? What do I want to do with my life? How can I make a difference?
The grown up parent within me, I realize, has little patience for the big questions. My internalized Father says you need to learn to live in the Real World. That means getting a job, earning a living, building a home. Life in the Real World is full of difficulties and dangers. If you don’t learn to put aside your dreams, you won’t survive.
This may sound like the voice of a bitter and cynical old man - but even a casual look at the news confirms that we are living in difficult and dangerous times. Our economic slump and the specter of rising and long-term unemployment are undeniable.
Last week the news said there are “Some hints of Optimism in Economic Data.” According to a new government report, fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week. The job market may be improving. But in yesterday’s paper I read that a “Stagnant jobs report renews fears.” In an alarming setback, the most recent report says no jobs were created in August, thus, yet again, stoking fears of another recession.
A job fair in Chicago last month, had job applicants standing in a line a half-mile long, thousands of men and women, young and old, desperate to find work. A young woman named Candace Mitchell stood in the line, because her current work as independent hairstylist isn’t enough to make ends meet. Every time she puts a couple of gallons of gas in her car, she needs to decide - will she spend these few dollars on gas to get home, or on dinner, or on her son’s football uniform, or on a needed doctor’s visit - which will it be? An older woman named Velvet Hays-Dawson stood in line hoping for work, because her current job as a bus-driver provides the only paycheck in the family. They recently had to decide whether to pay their mortgage or pay for their daughter’s college. They chose college, and now their home is in foreclosure.
Candace Mitchell and Velvet Hays-Dawson don’t have the luxury to ponder what they really want to do with their lives. And the only difference they want to make, is to keep their families fed, and to provide their children with the basic necessities they need to grow up and succeed. Or, at least that’s the message Jan Beatty’s father tried to convey to her, the message conveyed so clearly in her poem: work is work. Nothing more, nothing less.
* * *
Is the work we do an integral part of living a meaningful life? Or is work simply a brute necessity for economic survival? Is our work an opportunity to make a difference in the world? Or is work merely the domain of employers and employees, a realm from which millions of Americans are currently excluded?
There is no single answer to these questions. We can choose to treat work as one or the other of these options, and live our lives accordingly. And we can teach our children accordingly.
We can choose the attitude with which we approach our work. We can expect our work to be easy and tremendous fun. Or we can assume our work will be hard and lonely. We can do our work only when the spirit moves us. Or we can approach work as a daily discipline, a craft, which we practice, rain or shine, on good days and bad.
Our respective experiences of what work looks and feels like can differ amazingly. This is the surprising revelation William Zinsser experienced years ago at a school in Connecticut. It was a revelation to see how differently Zinsser and Dr. Brock understood the work of writing.
Zinsser makes sense of their differences by linking them to the notion of vocation as opposed to avocation. Writing is Zinsser’s vocation - his profession, his job. His writing pays the rent. As such, the act of writing is tinged with worries about bills to pay, and the sober realities of economic survival. He writes every day, because if doesn’t, he’ll go broke.
For Dr. Brock, writing is an avocation - it is a hobby, driven solely by his desire for fun and relaxation. It is a welcome distraction from his day job.
The words vocation and avocation are both drawn from the same root, the Latin word “vocare” - which also is the root of vocal and voice - and which means “to call.”
To have a vocation is to be called. It is to be drawn toward a particular kind of work by an inclination, a circumstance, or a voice not entirely our own. To be called means to be guided toward one’s work by an impulse deeper or greater than we can fully understand.
To have an avocation is to be called away. We are called away from the work we do for pay, called away from work defined by duty and drudgery and economic necessity, to a different kind of work. A work that arises from different motives and moves toward different goals.
* * *
We, who gather here to this place of worship, we do so for many reasons. We come here to build community, to seek inspiration, to promote justice, and to find peace - this is what we say in our mission statement. But that is not all we do here. We also celebrate and sing, we share meals and stories, we teach our children and learn from them, and from each other - about religion and God, about morality and the meaning of life.
We come here to grapple with the questions that matter the most to us. We come here, because we know, we can’t find the answers - and more importantly, we can’t live the answers - alone. We can only do this together. Together, we come here to hone our skills and deepen our understanding. Together, we come to find the critical challenge and the caring support we need to get a better grip on what it is we really want to do with our lives, and to figure out how we can make a difference.
Let me be perfectly clear. Coming to church is not all fun and games. It is work. And if you have read our newsletter, or heard announcements from this pulpit, in which individuals report on the good work dedicated members and friends have done either at community events or within the walls of this church - then you know I am not kidding, when I say this is a place of work. This is a place where a lot of good people come together to do good work.
The work we do here comes in all shapes and sizes. It looks and feels different depending on the time and the task at hand. And depending on the attitude of those involved. Sometimes it looks like to Dr. Brock’s enthusiastic avocation - and our work is done effortlessly and joyfully. Other times our work seems similar to Zinsser’s disciplined sense of vocation, and we stick with it, even when real effort is involved, even when it isn’t fun. We stick with it even when our work is draining and demanding.
We do this - not because we are masochists, or gluttons for punishment - we do this, because the call we hear, the call that arises from somewhere deep within us or from far beyond us, this call compels us to fulfill a profound purpose.
Our labors’ reward is measured neither in dollars and cents, nor in perpetual pleasure - our reward lies in that deeper satisfaction that is found only when we join together with friends to serve a greater good. The sense of meaning we find in such work can be a revelation.
It isn’t always easy to figure out what the work is we are called to do. The Christian author Frederick Buechner writes about this challenge. Our problem often is not an absence of calling, he says, but rather learning to deal with conflicting calls. “There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest… The place God calls you to,” Buechner writes, “is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet.” (Wishful Thinking, p. 95)
* * *
I don’t know whether what you need to do here, is be called away from one kind of work, or to be called toward another kind of work. But some kind of calling is involved. There is a voice we need to discern before we begin our work.
Before we pick up our tools and proceed with the task at hand, we need to listen closely in order to understand what our task truly entails. We need to listen closely, in order to understand the complexity of the need we hope to address. We need to pay attention to subtle clues, both within us and around us.
Like the master carpenter, who began his work by turning his attention to the world within - attending to body and soul - with diligence and discipline calming his mind, letting go of all distractions, quieting the clamor of the voices of ambition and pride, as well as their flip-sides: fear of failure and inadequacy.
Then he turned his attention to the world around him. He went into forest and examined the shape of every tree he encountered - its height, its width, its hardness and softness, its color and texture, its perfections and imperfections.
Only after attending diligently to the world within and around him, did he take up his tools - his ax and saw, his chisel and hammer. He yielded to a vision of an object, which he saw contained within the tree. He yielded to a still, small voice that whispered instructions, guiding his hands - the angle of the chisel on wood, and the force of the hammer’ s blow.
The outcome of the carpenter’s work was not merely a beautiful object to behold, and not merely an example of divine inspiration - the outcome of the carpenter’s work was of pragmatic value. It served a concrete purpose: a stand for chimes. And in so doing, in a small but very tangible way, served a greater good. In a small but tangible way the carpenter made a difference.
The integrity of intention and action, the harmony of the spiritual and the practical, the unity of discipline and devotion - the commitment to combine both dimensions in the work at hand, this is what allowed the completion of a work that seemed supernatural.
* * *
Work is work. There is no denying it. Work is work. And we need to work.
We need work to sustain our bodies, to sustain our souls. We need work to give concrete shape to the meaning of lives, and to bring our unique gifts to bear upon the needs of the world.
Our work calls us to draw from the deepest wellsprings within, so that each of us in our own small and idiosyncratic way, can make a difference in the world around us. This work may involve a degree of difficulty and drudgery, but it is nevertheless marked by a deep gladness.
This is my mantra: We need to get a job. We need a job that will give shape and form to our dreams. And if the job we find fails to embody our ideals - if work is work, and truly nothing more and nothing less - then may our job inspire us to listen more intently to our true calling. Then, may the very limitations of our work teach us to dream of vocations as yet unimagined.
May our dreams be for us a revelation of the true work we are called to do.
May we join together, and take up our work joyfully.
So that all our dreams may come true.
Amen.
