The Work Cut Out for Us

"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

Meditation:  by Marge Piercy, from a poem entitled  “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…

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 stand in the line and haul in their places,

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.

Reading: by the conservative pundit and political theorist William Bennett from The Book of Virtues (p. 347) 

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” is a question about work. What is your work in the world going to be? What will be your works? These are not fundamentally questions about jobs and pay, but questions about life. Work is applied effort; it is whatever we put ourselves into, whatever we expend our energy on for the sake of accomplishing or achieving something. Work in this fundamental sense is not what we do for a living but what we do with our living.
Parents and teacher both work at the upbringing of children, but only teachers receive paychecks for it. The housework of parents is real work, though it brings in no revenue. The schoolwork, homework, teamwork of children is real work, though the payoff is not in dollars…

We want our children to flourish, to live well and fare well - to be happy. Happiness, as Aristotle long ago pointed out, resides in activity, both physical and mental. It resides in doing things that one can take pride in doing well, and hence that one can enjoy doing…. Life’s greatest joys are not what one does apart from the work of one’s life, but with the work of one’s life. Those who have missed the joy of work, of a job well done, have missed something very important.

Reading: this is a story from the Islamic tradition, as retold by Thomas Moore in his book A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born to Do (p. 12) 

Mahud was a simple man who lived in a small village and made his living by selling vegetables at a busy market. He was comfortable enough and liked his work. But one day the angel Khabir appeared to him and told him to jump in the river. Without thinking about it, Mahud leaped into the flowing water.

He was carried downstream until a man on shore threw him a rope and pulled him out. The man offered Mahud a job in his fishing business and a small room where he could live. Mahud appreciated the man's kindness and took the job and worked at it, rather happily, for three years. Then Khabir appeared to him once more and told him to move on.

Mahud obeyed immediately and walked from village to village until in one place a man offered him a job in his fabric shop. This was new to Mahud, but he took the job and learned the trade and worked there relatively happily until the angel appeared again and sent him on. Mahud worked at odd jobs for years in this manner, always moving along when the angel instructed.

When Mahud was an old man, he had gained the reputation of a holy man. People began coming to him with their illnesses and worries begging him for cure and counsel. One day a visitor to his village asked him, 'Mahud, how did you get to where you are now?'

Mahud thought for a moment and said, 'It's difficult to say.' 

The Work Cut Out for Us

August 31, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” That’s a question I remember kicking around when I was a kid in grade school. On the playground with my friends, we’d drop onto the lawn, look up at the clouds, and imagine all the amazing things we would do when we were grown ups. I remember being an astronaut was high on the list. 

By the time I was in middle school my interests had shifted from outer space to animals. At that point in my life, I was drawn to all small things furry or feathered, scaly or slippery. I had my own little turtles and hamsters and gerbils, and a special bond with our family parakeet, called Gacky. I remember being deeply moved by a book I read by the primatologist Jane Goodall, about her years living among chimpanzees in the jungles of Africa. I thought, for sure, when I grew up I would be a zoologist. 

In high school my curiosity moved from animal to human behavior. Long conversations with friends about the emotional ups and downs of our increasingly intimate relationships led me to a growing interest in psychology. At that point I thought I might become a therapist. 

It wasn’t until my later teens that I began to wonder whether maybe, maybe I might want to be a minister when I grew up. 

My kids, who are in college now, are kicking around the same question. My son says he wants to be a jazz musician. My daughter says she isn’t sure. And my wife, Elaine, is kicking the question around, too. She started out in ministry the same time I did, but along the way was also a family counselor, went to law school, worked in several legal positions, then was director of a local non-profit. And now she has returned to the ministry, serving the UU congregation in Decatur. I have been working as a UU minister for twenty-five years straight. But still I sometimes wonder: “What am I going to be when I grow up?”

* * *

As William Bennett sees it, our chosen work is an essential aspect of our lives. Our work isn’t merely what we get paid to do, it isn’t limited to employment and unemployment, labor unions and career options. Work is what we do with our lives, anything and everything on which we expend energy and attention. And if we do our work well, we experience pride and joy and a deep sense of satisfaction. Work well done is the key to a life well lived, and real happiness.

I know there is some truth to what Bennett writes. I had a vivid sense of work’s satisfaction when I joined a few others of you last week at a Habitat Build in north Urbana. Swinging a hammer, pounding nails, climbing ladders, and helping build a new house – despite the sweltering heat, and the sore limbs – was a lot of fun. And as you might imagine, I get a sense of satisfaction writing and delivering sermons, and helping out with the many different kinds of things that get done around here. Building community is work, but also a lot of fun.

But work is not always fun. For the vast majority of human history, since the beginning of civilization, most people experienced work as something very different. Just think of the great achievements of antiquity: the Pyramids in Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal in India. These amazing feats of art and engineering were not carried out by men and women who had said they want to be builders when they grow up. These temples and palaces were built by the sweat and blood of the poor and the oppressed, by servants and slaves who were forced to realize their rulers ambitions.  

It was probably this experience the authors of the book of Genesis had in mind, when they told the story of Adam and Eve, and the fate that awaited them once they had been ejected from Eden. 

As a punishment for his insubordination and ambition, God sentenced Adam to a life of hard labor. “Cursed is the ground because of you,” God says. “in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you… In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground….”

The expulsion from Eden paints a rather dismal picture of why work is destined to be a hardship for us. It’s a sobering story. But I imagine it does capture some of the experience of those long ago, who had little choice but to take on back-breaking labor, in order to eke out a living. And it may also capture something of the experience of those today, who are less economically and educationally privileged than most of us here this morning. 

* * *

While it is true that our work can be a source of pride and joy and deep satisfaction, it is equally true that our work can be draining and dispiriting. Our work can be a heavy burden, a source of stress and anxiety, or tedious and hopelessly boring. 

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly has done extensive research on how work can be either enjoyable or not; how the very same tasks can be either satisfying or not. He cites a study that involved interviewing members of a rural community in the Italian Alps. One participant in the study is woman named Serafina Vinon, who is seventy-six years old. He writes:

“[Serafina] still gets up at five in the morning to milk her cows. Afterwards she cooks a huge breakfast, cleans the house, and, depending on the weather and time of year, either takes the herds to the meadows just below the glaciers, tends to orchard, or cards some wool. In summer she spends weeks on the high pastures cutting hay, and then carries huge bales of it on her head the several miles down to the barn. She could reach the barn in half the time if she took a direct route; but she prefers following invisible winding trails to save the slopes from erosion. In the evening she may read, or tell stories to her great-grandchildren, or play the accordion for one of the parties of friends and relatives that assemble at her house a few times a week.

Serafina knows every tree, every boulder, every feature of the mountains as if they were old friends. …. When [she] was asked what she enjoys doing most in life, she had no trouble answering: milking cows, taking them to the pasture, pruning the orchard, carding wool… in effect, what she enjoys most is what she has been doing for a living all along. In her own words: “It gives me a great satisfaction. To be outdoors, to talk with people, to be with my animals… I talk to every body – plants, birds, flowers, and animals. Everything in nature keeps you company; you see nature progress every day every day. You feel clean and happy: too bad that you get tired and have to go home… even when you have to work a lot it is very beautiful.”

When she was asked what she would do if she had all the time and money in the world, Serafina laughed – and repeated the same list of activities: she would milk the cows, take them to pasture, tend the orchard, card wool. It is not that Serafina is [unaware] of the alternatives offered by urban life: she watches television occasionally and reads newsmagazines, and many of her younger relatives live in large cities and have comfortable life-styles, with cars, appliances, and exotic vacations. But their more fashionable and modern way of life does not attract [her]; she is perfectly content and serene with the role she plays in the universe.” (Flow, p. 145-146)

The attitude with which Serafina approaches her work is similar to a particular quality of  experience Csikszentmihaly has observed among a wide variety of people – whether athletes or artists or academics, whether blue collar or white collar workers. The long-distance swimmer crossing the English channel, the chess player during a tournament, the climber working her way up a difficult rock face, the accomplished pianist performing a complex musical piece - all of them are able to bring a particular quality of attention to a challenging task. They become fully immersed in their activity, fully involved, which makes what they are doing feel both energizing and enjoyable. He calls this particular mental state “flow.” 

When we tackle our tasks in this frame of mind, we give little thought to the pay we may receive for work done. Time seems to fly by when we are wholeheartedly involved in what we are doing. Our work feels intrinsically worthwhile and engaging, and is marked by a certain sense of harmony, of being centered and at-one. It is similar to the notion of “doing without doing” or the “action of inaction” described in Taoist literature. 

As Csikszentmihaly sees it, the sooner we realize that the quality of the work experience can be transformed at will, the sooner we can improve this enormously important dimension of life. Yet – tragically - most people still believe that work is forever destined to remain ‘the curse of Adam.’

Interestingly, his studies have shown that people are actually more happy actively working than not. Time spent leisurely lying on a sofa, passively watching TV actually leaves most of us less happy than when we are actively engaged in our work. 

* * *

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

There are two distinctly different ways we might answer this question. We can answer in terms of a particular profession we hope to join, or a particular task we want to take on. We might answer that we want to be an astronaut or an athlete, a politician or a parent, a musician or a minister.

The second way we can answer the question is by focusing less on the particular tasks we take on, and more on the quality of consciousness we hope to cultivate, no matter what we do.

Mahud spent his life selling vegetables, managing a fishing business, trading fabrics, and doing many other things. What defined him, and what distinguished him from others was not the particular work he did. What distinguished him was the whole-heartedness with which he approached his work, and the spirit of devotion evident in everything he did. He exuded a sense of harmony, of wholeness, of holiness.

Mahud couldn’t put into words why he chose his particular life path, or how he got to where he ended up. When asked, all he could answer was “It’s difficult to say.”

Mahud was not a teacher, a scholar or psychologist. His only talent was the ability to hear the voice of the angel Khabir, and the courage to follow its advice. Or as Thomas Moore put it, he had “the precious ability to recognize the call to move on and the openness of heart to follow it.” 

Most of us will probably never have an angel physically appear to us and tell us what to do next with our lives. But we do all have the capacity to listen to the deeper messages of our own lives. What sparks our curiosity? What inspires us? Where do we find joy? We all have the capacity to be aware of the world within us, and the world around us. Khabir – the angel’s name – means “The All Aware” and is one of the 99 names attributed to Allah.

To find the work cut out for us, we need two things: discernment and discipline. We need to listen closely to what our life is telling us, and then we need to find the courage to follow its advice. When our deepest intuitions and our deepest insights tell us to leap into the river, we must dare to leap. Not hemming and hawing, but whole-heartedly, trusting where the river will carry us.

Sometimes taking the leap may mean taking on a fresh task, discovering something beautiful and completely new. Sometimes taking the leap may mean engaging in a familiar task with a fresh spirit, discovering something beautiful and completely new.

Either way, we will find the work cut out for us, when we have the capacity to listen and the courage to leap. That’s the secret of happiness and holiness: to jump into our work head first, to submerge in the task at hand, without dallying in the shallows, and swim off with sure strokes.

May we have the wisdom to understand 

what the world within and the world around is telling us.

And may we have the courage to do

what needs to be done.

Amen.