North Shore Unitarian Universalists
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Before I begin this morning’s sermon "In Praise of Work," I want to remind you about our annual Water Communion ceremony which will be held next Sunday, led by Patricia Stout. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the concept, this ritual involves the people of the congregation bringing a small amount of water from their summer to share with the congregation. Each person who wishes to take part in this informal ritual of regathered community is asked to bring a small amount of water -- about a film canister worth -- and be prepared to share aloud (if you wish) where the water comes from.
On this Sunday before Labor Day, let us contemplate work -- indeed, let us praise work. Work can give life purpose and boundaries and meaning; work can be ennobling, uplifting, and enriching. Work can even form, consciously or unconsciously, an important part of our identities. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.
I remember that soon after my father retired from his 36 years of work in the organized labor movement back in 1975, my mother asked me to lunch with her. Over the clink of glasses and the murmured conversations of the crowded restaurant, my mother leaned across the table to me and said theatrically (I come by it honestly!), "I think your father’s losing his mind!"
After I picked my jaw up from the table, I was able to get from my mother the real cause of her concern -- without his work, my father felt aimless, purposeless, out-of-sorts, confused. If he were not Barney Morel-the-AFL-CIO-subdistrict-director, then who was he? What was he supposed to do with the rest of his life? And in his pain and confusion, my father was indeed driving my mother nuts. Barney eventually worked through it, collaborating with me on an oral history of his work in the movement, and shortly after that, taking up golf. (And soon, my mother had other complaints about him, but it wasn’t that she thought he was losing his mind, it was that she never saw him.)
Many people, both women and men, have had similar experiences after leaving a long-time job, whether voluntarily through retirement, or against their will by being laid off or through a business closure. It is no coincidence that many of our present-day surnames -- names like Smith, Wright, Wheeler, Baker, Ferry, Farmer, Priest or Cohen, and even ethnic names like Ghandi (meaning grocer), and so on -- come from the occupation of one of our ancestors. So much of who we are, for both good and ill, is tied up in our work, often it is hard to extract the core of ourselves from what it is that we do.
Ministers are not immune from such concerns. A while ago, there was a discussion spanning several days on the UU Ministers on-line chat group about the difference, if any, between "doing ministry" and "being a minister." Were they the same? Was there a real distinction to be made in saying "I am a minister" or "Ministry is what I do but it’s not who I am"? No consensus was reached on these questions, but there were days of fruitful and interesting exchanges. You may interested to know that I came down on the side of "being a minister" -- that most of time I feel that ministry is who I am and not just what I do. (Now, whether this will cause me difficulty in the the time after my retirement, I guess I will find out out about 15 years from now.)
If we are going to identify so strongly with what we do, then it is important for us to be involved in work worth doing, or what the Buddhists call "right livelihood." If our work demeans the human dignity of ourselves or of others, if our work puts ourselves or others in some kind of danger, if our work is based in faulty ethics or a lack of connection to other human beings or to the earth, or even if we are simply unsuited for the work we are doing or the people we are doing it with, then we may find our spiritual and emotional unease making itself felt both psychically and physically. We may experience recurring nightmares, inability to sleep, or other physical symptoms without apparent clinical cause.
I don’t know about this reality just because I read it somewhere, although the phenomena is well-documented; I know this is true because it happened to me. Back in the early 1980s, soon after I had joined 1st UU Church in New Orleans, when I was a store manager for Laura Ashley (a job, by the way, I had avidly pursued and which I thought of as my dream job), two things started happening. I had nightmares several times a week, and I developed a mysterious skin rash that usually cleared up on my days off. I sought the advice of a dermatologist, and flunked every skin sensitivity test he put me through. I was not allergic to anything in particular, I just kept getting this rash. His diagnosis: urticaria, which in laymen’s terms apparently means, "red rash that the doctor can’t figure out."
When I quit retailing in 1985, it was mostly because I realized my heart wasn’t in it. I was meant for something else, only I didn’t know what it was yet. My deeper involvement in my church with my newly-freed time first drew me to become First Church’s paid professional administrator, and later still, to the UU ministry. I finally found what I was supposed to be when I grew up, and I joy-fully embraced the life it offered me -- with all its privileges, hardships, life changes, growth experiences, low pay and all. (The late Suzanne Meyer found this bumper sticker for me in a Baptist book store: I like this job so much, I’d do it for nothing. In much smaller type, it says further, Unfortunately, they know that. (Needless to say, I never did put that sticker on my car.)
In those days, I didn’t know about Rumi, the Sufi mystic and poet, but unconsciously I was following one of his most compelling directives: Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Now, now not all of us have the security and luxury of being able to drop everything and follow Rumi’s urging. Not all of us are able leave our jobs and take up an entirely new career direction, as First Church's sponsored seminarian, Deanna Vandiver, has done, or as our ministerial intern Charlie Dieterich did. Many of us are caught in jobs that we keep in order to pay our bills and cannot afford to think whether or not we feel somehow "fulfilled." Indeed, some of us have jobs that don’t even pay all of our bills. Others of us, while we may be making more money and may not be doing actual drudgery, still feel trapped and do not see a clear way out of our predicament.
Maybe we should take a step back and think in a new way. If we cannot do work that is what we truly love, then perhaps we can find ways to bring what we truly love to our work. We could build more meaningful relationships at our places of work; we could get into the mindfulness, the zen, of even routine tasks; we could witness whatever faith sustains us in the way we do our work, whatever it is.
In fact, that step back is essential for all of us. All of us can get too caught up in what we do, mistaking our work for ourselves, mistaking comfortable routine for what must be done. All of us could benefit from being able to take some valuable perspective on the work we do. In his diaries, Leonardo Da Vinci wrote:
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
Maybe that’s what Labor Day is really all about -- that little relaxation we can use to sharpen our judgment, to see our problems and challenges at work in a new light, to discern for ourselves whether or not we are letting ourselves be drawn by the stronger pull of what we truly love.
This morning let us sing a song in praise of work, work worth doing, right livelihood, work that enriches and ennobles our experience, work that gives our lives meaning and identity and purpose. In honor of the working women and men of this congregation and all around the world, please join with me in the special hymn of working people, a song very appropriate for Labor Day, "Solidarity Forever."
