All of us need to work, no matter what our age. And as our retirees know all too well, work doesn’t end when you retire. You may not get paid money for it but you do get paid, and you can live a tremendously busy and fruitful life up until the day you die. As the Catholic mystic Matthew Fox put it “There is a priesthood of all workers (all who are doing good work are midwives of grace and therefore priests) and this priesthood ought to be honored as sacred and workers should be instructed in spirituality in order to carry on their ministry effectively.” (from The Reinvention of Work, 1995)
When we think of work, we too often think of it as a
function – what we do to get “it” done – and so the vocae of our souls are left to chance. We may or may not find meaning in what we do
for money. The problem of our modern
working life has less to do with efficiency and much more to do with the lack of
meaning in what we are called to do. Repetition of tasks, whether they be with
our hands or with our heads pushing paper and keys from one place to another
robs us of the meaning we crave.
It is never easy to reconcile these contradictions in our lives. The better paying jobs are more often than not the ones that lie at the edge of what we value as a people.
Single parents who struggle to raise their families and not quite so able to just give up a well paying job and maintain the environment they want for their children.
I do believe that money does make a difference in raising a family. But I am asking us to examine the gap between what we do and what we value. And just as we should question making money at a job that has little meaning to us, we need to also question making enough money at a job that does have meaning. It is a tragedy that some of our most socially beneficial vocations pay far below what the people do them need to live on.
It is never easy to reconcile these contradictions in our lives. The better paying jobs are more often than not the ones that lie at the edge of what we value as a people.
Single parents who struggle to raise their families and not quite so able to just give up a well paying job and maintain the environment they want for their children.
I do believe that money does make a difference in raising a family. But I am asking us to examine the gap between what we do and what we value. And just as we should question making money at a job that has little meaning to us, we need to also question making enough money at a job that does have meaning. It is a tragedy that some of our most socially beneficial vocations pay far below what the people do them need to live on.
Answering
the call to good work, then, is doing what we find meaning in. “Right work” wrote the Buddhist monk Thich
Naht Hanh “is the result of being present in the moment of doing”. Whatever we are doing becomes meaningful when
we pay attention to all that the work means.
The process of working, whether it is paid or not, whether it is your
vocation or your occupation, it is a spiritual opportunity.
With Grace and Grit, John
