Work Worth Doing
"It happened at a retreat. . .for some twenty elected and appointed officials from Washington, D.C.," the writer and activist, Parker Palmer tells us. "All of them had worked for a decade in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, after farming for twenty-five years in northeastern Iowa." And on the desk of one of these officials at the moment of the retreat "was a proposal related to the preservation of Midwestern topsoil, which is being depleted at a rapid rate by agribusiness practices that value short-term profits over the well-being of the earth.
"His 'farmer's heart,' - the official kept saying, knew how the proposal should be handled. But his political instincts warned him that following his heart would result in serious trouble, not least with his immediate supervisor. On the last morning of our gathering, the man from Agriculture, looking bleary-eyed, told us that it had become clear to him during a sleepless night that he needed to return to his office and follow his farmer's heart.
"After a thoughtful silence, someone asked him, 'How will you deal with your boss, given his opposition to what you intend to do?'
"'It won't be easy,' replied this farmer-turned-bureaucrat. "But during this retreat, I've remembered something important: I don't report to my boss. I report to the land."[1]
Now you probably didn't hear about this proposal on the news - you probably didn't hear about this one man's stand for what he knew to be right - in fact, probably no one ever heard about it but this man and his family and maybe his colleagues at work - but for this singular man, our man from Agriculture, this seemingly small decision marked a pivotal moment. A moment when he remembered his best self - his dreams of what and who he could be. He remembered in that moment that ultimately, as a farmer at heart - he doesn't report to his boss, he reports to the land.
In that one moment, even in the face of the dangers he knew surely lay ahead for him - this man from Agriculture was suddenly and completely whole again - rejoining soul and role, as Parker Palmer says - choosing a life of integrity over a life of division. In that moment and in the moments of testing that surely followed - this man was doing the quiet work of spiritual living - doing his best to align his actions with his values - fueled perhaps by the support of fellow travelers, by time away from the daily dust of the road that can cloud our vision - fueled by the ever stronger voice of his heart that when listened to - called him consistently back to himself.
In the overall scheme of the world and its workings - this man's decision was a small one, but it may still seem like an extraordinary one to some of us. After all, this man risked his job and his livelihood to follow his heart. He risked the disapproval and scorn of his supervisor and his peers, he risked losing the material success and the status that he had worked so hard to achieve, he went against the grain of what was expected of him. And so this choice that he made - this action that he took may feel just fine for him - but completely out of bounds for many of us - dangling there like an unreachable ring that doesn't relate much to our own lives.
But I wonder, I wonder who among us has not at one time or another felt the tugging at our heart that this man talked of - who among us has not at one time or another acquiesced to authority just to get along even when we know that the choice being made violates the core of our values? And who among us, I wonder, has not known the interior division, the shame and the numbness that settles in when we act against what we know is right simply to preserve our own illusion of safety.
The divided life that our man from Agriculture was living is all too familiar for many of us - I fear - all too familiar to our families and friends and fellows in this culture. And this experience of living a life divided is not new for us as Americans. One of our great Unitarian prophets, Henry David Thoreau wrote long ago that "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." And much as I wish it were different today - I know that those words still resonate with many of us. After all it was not that many years ago when the poet, Paul Simon, hit a note in our hearts when he sang to us - "We work our jobs, collect our pay, believe we're gliding down the highway when in fact we're slip sliding away."
Our culture calls us to pursue the illusion of safety and security in the form of possessions and prestige - and when we do just that, it can seem like we're gliding down the highway for a little while - reveling in our success - when really, without even noticing it - we're slip sliding away.
Dreams die, my friend Rob Eller-Isaacs says, when they don't turn into promises - and this can be the ultimate price we pay when we live our lives divided - allowing soul and role to part ways - carrying one set of values in our hearts but living out another in our homes, our offices and fields and communities.
On a personal level, I think we know that when we live divided, we are essentially living as wounded beings - beings left with gnawing depression and anxiety, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, left gaping there in the center of our being with a spiritual emptiness that can lead us to seek relief in all the wrong places. We numb ourselves with too much work, too much television, too much food or drink - we pick the anesthetic of our choice and start running - and in this society of ours, it is all too easy to do just that. In our culture, with its emphasis on endless consumption, attention is deflected away from our spiritual hunger at every turn. "We are endlessly bombarded by messages telling us that our every need can be satisfied by material increase," author bell hooks writes, and "while the zeal to possess intensifies, so does the sense of spiritual emptiness. Because we are spiritually empty we try to fill up on consumerism. We may not always have enough love but we can always shop."[2]
And I think that bell hooks is on to something here - because what I think is missing in this life-long journey of reconnecting soul with role - of striving to live a spiritual life by aligning our actions with our values in all arenas of our life - it is not so much courage or intelligence or even will-power that I think is missing for us - but love. Love for ourselves and others - I think what is missing is something as simple as love.
Love, the author and theologian bell hooks, tells us - love is not simply an emotion - but an action. Love is the tangible action we take on behalf of our own or another's spiritual growth and it is an active choice we make again and again. Love, when we understand it in this sense is as much an action as it is a feeling - and when we choose to act out of this kind of love for ourselves and others - we offer a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge and responsibility to ourselves and each other. This kind of love is most definitely a choice - and it is a choice we can make in all areas of our life - from the workplace to our hearts and homes and communities. When we choose to live into this kind of love - then we take up our role and our responsibility in the development of our own spiritual lives and the spiritual lives of others - refusing to shirk the truth that ultimately - it is up to us to listen to our farmer's heart - to our heart of hearts - to the trees, as the poet, Mary Oliver said, the trees that call to us, reminding us that we, too have come into the world to do this - to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.
And it is the choices we make - the active choices we make - that lead us to live into this kind of love.
Several months ago, as part of my study leave, I gathered with a number of colleagues and friends at a retreat center in North Carolina and on one particular afternoon as we were sitting on the porch waiting for the dinner bell to ring - the conversation turned to a favorite topic for ministers. It is often said that every minister really only has one sermon in them - there's a theme that they return to over and over again regardless of the subject they say that they are preaching on - and so we asked one another, "what is your sermon?" My friend Tamara Lebak - one of the ministers at our church in Tulsa, Oklahoma piped right up without hesitation. "We have a limited number of choices to make in our lives," she said. "Each one of us has a limited number of choices in our lifetime - so what will we choose?"
I've been haunted by this statement and this question ever since - that each one of us has a limited number of choices in our lifetime - so what will we choose - and it comes back to me not only when I'm making the small choices - choices like whether or not to head home for dinner while my son is still awake or just work straight through the evening - and it comes to me when I'm faced with the bigger choices, too, and I can't help but remember then that every single choice I make adds up to the legacy of a lifetime.
In those moments I often remember another interaction I was lucky enough to have this past spring. It happened during Equality and Justice Day in Albany when I went, along with over a thousand others to our state capitol to lobby for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. As a member of the Board of Directors for the Pride Agenda I was invited to attend a lunch meeting with several members of the State Assembly who had voted for marriage equality when the bill had come before them the year before. The thing that made this lunch different was that it wasn't a room full of Democrats or independents that we were meeting with - but rather it was a room full of us, the board members, and just 3 others - the Republicans in the assembly who had broken ranks with their colleagues and their party to vote for equal marriage for all people.
Two of the assembly people in the room had not only voted their conscience and voted for marriage equality on that fateful day - but had also given impassioned speeches from the floor on behalf of equal rights for all people. One of those assembly members was Teresa Sayward - and I'll never forget the answer she gave when one of my peers asked her if things have been difficult for her since the vote.
"No." she replied simply. "A difficult vote is when you get up the next morning and find that you can't look yourself in the mirror because you voted against your conscience. It is never a difficult vote when you know that you are doing the right thing...and who knows, maybe I'll have time for a bigger herb garden next year."
Assemblywoman Sayward was confident that she did the right thing in that moment - and with that singular choice she followed her heart and lived out her love not only for her gay son but for herself, her family, and the larger family of which she is a part - offering trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge and responsibility - all of the components of love that our theologian, bell hooks, named earlier.
These choices that we are called to make are not always easy - but they can be simple. And they come before us every day - they come before us with no end in sight until we die in moments large and small. Whether at work or at home - whether we are single or married, have children or not, are retired or are still working at job we love or hate - the choices come before us in moments small and large - will we live with love as an action word that guides our decisions or will we cave to the common culture and find ourselves lost and divided, living someone else's life as we drift on down the highway, slip sliding away?
The choices we make are the work of a lifetime - and they are certainly work worth doing. Framed by the concept of love in action the work of our lives - the daily choices we make whether big or small - can lead us to work worth doing and that work, as the poet, Khalil Gibran wrote - that work can be our love made visible.
I don't report to my boss, our man from Agriculture remembered with his farmer's heart at the end of a sleepless night, I report to the land.
Each one of us has a limited number of choices in our lifetime, my colleague, Tamara Lebak says.
A good decision is one where, when you see yourself in the mirror the next morning, Assemblywoman Sayward told us - you can meet your own eyes.
Every where we turn there is work worth doing. Every day, in each and every moment our choices call to us, begging to be answered by the voice of our heart - our farmer's heart, our heart of hearts, the whispering of the trees that reminds us that we too, have come here to go easy, to be filled with light and to shine. Every day, in each and every moment our choices offer us the opportunity to start again, deciding anew to lean into the love that draws us forward - the love that helps us to remember our dreams and turn them into promises.
And as our dear poet reminded us earlier this morning -
It is not too late - we have not yet grown too old
to dive into our increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.
It is not too late - it is never too late, my friends - if we listen to the calling of our hearts and to the whispering of the trees. It is never too late to choose the work that is worth doing - the work of our lives that at its best is truly our love made visible - the work that we do that is built on each and every one of our choices, large and small, that create our lives and our legacy in this world.
So let us choose wisely, friends, reminded this morning by all those who have gone before us that we can start again in any moment - that the decision is up to us. And let us lean in to the larger love that calls us to put our love in action - leading us to create a better world for ourselves, for each other, and for those who are yet to come.
May it be so, and Amen.
August 10, 2008
- Parker Palmer. A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. (Jossey Bass, 2004), 18-19.
- bell hooks. All About Love: New Visions. (Harper Paperbacks, 2001) , 72