Wisdom Distilled from the Daily

by Joan Chittister

  The old altar bread iron I used myself as a young teacher in 1955. On Mondays I went to college and on Tuesdays I pleated the community headdresses. On Fri-days I cleaned the community room, on Saturdays I did church work, and on Sundays I taught Sunday School. But on Wednesday afternoons I would rush home from teaching school, mix a runny batter, and bake communion hosts on that machine. I would bake until prayer time every Wednesday of every week.

  The shovel we used in 1968 to break ground for the new monastery and we have never used it since.

  Point: they’re all old; they’re all useless; they’re all unused and they’re all valueless. Why keep them?

  I think I know. Silently, unceasingly, clearly, these artifacts of another age remind us that the work that brought us here must go on. They recall us to the truth that work is fundamental and necessary and physical and holy and spiritual and creative.

  Work, you see, is a basic part of the monastic tradition. The Rule is full of it. There are no slaves in Benedict’s monastery even in a period of slavery. There are no servants. “When they live by the labor of their hands, as our ancestors and the apostles did, then they are really monastics” (RB 48:8), Benedict says. We do not live off the labor of others. We are not to be a burden on society. We are not an elite. Those working in the fields at the hours of prayer are to stay in the fields and pray. Prayer is not to be used as an excuse not to bring the harvest in. Those about to begin a community service for the week are to ask a blessing on that work. Everyone is to serve at table. Everyone: the children of nobles as well as those who were the children of serfs.

  Work in the monastic tradition is not something to be avoided. Work is not a punishment or a penance. Work is a privilege.

  Among the earliest sayings of the Desert Monastics, one of the oldest stories passed from generation to generation, was a story about the purpose of work.

  One day a holy monastic was going to town to sell some small articles in order to buy food to live on. A cripple on the roadside said, “Where are you going, Teacher?” And when the monastic said [he was going] to town, the cripple said, “Would you do me the favor of carrying me there with you?” So the Teacher carried the paralytic into the town.

  Then the cripple said, “You can just put me down where you sell your wares.” And the Teacher did so.

  When the monastic sold an article, the cripple said, “What did you sell it for?” And when the monastic stated the price, the cripple said, “Will you buy me a cake with that?” And the Teacher did so.

  When the selling time was over, the cripple said, “Now will you do me the favor of carrying me back to the place you found me?” And once more, the Teacher did so.

  When they arrived at the place where the Teacher had found the paralyzed beggar, the cripple said, ‘You are filled with divine blessings, in heaven and on earth,” and disappeared. Then the monastic realized that the cripple had really been an angel, sent to try both spirit and flesh.

  Here, in this simple monastic story of the right of the wounded in society to make themselves part of our worlds and to profit from the fruit of our labors, all the modern-day attitudes toward work go awry. In the monastic mind, work is not for profit. In the monastic mentality, work is for giving, not just for gaining. In monastic spirituality, other people have a claim on what we do. Work is not a private enterprise. Work is not to enable me to get ahead; the purpose of work is to enable me to get more human and to make my world more just.

  The questions for contemporary society and the technological age are clear: Is non-work really an ideal? What should we be doing when we are not working? And, how is work in the monastic spirit different from work done out of other perspectives?

  There are two poles pulling at the modern concept of work. One pole is workaholism; the other pole is pseudocontemplation.

  The workaholic does not work to live. The workaholic lives to work. The motives are often confusing and sometimes even misleading. Some workaholics give their entire lives to work because they have learned in a pragmatic culture that what they do is the only value they have. Many workaholics don’t work for work’s sake at all; they work for money and more money and more money Other workaholics work simply to avoid having to do anything else in life. Work is the shield that protects them from having to make conversation or spend time at home or broaden their social skills. Sometimes, ironically enough, work becomes the shield that enables people to get out of other work. As a result, although the workaholic often makes a very good contribution to society, it is often only at the expense of their fuller, wiser selves.

  Pseudocontemplatives, on the other hand, see work as an obstacle to human development. They want to spend their hours lounging or drifting or gazing or “processing.” They work only to sustain themselves and even then as little as possible. Pseudocontemplatives say they are seeking God in mystery, but as a matter of fact they are actually missing the presence of God in the things that give meaning to life. The biggest shock of my early life in the community was to find out that novices were not permitted to go to chapel between the regular times for prayer. Were not permitted. Now what kind of a place was this? Here I was, set to get instant holiness and impress the novice mistress at the same time, but someone apparently had figured out both motives and moved to block the whole idea. In fact, they had something much better in mind for all of us. They wanted us to work. Why?

  Genesis is very clear on the subject. “Then God took Adam,” Scripture says, “and put him in the garden to cultivate and to care for it” (Gen 2:15). Adam was put in the garden to till it and to keep it, not to contemplate it; not to live off of it; not to lounge. Even in an ideal world, it seems, God expected us to participate in the co-creation of the world.

  The early Christians, including Paul, worked to sustain themselves. “You know that these hands of mine have served both my needs and those of my companions. I have always pointed out to you that it is by such hard work that you must help the weak” (Acts 20:34–35). And the Rule is equally clear: “When they live by the works of their hands, as our fathers and the apostles did before us, then are they really monks” (RB 48:8). The Desert Monastics, too, always worked. They braided baskets for sale to support themselves and to provide something of use to others, of course, but also to avoid what the ancients called acedia, a kind of lethargy that made the continued efforts of the spiritual life too much for the soul that was undisciplined and unexercised.

  None of the great religious figures withdrew from reality intent on rapture alone. The rapture came from making reality better. And work was the key to it all.

  Work is a Christian duty. Paul’s rule was “Those who would not work should not eat” (2 Thess. 3:6-12). And Benedict’s rule was “Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the monastic should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading…. Even the weak and delicate should be given some work or craft” (RB 48:24).

  Now those are crucial concepts. In one swift phrase, work and meditation are put on the same level in Benedict’s rule. Work is not a nuisance to be avoided. Work is a gift to be given. Clearly, holiness and work are not mutually exclusive ideas. Work, on the contrary, is a necessary part of holiness in Benedictine life.

  Surprisingly enough, in a document on the spiritual life, Benedict treats work first after prayer and at more length than lectio, the meditative reading of Scripture. There is to be no doubt about it: the monastic life is not an escape from responsibility nor is it membership in the local country club. The Benedictine is to be about tilling and keeping the garden of life in the most serious of ways.

  Western culture has not treated work kindly. We have a history of serfs who worked like slaves and sweatshops that robbed people of their human dignity and basic rights. We have lived in a capitalism that bred brutal competition and unequal distribution of goods as well as inventiveness and profit. We are watching the poor get poorer even while they are working. We see the rich get richer even when they don’t. A
nd we realize that the middle class must work harder every year just to stay where they were last year. What can possibly be good about all of that? That depends on the work we do and why we’re doing it.

  In Benedictine spirituality, work is what we do to continue what God wanted done. Work is co-creative. Keeping a home that is beautiful and ordered and nourishing and artistic is co-creative. Working in a machine shop that makes gears for tractors is co-creative. Working in an office that processes loan applications for people who are themselves trying to make life more humane is co-creative. Working on a science project, on the other hand, whose sole intent is to destroy life makes a mockery of creation. To say that science is blind, that science is objective, that science is neutral when what you make is napalm and the components of germ warfare and plutonium trigger-fingers is to raise ethical questions of overwhelming proportions. Here Benedictine spirituality confronts the casuistry and clever moral gyrations of this time with the sign of the accusing presence of Christ. Benedictine work is intent on building the Kingdom, not on destroying it.

  In Benedictine spirituality, work is purposeful and perfecting and valuable. It is not a time-filler or a moneymaker or a necessary evil. We work because the world is unfinished and it is ours to develop. We work with a vision in mind. After the person with a Benedictine soul has been there, the world ouglit to be a little closer to the way the Kingdom will look.

  Work is a commitment to God’s service. The parable of the unproductive fig tree is a dramatic one. The fruit tree that does not do what it can do and should do, Jesus curses. To have a gift that can nourish the community and to let it go to waste strikes at the very heart of community. I must be all that I can be or I can’t possibly be anything to anyone else God the creator goes on creating through us. Consequently, a life spent serving God must be a life spent giving to others what we have been given. To refuse to do for the other what we are more than capable of doing simply because we do not like to do it, is to deny the very reason for which we are who and what we are.

  The man who is a good cook but refuses to cook because “cooking is woman’s work” while his wife struggles to do the wash and take care of the children and keep the house clean and handle her own job at the same time is not serving God with the gifts he has been given. Young people who are too busy with their own agendas to help around the house but have no problem eating there are not serving God. The woman who won’t spend extra time on the office job or admit that she can transcribe as well as translate manuscripts when both services are sorely needed is not serving God with the gifts she has been given. People who won’t admit their talents for fear they’ll be asked to use them are not simply being selfish, they are refusing to serve God.

  Laziness and irresponsibility are forms of injustice and thievery. They take from the people of the earth. We were not put on earth to be cared for. We were put on earth to care for it.

  But that is hardly the message we get in a world intent on making the greatest amount of money with the least amount of effort. That is certainly not the message we get in a world where money talks. In a Benedictine community we are never permitted to link the money we earn with the things we need. We aren’t given the use of a car because we earn a salary large enough to support one. We are given the use of a car because we need it, for whatever, whether we earn a salary or not. Spending time with shut-ins, serving soup in soup kitchens, visiting our families, getting to our ministries are all exercises in gift giving that may or may not earn salaries. The point is that Benedictine spirituality demands we give what we have to give simply because it is needed and because we have it to give, not because it will fill our pockets. Work, in other words, is to be done for its own sake, not because we feel like it or because doing it will necessarily enable us to garner some profit for ourselves. No, work is a great deal more important than that.

  Work develops the worker. The fact of the matter is that work is the one exercise in gift giving that always comes back to the giver. The more I work at anything the better I get at it. And the better I get at something, the better I feel about myself. It is the fear of being good for nothing that destroys people, but skill in anything develops only with practice and practice and practice. Everyone knows the difference between a good teacher and a poor teacher, a good manager and a poor manager, a good telephone operator and a poor operator, a good porter and a poor one, a good gardener and a poor one. And they all got that way by working, with concentration, with commitment and, often, with long hours. With the transformation of the forty-eight-hour week into the forty-hour week and now the slow but clear move to the thirty-hour-week or part-time employment, the whole notion of work for pay will have to change. Some work will be done to live, of course, but some work will have to begin to be done simply because work has something to do with being alive and being left with a garden to “till and keep.”

  In the Benedictine tradition, labor is dignified and so are the laborers. In a society where work was a sign of lower status in society, where nobles never expected to work a day in their lives, where slavery was considered a natural state in life, everyone worked in Benedict’s community “The members should serve one another,” the Rule mandates. “Consequently, no one will be excused from kitchen service unless they are sick or engaged in some important business of the monastery, for such service increases reward and fosters love” (RB 35). Humility is something to be demonstrated, not talked about. Service is its own reward. Love comes from loving. Ironically, it is what I have cared for that I grow to care about. Work and community, it seems, are inextricably linked. People who tell you they love you but never do a thing for you, people who say they value the family but never join the family in any project, people who say they care about the planet but never do a thing to make the planet a more human place to live, fail to see that life is an exercise in co-creation. And that requires work.

  Work is essential, then, both to community development and to justice. But the justice works both ways. Benedictine spirituality not only requires that the worker do justice to the community, but that the community do justice to the worker. Give them the help they need, the Rule says (RB 53). Give them enough to eat (RB 39). Let them get enough sleep (RB 8). Listen if they say the job is too hard for them (RB 48).

  The life questions with which the Rule of Benedict confronts our age become, consequently: What do I expect of the people who work for me? Can they live decently on what I pay them? Do I allow them a life of their own? What are my real expectations of them—a forty-hour-week or response to my nod and call? Are they people in my life or only pieces of another kind of machinery? Do I even know the names of the typists in the pool? It is so easy to become elitist, even in a classless society. All we have to do is to make people invisible. But Benedictine spirituality simply defies that kind of life. We’re told to honor one another, whoever they are.

  Work makes time worthwhile. There is a romantic notion that monastics spend time gazing into space. Well, not with my novice mistress you didn’t. She understood best the admonition of the Rule, “Work while you have the light of day” (RB 41:8), and she strained to teach it to us, for our sakes and for the sake of the world around us. Sloth, she taught us, was not a monastic virtue.

  Time, we learned through regularity and responsibility, is the treasure that cannot be recovered and must not be taken for granted. Time is all we have to make our lives bright-colored, warm, and rich. Time spent on an artificial high is time doomed to failure. Time spent amassing what I cannot possibly use and which will not change my measure of myself even if I do use it, is time wasted. Time spent in gray, dry aimlessness is a prison of the thickest walls. But good work that leaves the world softer and fuller and better than ever before is the stuff of which human satisfaction and spiritual value are made. There will come a moment in life when we will have to ask ourselves what we spent our lives on and how life in general was better as a result of it. On that day we will know the sanctifying value of work.

&nb
sp; Work has been one thing that our culture has done best. Every American child is encouraged to get a paying job from the age of six. We have been trained to be responsible and productive. As a result, the Western world fast became the industrial center of the world where a few people could out-farm, out-produce, and out-organize every other area of the world. But we have some serious by-products of the Puritan notion that hard work is a claim on God’s blessings and a sign of God’s favor as well. Success and efficiency and opportunity and elitism and alienation have marked us too. The drive for success at work, instead of success in life, continues to make people ill and to destroy marriages and to increase the level of personal dissatisfaction.

  Efficiency has become a god that will accept the sacrifice of people for the sake of the production line. The days of hand-carved chairs from an artist’s hands have given way to plastic molds for the sake of profit though it’s clear that we need beauty and community in this world today more than we need one more product of anything. We need to learn that there are some things worth doing in life that are worth doing poorly, if doing them perfectly means we will have destroyed people for the sake of producing the product. Do we need paper clips in this world? Absolutely. Do we need to make them faster and distribute them more broadly than anyone else in the world in order to make more money than anyone else in the paper clip business? Not if it means that we must drive the workers who make them beyond their endurance and ourselves beyond the humane to do it.

  Opportunity has made dilettantes of us all. We run through the candy store of life always looking for the better job and the better pay and the better office. Nothing is ever good enough in the quest for success. Instead of settling down, we work constantly with one eye on the next office, the next opening, the next promotion. Instead of being who we are where we are, we are always on our way to somewhere else in this culture. So making friends with the neighbors is not a high priority. After all, we won’t be here long. Keeping the word that sold the product is of little consequence. We won’t be here when the customer complains. Developing a conscience about what we do and how we do it is hardly important. By the time it fails or is uncovered we will have been long gone. And our family lives and human development will have been long gone with it.