Radical Grace
Oct-Dec 2007

THE SPIRITUALITY OF WORK
By Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB

     Once upon a time some disciples asked their rabbi, “In the Book of Elijah we read: Everyone in Israel is duty bound to say, ‘When will my work approach the works of my ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?’ But how are we to understand this? How could we in our time ever think that we could do what they could do?” And the rabbi explained: “Just as our ancestors invented new ways of serving—each a new service according to their own character—so each one of us in our own way must devise something new and of service to others and do what has not yet been done."

            It's a lovely story. It takes the burden of false success off our shoulders. It faces us instead with the task of personal responsibility. We are not asked to do more than we can. We are simply asked to do something in our own time that has value. We are asked to profit the world by our existence. We are allowed to be unique; we are not allowed to be useless.
The story of co-creation is the autobiography of every human life, both yours and mine. Responsibility for the world starts here, with you, with me. Life is not about traveling through. Life is about doing something that lasts beyond us, something that will eventually, at least, bring the world one step closer to completion. Life requires that we do more than philosophize about what the world lacks. We must do something of ourselves to provide it. Otherwise, why were we born?

"Work," the Persian poet Gilbran writes, "is love made visible." The meaning is clear: We do not work for ourselves. We work so that others may not want. We work for the gain for the next generation. Work involves us in the exercise of world-building, of co-creation. And, we must each of us, in each age, work in new ways to achieve it.

The Book of Ecclesiastes puts it squarely. "There is a time to gain," it says. There is a time to make a difference. There is a time to develop the best in ourselves so that we can make the best possible world for everyone else as well.
The truth is that the most telling indicator of the spiritual deterioration of the Western world may well be in its modern disregard for work. People work for money now, not for the sake of the work itself. People work so that they can do something other than work as soon as possible.

People work to be employed, not for the sake of creative expression. People work in segmented tasks that have no meaning to them. And so, ironically enough, we have separated work and life. Work is something we do because we have to do it, not something that we want to do because it is in itself fulfilling, meaningful, and important to the world around us.

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