The Work

A week’s worth of perspectives on our collective labor (and Wordle-addiction)

Today’s essay got delightfully long. I turned it into 7 sections. Pick one a day if you’d like. Chew on it as you work. Let me know what you think.

1.

“Winter is good for the work.”

Years ago I sat in a room packed with other writers, listening to Dani Shapiro speak, all of us hanging on her words. She was effortlessly cool in her leather jacket and also a New York Times bestselling author, so we paid attention to everything she said.

I scribbled the sentence in my notebook, circled “good,” underlined “for the work.”

I don’t delight in winter. I loathe Minnesota’s arctic temperatures and long months shrouded in darkness. But Dani was talking about craft and commitment, describing how winter’s inward pull and slower rhythms could be good for creativity, that hibernating in colder months could lead to fruitful harvests.

I wrote down her words, convinced I could convict myself of another way.

Every winter that followed, I’d pull out her wisdom like woolen mittens: trust-worthy, necessary, tools for the time ahead. I started to see how the long nights cleared more space for deep work. How the chance to catch every sunrise let me witness resurrection each cold morning.

But even more than winter, Dani’s words transformed how I thought about The Work.

For the first time, I felt myself pulled into a profession. A widening circle of writers who were collaborating on something bigger than our pet projects, all of us part of the great human creative endeavor called Art.

My words could matter for The Work? My small scratches might mean something bigger? My ideas or inspiration could be offered with others, for the common good?

I wanted to be part of The Work.

(A holy labor.)

2.

From Dorothy L. Sayers, “Why Work?” (1942)

“In nothing has the Church so lost Her hold on reality as in Her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the world’s intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at least, uninterested in religion.

But is it astonishing? How can any one remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. [...]

Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meet they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meet for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.

The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which She means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done.

This brings me to my third proposition; and this may sound to you the most revolutionary of all. It is this: the worker’s first duty is to serve the work.”

3.

We don’t talk about parenting as The Work. 

Or caregiving. Or childcare. Or eldercare.

Ironically, this relational labor of utmost importance—whether done by family or paid professionals—is individualized. No wonder so many feel isolated, estranged, buried under the weight of their daily work.

It was always meant to be communal. For centuries it was. In some cultures it still is.

What difference would it make if we reframed as The Work?

4.

The word “liturgy” is often translated as “the work of the people.” 

Theologians debate this translation of leitourgia, but the reason it resonates is clear: we want to believe that our rituals of gathering, celebrating, lamenting, or thanksgiving are not private domain but public offerings of our deepest humanity. 

Here is who we are, before our God.

5.

Look at the phenomenon of Wordle—not just the buzz of the daily word puzzle, but the delight of sharing results on social media. It wouldn’t be the same if we weren’t all trying to figure out the same word each day. 

Look at the collective obsession with the Encanto soundtrack and the infinite TikToks churning out by adults who can’t stop singing. It’s delightful (and maddening) to know how many of us have the earworms burrowed in our brains.

We need ritual. We need liturgy. We need community. We need collective effervescence.

We need The Work.

6.

Whenever my formation leader in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd talked about thorny questions presented by ecumenism—how to talk to children in an atrium about baptism who aren’t Christian, for example—she would end her explanation with a deep breath and a simple prayer:

One flock, one shepherd.

The hope that one day, we might all be one, as Christ himself prayed.

Catechists often talk about this Montessori-based method of faith formation as “the work.” 

As the work continues to spread.

As we contribute to the work. 

As the work develops and deepens.

Every time I hear it, I feel that heart-swell in both chambers: the yearning to be part of the collective and the gratitude to find myself within it.

7.

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each.

For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

(1 Corinthians 3:5-9)

Peace,

Laura

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