Showing up…
and ‘checking in’ for a good beginning
<to check in> to record one’s presence or arrival.
Dear Friends,
Years ago (and perhaps in some places still) workers physically punched their cards into a clock machine to register the time they arrived at work. Even if many of us don’t do this anymore, we may be required to start work at a particular time: to take over a particular shift; to throw open the doors to the public; or to answer the first phone call or email at the beginning of official opening hours. We may need to check in with our supervisor or pick up our instructions for the day.
In some monasteries today, monks check-in at a time they call ‘Prime’ to receive directions about the work they will do that day:
Prime is the hour when work duties are given out. The focus is on a proper beginning.…At Prime, the giving out of the work includes both blessing the work and distributing it.
—David Steindl-Rast & Sharon Lebell1
Whatever our context, many of us launch ourselves into our work as soon as we arrive, barely stopping to collect our thoughts or to consciously situate our work within the deeper context of our lives.
Yet this threshold moment, right before we begin, is indeed ‘prime’ time. It has the potential to help us focus on ‘a proper beginning’ so that our work might become a blessing for ourselves and for others.
GOING BACK TO THE VERY BEGINNING
The ancient biblical stories of the creation of the world offer us tantalising glimpses of how work may be understood at its most blessed.
In the first creation story, God is Creator, Maker, Worker and Author who forms the heavens and earth through successive words of power that separate the different physical elements from one another—elements that were previously undifferentiated, formless and empty.2
These Divine word-acts make the world and its creatures. Gordon J. Spykman in a wonderfully human understanding of this Divine work says of this story:
Having bent low for days putting the finishing touches on [God’s] masterpiece, God now leans back, as it were, to survey [the] handiwork and to revel in it with a deep sense of divine satisfaction.
—Gordon J. Spykman3
The second creation story that includes the forming of the human ‘earthling’4 also reflects this understanding of the nature of work. The first human is given the gift of a home: a beautiful garden orchard with trees laden with fruit. With this divine gift comes a human commitment: the garden must be cared for. The gift of the garden-home and the “tilling and keeping it” go hand in hand.5
If we enter into this sacred understanding of the origins of work, our own work becomes a creative participation in, and commitment to, God’s own good creation. We co-operate fruitfully together to help create a world-home that is good, delightful, and a blessing for ourselves and others. The work may be hard and tiring, but it carries a sense of delight because the verdict of ‘good’ accompanies it. Work, understood and practiced in this way is a blessing.
BUT WHAT ABOUT WORK AS CURSE?
Most of us know how the mythic story of Adam and Eve unfolds: the couple are turfed out of paradise because they eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge (of good and evil). Adam is told that for his disobedience the ground itself is cursed because of him. It will now produce thorns and thistles, and for the rest of his life he will labour hard to put food on the table.6
How are we to understand this story about a land-curse linked to the hardship of work? One interpretation is that work is a form of punishment handed down through the generations. It is now a form of ‘hard labour’ - a bitter necessity that will end only when our life on earth ends.
But here’s another interpretation: rather than a form of perpetual punishment, the curse can be understood as an attempt to describe, through sacred story, how life is often actually experienced in a world where things have gone awry. The curse is not intended to declare how life now should be; it is a way of explaining how things so often are.7 Human destructiveness, exploitation and self-will are not neatly self-contained but spill out into the whole of creation so that we all experience a mixed reality of both blessing and curse, creativity and destructiveness, gift and exploitation. Our experience of this mixed reality is what it means to be born into our precious but broken world.8
What story about work do you live within (consciously or unconsciously)?
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: Checking in
Just before you begin your work for the day (or night), ‘prime’ yourself for the work ahead of you by taking a breath and pausing.
Take a moment to remember what brought you to the work you currently do. Did you have a large vision; an audacious hope; gifts that you wanted to express; a curiosity that wouldn’t go away; a sense of call?
Did you bring more practical reasons to the table - the need to pay your way; to support your family; to gain experience for another form of work down the track?
Maybe there were a whole mixture of motivations.
Remind yourself of the reasons that have brought you to your work. Retrieve the energy that lies within this remembering.
Now sense your way into how you feel about the particular tasks that lie before you in the hours ahead. Acknowledge any doubts, anxieties, desires or excited expectations that you may have. (Don’t overthink this: just get your sensed feelings of what lies ahead.)
In this space of both remembering and acknowledging, hold the strange and chaotic mix of intentions, hopes and commitments that brought you to your work in the first place, with all that you currently sense and feel about the hours ahead of you. No need for words - just sense that whole mixed texture of it all;
and invite a blessing upon all that is resolved and unresolved in your heart.
If it feels right, conclude with a short prayer for guidance for the hours ahead.
The focus is on a proper beginning.…At Prime, the giving out of the work includes both blessing the work and distributing it.—We pray that God may guide our actions. When we do our work in this way, then everything becomes prayer.
—David Steindl-Rast & Sharon Lebell9
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
Each day, just before you throw yourself into your work, take a few moments to practice ‘checking in’. It will take no more time than it does to get your cup of coffee, or ride the elevator to your office, or walk from one part of your house to your desk.
At the end of the week look back. Did you remember to check in or did you forget? (New habits take a while to establish.)
If you did explore this practice, what was this like for you?
How did your work hours then unfold?
David Steindle-Rast with Sharon Lebell, Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through the Hours of the Day (Berkeley, SA: Ulysses Press, 2002) 46.
Genesis 1 - 31; 2:1- 4.
Gordon J. Spykman, Reformation Theology: A New Paradigm For Doing Dogmatics (Michigan:Eerdmans Publishing Co.,1992) 192.
‘Adam’ comes from the Hebrew word for earth.
Genesis 3:8.
Genesis 4: 17-19.
In the Genesis story the counterpart of the man’s toil is the painful labour of women giving birth: perhaps suggesting that the hardships experienced in women’s traditional (work) roles were also not part of the divine intention!
Of course, struggle, disappointment and hardship are not always experienced as curse. Many artists and craftspeople speak of the mixed delight, struggle and anxiety that accompanies their creative work, particularly as they seek to make a living from their creative endeavours. People who willingly undertake very difficult forms of paid employment also speak in this way. However, many workers have little or no choice about the work they carry out. They take whatever is on offer in order to survive and support their families. And yet this too can be good work, and may be accompanied by moments of joy in the midst of considerable hardship.
See footnote 1.