The Simple Gift

Hard work and I have a long-standing relationship, a relationship that I enjoy.  I usually have several projects going at once in both my professional and personal life.  I get up early and start right in, my days a mix of the critical and the trivial. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. I freely admit that not all my tasks, whether self- assigned or imposed on me by others, are exciting, creative, or even necessary. Many of them are repetitive and many I label as menial.  In these past two weeks of home-bound life, those tasks loom large. The mundane chores of washing dishes, sweeping the kitchen, pulling weeds, washing dishes, folding laundry… and did I mention washing dishes?  I cannot avoid this daily work by driving off to a meeting.  I cannot leave the chores behind as I venture off on a long-planned trip or enjoy an impromptu get-together at a local restaurant. Well, once a workaholic, always a workaholic, and I settle into my comfort zone. I’ve started cleaning out drawers and desks and closets. Today I decided to put off a long-neglected task: reorganizing the spice cabinet.  This sudden obsession with order is getting a little scary.  Maybe not as scary as the rows of lined-up cans from that kitchen scene in Sleeping with the Enemy, but still…

As I reach into the back shelf and begin to pull out the assortment of bottles, jars and seasoning packets, my hand closes around a jar of dried thyme.  My memory jogs to another container and another time: a tin of thyme I purchased several years ago during a summer visit to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village near New Gloucester, Maine.   One sunny afternoon I walked around this beautiful farm, touring the Meeting House and the Museum, visiting the kitchens and picking up that little tin of dried herbs from the farm store. This idyllic place is a remnant of what was once a vital, energetic and industrious religious sect whose members spread across the Eastern United States over 150 years ago.  A foundational tenet of the Shaker religion is the value of work, work, and then, more work. Aaah! My kind of people! To Shakers, there was no difference between work and worship. Their lives hummed with a seamless rhythm: prayers, work, meals, work, sleep, work… Sundays were reserved for their unusual form of worship and the ecstatic dancing from which their Shaker name is derived. Their founder, Mother Anne Lee, taught that labor was a gift from God, and in turn, our labor was our gift to God.  There were neither meaningless tasks nor menial ones. All work was important; all work was an offering; all work was a means to connect with Spirit. Hands to work and hearts to God.

The long-ago Shakers’ firm beliefs in the worship of everyday work produced their distinctive lines of enduring furniture, simple utilitarian crafts and innovative inventions. To enter a Shaker community was to commit completely to a life of celibacy and communal living (Maybe not totally my kind of people!) Year after year, their work continued, even as the believers dwindled down to a faithful few. At Sabbathday Lake, a handful of Shakers still live and work with industry and devotion.  Their worship services are now attended mainly by tourists who along with dedicated volunteers, help to sustain the Shaker community.  It is easy to brush the Shakers off as a curiosity from another time.  Yet their lessons of perseverance and the value of simple, hands-on work remain.

In this bewildering time, we are grasping at solutions to stem the tide of disease and to fortify the vitality and endurance of our society.  Reported numbers of those affected are staggering, yet we also hear optimistic stories about companies re-tooling to produce medical supplies and equipment. Scientists work around the clock to develop treatments and vaccines. This work is complex and exacting, and most of us will have no direct hand in it. Even though medical solutions and breakthroughs are likely months away, we are not powerless. Right now we have only a few very simple tools available, but simple does not mean unimportant.  In a world where we don’t know what is going to work, what might work, what we hope or dream could work, we have the gifts of three simple things that will help, the Simplest of Gifts in the Toughest of Times:  

Soap and water

Social distance

Shelter in place

While these practices aren’t 100% reliable, they are the best things that we have right now. Amazingly, we all have the chance to use our everyday lives to save our lives- and we are doing it.  Millions of people are carefully washing their hands with soap and water.  Millions of people are doing the hard, sacrificial work of staying home, away from their jobs and their social lives, separated from their families. Parents are transforming themselves into essential educators.  Thousands are bending over sewing machines that are now life-saving machines, producing masks that will provide barriers to infection.  Despite stress and financial hardships, we work and we persevere. All of this work binds us together. All of this work is a conduit of Strength and Spirit. Hands to work and Hearts to God.  Simple wisdom, clear advice.  Mundane, perhaps.  Repetitive, often. Menial, never.   

The ministry of the mundane and the mercy of the menial are gifts to receive and to give during this time of extended home-living.  I am humbled and suddenly any lingering, petty irritation melts away. Who is to say what work is valuable and what of little consequence, after all?  All honest work is a way to keep our hands occupied while our souls can soar.  I search for my inner Shaker and honor the work of my hands.  For in the work, is the worship and in the work is the way forward to hope. The centuries-old words of poet John Milton ring true today:  They also serve who only stand and wait.¹   We stand. We wait.  We work. We serve.

I have no specialized training to fight this contagion, but each day that I wash hands, distance myself, and stay home I am easing the burden for those who do. I renew my commitment to do the hard work before me, for hard work has often been my solace and my friend. The self-appointed, once-designated menial task of organizing spices takes on more importance if I use the time and effort as a heart-felt offering and a work-infused prayer. Just for good measure, I head over to the sink and wash my hands with soap and water for 20 seconds before tackling those cabinet shelves once again. I place that little jar of thyme precisely between the tarragon and the turmeric (Hmmm…).  And as I work at this ordinary little job, I sing the simple Shaker dancing song:  Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free, tis the gift to come down where we ought to be²…   I am here, right here, where I ought to be.

¹ From the Poem When I Consider How my Light is Spent by John Milton.

² Simple Gifts, (1848) A hymn by John Brackett

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord… Colossians 3:23.

Photo Credit and for more information visit:  www.maineshakers.com

Reflection Question:

Please use the comment section to share a story about the simple work of your hands that is making a difference .