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Work
Reverend Brian J. Kiely,
Unitarian Church of Edmonton, March 3, 2002
This may be the most subversive sermon I have ever preached. So
be warned:
Paying attention to what I am about to say could change your life
in ways that mess up your future plans and upset those around you.
Last Thursday, Karen Mills, Linda Stolee and I were having an impromptu
staff meeting... which is to say we were having tea together. We
drifted into talking about this service, mostly by accident.
About this time last year Karen quit her high powered, high pressured
and highly paid job at a market research firm, took several months
off and finally won a half time job as our Director of Religious
Education. She has since added some other work occasionally teaching
corporations how to write in simpler language.
Neither job pays a Queen's ransom. Said Karen, "I gave up a
whole lot of money for a whole lot of happiness."
It's a simple statement but it says so much about the changing attitude
towards work in our culture. And what was even more interesting was
the way Linda and I started nodding in agreement and understanding.
We had both made that decision as well. Linda used to teach in the
public schools until she reached the burn-out stage. Now she works
part-time as our Administrator and all around church mom. Half-time
work here allows her to give more time to her passion of quilting,
a fine example you see behind me here today. She crafts them and
teaches the art form through one of the local sewing centers. Not
a whole lot of money, but a whole lot of happiness.
My first career was as a photographer and journalist. After three
years on a newspaper, I took a good paying position at a mid-level
portrait studio. The window for creativity was very small, and
the boss was a man who would do anything, concoct any story,
play on any emotion to boost a sale. It was the kind of 'money is
everything'
environment that killed the soul. In the end I walked away to
go back to school and took a part-time job as an aide to disabled
men in an assisted living environment. In other words I chose
midnight
shifts with bedpans over a financially comfortable living taking
pictures.
Today all three of us work here in the church because this is the
kind of work we want to do. We have all traded a "whole lot
of money for a whole lot of happiness".
Most of us have or have had an occupation of one sort or another.
British mystery novelist Dorothy Sayers summed it up nicely 70 years
ago in a self-deprecating comment on her own choice of career, "A
human being must have an occupation if he or she is not to become
a nuisance to the world."
Of course there is truth in that.
We all have a responsibility to find something to both occupy our
time and to provide a living
for ourselves. Most get a job of some sort, and here I include
such unpaid professions as homemaking and parenting. In those
families where one income is sufficient, those unpaid roles can create
and
enhance the quality of life for the whole family.
But these days homemaking as a full-time career is available to
a smaller and smaller segment of people, although I have noticed
some couples where one or both partners take less than full-time
paying jobs so they can both do some of the work of the home.
And that's the point. These days our society seems to be backing
away from the, "You are what you do," concept. If you want
proof on how we are changing just look at the people trying to capitalize
on our shifting wants and needs: the television advertisers.
There was a new bank commercial airing during the Olympics. It
had four different vignettes designed to contrast the way the majority
used to think about financial goals with the way we do now. One
showed a black and white shot of a man in a suit taking jewels
out of a safe with the caption: The old treasure. The camera
then
cut to the same smiling man now in color dressed in casual clothes
cradling a grandchild captioned: The new treasure.
The messages conveyed in the ad were clear, where once we prized
things like big houses and other symbols of wealth, now we prize
freedom and happiness. Our new goals are built around relationships,
health and lifestyle.
But does that translate into the workplace? Not yet in most places.
I have an old friend who worked for 20 years as a trial lawyer. His
family lived a very comfortable lifestyle, and he openly admitted
feeling imprisoned by it. As he phrased it, he was wearing golden
handcuffs.
Well, there have been a lot of changes in his life in the last couple
of years. He has a new job in a human resource firm and seems much
happier. He wasn't able to throw it all away to follow the acting
work he loves... after all he does have responsibilities to his children...but
at least he no longer feels the walls closing in on him.
What's it going to be? Money or happiness?
Another example: the teacher's strike. True, the teachers are asking
for more money, and I have no concerns about that. I believe good
teachers deserve as much as we can afford to pay them. When they
are successful their work pays off in so many ways down the road
in both increased productivity and decreased costs to our social
service system. But the teachers have also been striking about work
place issues. They want smaller class sizes, not so they can slack
off, as has been portrayed by the premier, but so they can work more
effectively and avoid burn out.
These are people who love their careers. Most went into teaching
with a sense of high idealism. I believe this strike is as much about
preserving those ideals of helping students as it is about money
or time spent working.
I don't think it is unreasonable for new teachers to enter their
career hoping to pursue it for 25 or even 35 years. But most can't.The
workplace sucks many of them dry long before they get near the gold
watch of retirement.
I look around this congregation and I am amazed by the number of
members we have who left teaching early, several because of stress
related illnesses. If this was a mine and this many people were being
forced out by unhealthy working conditions, there would be a judicial
inquiry. Instead the government tries to imply teachers are lazy.
What I see, friends, is a group of people trying to do work they
love in a way that will allow them to keep doing it well for a long
time. I don't find that unreasonable.
The teachers are asking for what all people deserve: meaningful,
doable work. An unfulfilling job may keep bread on the table, but
at what cost? We are passionate creatures and we all have some measure
of creativity. We need work that sustains, not work that ennervates.
Of course there are people who choose jobs that are not taxing so
they can devote themselves to some other passion, be it family or
some other creative endeavour. They want work that is straightforward
and undemanding. That's fine. We need them, because frankly, there
are some very necessary jobs that will never be creative gems.
But a lot of other people want a degree of job satisfaction. German
author Jenny Heynrichs writes, "Work is creativity accompanied
by the comforting realization that one is bringing forth something
really good and necessary, with the conviction that a sudden, arbitrary
cessation would cause a sensitive void, produce a loss."
Artist and activist Ade Bethune decided that she had to change her
own approach to make work work: "I went back to being an amateur,
in the sense of somebody who loves what she is doing. If a professional
loses the love of work, routine sets in, and that's the death of
work and life."
It used to be that people looked to God for meaning in their lives.
Today we tend to look in other directions, towards family and towards
our work. We need more than a paycheque. We need a sense that we
are beings of worth. For many job satisfaction provides that reassurance,
that sense of purpose and meaning.
I recall a story I heard once. An job satisfaction researcher approached
a garbageman. The researcher felt a little foolish asking job satisfaction
questions of this man. After all, what could be more unpleasant
than collecting rotting garbage day after day. But the researcher
was surprised to find that the garbageman got a great deal of satisfaction
from his work.
"Hey, people depend on me. If it wasn't for me the city would
stink. There would be rats running around and people would be getting
sick. Without me, the whole city would come to a grinding halt. At
the end of the day, knowing that is pretty darn satisfying."
Work doesn't have to be sophisticated or even highly paid to be
satisfying. But it does have to be satisfying.
The poet Marge Piercey writes in "To Be of Use":
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek head of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
So what of you? Are you satisfied with your work? Does what you do,
whether it be paid or volunteer, give you some sense of accomplishment,
of contribution? At the end of the day, does it bring you peace
of mind?
If not, well to be blunt, what are you going to do about it? The
choice is yours. You can stay where you are, or you can begin to
make change. You can changes a job, a career, an activity. Or perhaps
you need to change yourself and your attitude towards work; find
ways to become an amateur again.
Finding the answer won't be easy for we all lead complicated lives.
I don't have your answer, but perhaps I can point you in some new
directions and towards some new resources. In the end the decision
about work, or any other aspect of your life belongs to you.
I'll leave the last word to longtime Washington Post Publisher Katherine
Graham, "To love what you do and feel that it matters - how
could anything be more fun?"
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