“In dairy, granary, or in the fields, each worshipped God in his appointed task, and made his toil a sacramental thing….. The secret of the early Celts lay in this, that they linked sacrament with service, altar with hearth, worship with work.”
~F.M. McNeill/Troup, Celtic Daily Prayer:Prayers and Readings of the Northumbria Community
Once again the daily devotional I read in the morning gave me fuel for the day. As I read the words above, I imagined the lives of those who might see their work…..in the barn, in the field,in the kitchen….as sacrament. I imagined the farmer who felt the heat of the dairy cow’s body, its sweet, pungent odor wafting up toward his weathered face while milk pounds loudly in the pail.I imagined all those who worked in fields, planting, tending, harvesting to provide food for their own tables and the tables of others. How might the work be different for the worker if seen through the lens of sacrament…..an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
These days find few farmers using their own hands to do the work described above. Machines and technology carry out these once human tasks. And so it is for most of us. Our work is housed in keyboard and servers and machinations invisible to us. The daily movements of our work depend on things other than earth, water, wind and sun. While we know that the food that makes its way to our tables had its origin in these places, we are most often far removed from its landscape and its sacrament. Is it even possible to think of the work we now do as sacred, as holy? I wonder.
Perhaps it is not the work itself that is sacred but the way in which we do it. This reflection on the life’s work of the early Celts described an act of making prayer baskets. These baskets which no doubt were created to hold harvest and laundry and any number of ordinary things, were woven as people poured prayer into the push and pull of reed. As the single reeds began to be formed into something, not singular but multi-layered, a basket was formed of the prayers of the one who was weaving. Strand upon strand became a container for carrying all the while infused with the prayers of the one who created it. In many ways these baskets must have mirrored the very Creation itself. So many acts coming together held in hope and promise and prayer…..sacrament.
This illustration made me wonder: Is it possible to see the work we do as sacred? Is it possible to take the piece of paper or the cradled phone and hold it in a holy way? Is it possible to fill the ordinary, perhaps even monotonous movements of work, with prayer? Is it possible to make our ‘toil a sacramental thing’?
Certainly some work is easier to see the Holy in than others. Caring for a child, holding the newness of that life close to you, marveling at its possibility seems impossible to not see the holy there. The same could be said for those who care for the elderly and the dying. Offering a cool drink or a warm touch, a kind word or a gentle laugh seems an act of prayer, an extension of God in the moment. Many are beginning to dream of the seeds they will plant, the flowers, vegetables, fruits their toil will bring into the world. Oh, how we long for this sacred growing after such a winter!
But most of us make our days….which is our life….by work that is not so obviously sacred. Screens, printers, engines, dishwashers, vacuums, assembly lines, freeways, the full throttled living of our time can keep us removed from any notion of weaving prayer baskets. My sense is that those early Celts did what they did, created the sacramental life they had, out of choice. And so, in that spirit, can we.
How might this day be different if you thought of your work as holy, as sacred as going to the communion table? Each movement, each interaction, each spoken or written word, all an act of prayer. In this season of Lent, in this particular winter that will not go away, it seems a worthwhile thing to try.
