We continue our meditation on the sacredness of work and how we all, when we do good work, are midwives of grace and therefore priests in the fullest or archetypal sense of that word.
Our work can be a way of bringing a sense of the sacred back to what is too often a flat and violent or uncaring world, one that is often out of touch with its own specialness and sacredness.
The universe itself is busy, always busy, at doing its good work. It has been so for 13.8 billion years according to today’s science. We, our Earth and the creatures we share the Earth with, are recipients of this Great Work. Thomas Berry teaches that when a sense of the sacred has been lost, there is only one remedy: To rediscover the sacredness of the universe and our place in it.
In meditating on the sacredness of our work, I am responding to my dream years ago when I was told, “There is nothing wrong with the human species today except one thing: You have forgotten the sense of the sacred.”
Can we recover this sense of the sacred? Is our work—for which we apprentice, go to school, struggle for years to be adept at— an avenue to the sacred? Along with the universe in which we live, move, have our being and which has birthed us and brought us forth in this planet that has welcomed us with so much fervor, beauty and grace? So much to be amazed at?
In yesterday’s DM, I shared some teachings from Meister Eckhart about the holiness of our work. We need to invite the mystics to the table on such important subjects as work. Continuing meditating on his wisdom around work, he teaches that we should all be like Mary who gave birth to the incarnate Son of God. We do this when we birth good work. Commenting on how Mary conceived Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit, he says:“We should interpret the verse ‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee’ (Lk. 1.35) to mean: ‘The Holy Spirit shall come from within thee.’” 87
We are here to birth the Christ, the Buddha, the Image of God in our work and in our person with the aid of the Holy Spirit. And nothing less. That is how glorious our work is.
Eckhart speaks of our divine fruitfulness this way. It is good for a person to receive God into himself or herself and I call this receptivity the work of a virgin. But it is better when God becomes fruitful within a person. For becoming fruitful as a result of a gift is the only gratitude for the gift. I call such a person a wife.
In this sense the term ‘wife’ is the noblest term we can give the soul. It is far nobler than virgin. Every day such a person bears fruit a hundred times or a thousand times or countless times, giving birth and becoming fruitful out of the most noble foundation of all.*
Is it true that becoming fruitful as a result of a gift is the only gratitude for the gift? The way we say ‘Thank You’ for Life is to become fruitful with Life and we become eager to share it. It results in our vocation or calling to work.
Notice how immensely generative and fruitful Eckhart believes we can be, bearing fruit countless times a day. And how our work comes “from the most noble foundation of all.” From the depths of ourselves, from that manger where we and the divine link up. From the kingdom/queendom of God within.
*Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, pp. 87, 77.
Banner image: Raising children is holy work (and often undervalued). Photo by Shelby Murphy Figueroa on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Does your work come from a very deep place in you, one that can be called the “noblest foundation of all”? Can this gifting and thank you happen many times a day for you and for the rest of us? How wonderful is that! Do you recognize the Sacred operating in your work? And in others’ work?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time
Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
1 thought on “The Sacredness of Our Work, continued”
As the Buddhist teachings remind us, Right Livelihood in a requirement on the Noble Eightfold Path and some occupations cannot be called sacred. As I reflected on yesterday’s DM and its allegory of the three brick layers at St-Paul’s cathedral, it occurred to me that, whether they were aware of it or not, the three bricklayers were engaged in the construction of a cathedral. Before calling our work sacred, should we not question whether we are engaged in the construction of a cathedral? When countless social architects, scientists and prophets (the Christopher Wren of our times, Thomas Berry among them) have long recognized and documented the unsustainability of our relation to Mother Earth and of the Anthropocene, when our universities have become factories of bricklayers for an unsustainable Tower of Babel, calling most work sacred is more and more difficult. In chapter 14 of The Great Work, titled “Reinventing the Human,” Thomas Berry convincingly explains that our way into the future rests not only on the renewal of the bricklayer’s perception of his work, but on the renewal of the master plan of the building and of the bricklayer’s humanity itself.