Reading can be a tricky thing, because all we have is ourselves. What I mean by that is we can only understand so much, our us-ness limits so much. That’s what makes great writing so great, it pushes or pulls us out of our us-ness into the perspective of someone else. The worst thing you can do as a literate person is isolate your reading to those things, only those things, that are identical to your own perspective. Being human is best when it’s rich and complex, a diamond with many facets. Otherwise we remain coal. Solid, yes, but solidly dull, in need of a few million years worth of pressure.

That is my prologue to this. Everything I write is my perspective. I hope it’s enough of a different perspective to be interesting and maybe even to help shave a dull edge for you every now and then. I’m not sure if I get better by describing that perspective better, or by allowing it to be changed into a perspective that merits writing about.

All this background could preface any discussion, but I wanted to get it out there sometime, so have it.

As a male, 30, agriculturally and religiously raised and trained, I’d like to talk a little bit about work. These are not statements about all work for all people, but I think there are some themes that are pretty common. I am a thinker. I enjoy concepts and words. As a teenager, it was thought and basic philosophy and communication. Early 20′s, ministerial and theological, mixed with ancient languages. Marketing and advertising ideas and concepts followed, briefly. In the last few years, I’ve become more interested in numbers, primarily in the economic sense. Business, stocks, trading, profit, loss. I am someone who is comfortable in his own head more than anywhere else. It’s hard to make a living that way, even though most of you do it, and I admire/envy you who do. Daydreaming, lost in thought, scatterbrained, I always found myself working with my hands, usually outside. I live mentally, but I move physically, constantly. I don’t know if I’m ready to say I’m better at hands-on work, just not as good as I wish at mind-on work. Those who are good at hands-on work are able to focus. They’re the ones I work for eventually. They are the ones who wonder at me as my mind wanders, and I miss a step, a cut, a leak, a part. So why do I keep doing this kind of work? Because it’s what I need to do. Since I left for college I have been seeking to get away from labor. I hesitate to call it work-work, even though that’s how I think of it. For me there’s work, like what everybody does, mostly office-based, and there’s work-work, what my grandfathers did/do. Fields, tools, bruises, scars, sweat. Sweat’s the deal, really. At least to me. I have made mental mistakes that made me sweat, and it’s like an evolutionary echo, to the time my not-too-distant ancestors sweat all day just to survive. Sweating in a suit feels wrong to me. Like my body is mocking the man who builds fence or repairs tractors, I am in my coat of many colors and/or long sleeves, my heart under the stress normally reserved for lifting or pulling or breaking.

I am satisfied on a random day of hard physical labor, more so than on any day of mind work I can recall. For many people that’s not the case, so I hope I’ve been clear enough about this being more a personal reflection than an ideological diatribe.

I find value and worth in completed work, muscle work. My guess as to why that is is that physical work allows for mental work as well. I can operate a saw or a shovel and still think about my family, or the economy or a song lyric, or in the rare case I hear a sermon that Sunday that I’m not hyper-critical of, some good practical theology. I can’t get lost in that thought, especially in the case of the saw, but I can process and reflect. One of those modes of reflection is prayer. “To the glory of God,” I might think with especially repetitive and unchallenging tasks. What does that mean? Probably a lot of things, but at the least it centers me, connects me to the One I believe to be the foundation, center, and completion of all things, including work. The Genesis creation accounts give a picture of a God who is hands-on. I find a connection to God when I am dividing and defining, molding and viewing. I feel sure that the times I can think on these things are the times I am most satisfied with my work, because this is the universal experience we have the chance to share. I have a lot of uncertainty about jobs and careers and calling, but I am absolutely certain of this: Your work (job or not) is just like mine in that it has room for God, because whether we open our eyes to it or not, God is already there.