Two months ago I was asked to be part of a service celebrating the holiness of work. Most people assumed I would talk about my pastoral or chaplain work, but I wrote this about a dull, plodding job that I discovered had its own holiness. This is the five minute version I went with. I wrote a longer version to get the story out and may turn that later into a longer essay.
THE HOLINESS OF LIFT AND DROP
I used to work short-term jobs, most of them through
an agency. There was a plant in Mankato, LMH Quality Packaging, that put
together candy bags for local businesses. I rode my bike there one day and was
put on the assembly line, checking bag seals. But after a little bit I was
called into the foreman’s office and told, because I looked like someone who
didn’t mind harder work, I would be moved.
I was taken to a room
that was pretty big although there was only one table and one man in it. The
fellow was a little shorter than me and what he was doing was walking around
the table, which had sides about a foot tall, with a shovel. There were
different candies inside and he’d dig into them and then drop them again before
taking another shovelful. I was handed a similar shovel, a short-handled grain
shovel, and left in the room.
The guy, whose name was
Gary, told me what the work was without stopping or slowing down. What we were
doing was mixing candies for the assorted candy bags you get around Halloween
or party treats. About every hour someone else come along, take the table which
was on wheels, and bring in an empty one. Then a half dozen other people would
bring in about 20 10-pound bags of different candies—Sweet Tarts, Skittles,
Peanut Butter Cups, Tootsie Rolls, the kinds of candy were always different—and
dump them into the table. Our job, he explained, was to walk the length of the
table and then around, dipping the shovels into the candies, and then turning
the shovelful over. Every 10 minutes we’d change directions.
That was it. Not a very
hard job. But shortly after starting, I was bored and my arms ached, especially
my shoulders. My legs were sore from the walking and pivoting. My forearms ]
jolted each time I dug my shovel into the box and it connected with the bottom.
Sometimes the hard candies broke or the softer ones mushed and then I’d have to
reach in and dig them out. And I was bored. God, was I bored.
At our first break, Gary
gave me pointers. “Angle the shovel gently so you don’t hit the table bottom.
Let the momentum carry the shovel just above the pile and then let them slide
off to one side. Keep your legs bent at the knees and your legs won’t hurt as
much. Stay exactly opposite me and you won’t have to hurry or slow down, just
keep the same pace.” I did that and it was easier but no less boring. I hollered
over to him “How do you deal with being bored?”
He said, “Bored? I never
think about it. I just focus on one thing: the shovel lifting and dropping.
That’s it. Everything else just gets in the way.”
I was surprised, given my
experiences with Zen and meditation, I hadn’t caught onto it sooner. It was
kitchen work, simply the repetition of movements without haste or worry about
it’s being done. The job would never be done I realized, more tables with more
candy would come in, and it would always be done by the end of the day because
another two guys would take the shovels for second shift.
The rest of the week
passed by with aches of course, and some foot sores. I learned to wear sneakers
instead of boots, to ease the shovel because it didn’t matter how much I loaded
on the shovel, it would always be added to by Gary. And I drifted, letting my
mind wander away from monkey-mind, and let thoughts come, go, stay, whatever
they felt compelled to do.
The work was holy, by
which I mean there were people who enjoyed those candies and enjoyed the
variety available. Even if no one bought the bag and it ended up in the
landfill, the insects and mice would eventually eat the candy. It might not be
good for them nutritionally—it wasn’t good for you or me nutritionally—but it added
a little sweetness and pleasure to their lives, and I could hope for no more
than that.
