Epiphany at a fast food place - finding meaning in all teacher work
Epiphany. An appearance of something other worldly or divine. It happened to me one dreary November night at a fast food place.
It had been a long day of work, but I had an evening graduate class, and afterwards a meeting. I stopped somewhere for a bite to eat, glad the day was over. But it was not, for there was a surprise lurking between the pages of “Portland,” the award winning University of Portland alumni magazine I had pulled out and started to make greasy as I ate and read.
The magazine had reprinted excerpts of the article “In the Abbey” by Brother Todd Koesel, a Trappist monk who wrote about the men of Our Lady of Guadalupe Cistercian Abbey in Oregon’s wine valley, and their labors as book binders for universities, libraries, authors.
For over 50 years books arrived which the abbey monks checked, collated, cleaned, marked, measured, trimmed, notched, glued, flannelled, stacked, dried, and covered books. Two million times, and counting.
Koesel wrote of the monks who had done this work, some for over 40 years. Like Brother Albert, who stamped cloth bindings, and loved to make checkout girls in the stores laugh. And Father Francis, Yale swim team of 1949, leader of the bindery and abbey nurse. Brother Cris speaks Hebrew and Greek, builds websites and plays the guitar. He discovers that the hot glue they use in the bindery is called Wisdom. Father Martinus speaks eight languages and is the resident inventor.
“Today I am looking around at all of men and think about love and how hard it is and the burden that we each bring to that table and why why why do our heart strings get so caught up in this and that it’s all going to be ashes someday anyway…,” wrote Koesel.
That evening, Koesel’s lament – that this is all going to be ashes someday – was also my lament. Weary, cold and hungry, I was vulnerable to doubts about the meaning and value of my work. Teaching can be marked by meaning and joy and reward. But parts of it is also mundane, prosaic, fleeting, mechanical. Why do I have to collate and staple so many Xeroxed worksheets and check so many tests? Why do I have to write lesson plans that are clear in my head already? Why have I not had time to read a real book this year? Why is my pay what it is when I help a child learn every day? Work, work, work. What am I working for?
In the past I had found comfort in Eugene Peterson’s book “Leap Over a Wall,” where he devotes a chapter on work. He explains how work, all work, is an extension of the sovereign work of God, who expresses his sovereignty as a worker. He calls this kingwork. When King David erupted in exultation over the uniqueness of man, he wrote in Psalm 8: “Tho has made him a little less than God..thou has given him dominion over the works of thy hands. “
We work because God works, and our work can be an extension of the sovereign work of God if we allow it to be. But Peterson differentiates between getting the right job or career from doing kingwork in whatever we do. For example, David was anointed king of Israel and at the same time served King Saul. “For David, serving itself was ruling. The servant was simultaneously king. David in Saul’s court was a king serving a king…All true work combines two elements of serving and ruling. Ruling is what we do; serving is the way we do it. There’s true sovereignty in all good work. There’s no way to exercise it rightly other than by serving,” Peterson wrote. It is not what I am doing, but the serving that goes with what I do, that makes mine the work of kings.
The monks found beauty and joy in the daily work of bindery. There is a rhythm, said Koesel, to the work in the bindery. A kind of music that seems to have been going on for years and years, Koesel wrote. Like them, I can find there is kingwork to be done in the repetitive and seemingly inane parts of my work. The kingwork is not in the work, but in the serving way it is done. Whether I am at that final point when a student learns, or in the humble task of correcting test papers, I can, like Koesel and the abbey monks, make kingwork happen. It is not the task, or the work, that makes work meaningful. It is that there is, as Koesel wrote, “one who stands near me in this and asks me to walk this line right now and to see Him in it and to understand at ever deepening levels that He is here that He is the one at work that we just have to show up and believe and hope and love and suffer and He will claim our hearts through all of it.”
He will claim our hearts through all of it. Those were the words of my epiphany.
Epiphany. An appearance of something other worldly or divine. It happened to me one dreary November night at a fast food place.
It had been a long day of work, but I had an evening graduate class, and afterwards a meeting. I stopped somewhere for a bite to eat, glad the day was over. But it was not, for there was a surprise lurking between the pages of “Portland,” the award winning University of Portland alumni magazine I had pulled out and started to make greasy as I ate and read.
The magazine had reprinted excerpts of the article “In the Abbey” by Brother Todd Koesel, a Trappist monk who wrote about the men of Our Lady of Guadalupe Cistercian Abbey in Oregon’s wine valley, and their labors as book binders for universities, libraries, authors.
For over 50 years books arrived which the abbey monks checked, collated, cleaned, marked, measured, trimmed, notched, glued, flannelled, stacked, dried, and covered books. Two million times, and counting.
Koesel wrote of the monks who had done this work, some for over 40 years. Like Brother Albert, who stamped cloth bindings, and loved to make checkout girls in the stores laugh. And Father Francis, Yale swim team of 1949, leader of the bindery and abbey nurse. Brother Cris speaks Hebrew and Greek, builds websites and plays the guitar. He discovers that the hot glue they use in the bindery is called Wisdom. Father Martinus speaks eight languages and is the resident inventor.
“Today I am looking around at all of men and think about love and how hard it is and the burden that we each bring to that table and why why why do our heart strings get so caught up in this and that it’s all going to be ashes someday anyway…,” wrote Koesel.
That evening, Koesel’s lament – that this is all going to be ashes someday – was also my lament. Weary, cold and hungry, I was vulnerable to doubts about the meaning and value of my work. Teaching can be marked by meaning and joy and reward. But parts of it is also mundane, prosaic, fleeting, mechanical. Why do I have to collate and staple so many Xeroxed worksheets and check so many tests? Why do I have to write lesson plans that are clear in my head already? Why have I not had time to read a real book this year? Why is my pay what it is when I help a child learn every day? Work, work, work. What am I working for?
In the past I had found comfort in Eugene Peterson’s book “Leap Over a Wall,” where he devotes a chapter on work. He explains how work, all work, is an extension of the sovereign work of God, who expresses his sovereignty as a worker. He calls this kingwork. When King David erupted in exultation over the uniqueness of man, he wrote in Psalm 8: “Tho has made him a little less than God..thou has given him dominion over the works of thy hands. “
We work because God works, and our work can be an extension of the sovereign work of God if we allow it to be. But Peterson differentiates between getting the right job or career from doing kingwork in whatever we do. For example, David was anointed king of Israel and at the same time served King Saul. “For David, serving itself was ruling. The servant was simultaneously king. David in Saul’s court was a king serving a king…All true work combines two elements of serving and ruling. Ruling is what we do; serving is the way we do it. There’s true sovereignty in all good work. There’s no way to exercise it rightly other than by serving,” Peterson wrote. It is not what I am doing, but the serving that goes with what I do, that makes mine the work of kings.
The monks found beauty and joy in the daily work of bindery. There is a rhythm, said Koesel, to the work in the bindery. A kind of music that seems to have been going on for years and years, Koesel wrote. Like them, I can find there is kingwork to be done in the repetitive and seemingly inane parts of my work. The kingwork is not in the work, but in the serving way it is done. Whether I am at that final point when a student learns, or in the humble task of correcting test papers, I can, like Koesel and the abbey monks, make kingwork happen. It is not the task, or the work, that makes work meaningful. It is that there is, as Koesel wrote, “one who stands near me in this and asks me to walk this line right now and to see Him in it and to understand at ever deepening levels that He is here that He is the one at work that we just have to show up and believe and hope and love and suffer and He will claim our hearts through all of it.”
He will claim our hearts through all of it. Those were the words of my epiphany.
Epiphany. An appearance of something other worldly or divine. It happened to me one dreary November night at a fast food place.
