Labor and Communion

When they say Don’t I know you?

say no.

 

When they invite you to the party

remember what parties are like

before answering.

 

Someone telling you in a loud voice

they once wrote a poem.

Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.

Then reply.

 

If they say We should get together

say why?

 

It’s not that you don’t love them anymore.

You’re trying to remember something

too important to forget.

 

Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.

Tell them you have a new project.

It will never be finished.

 

When someone recognizes you in a grocery

     store

nod briefly and become a cabbage.

When someone you haven’t seen in ten

years

 

appears at the door,

don’t start singing him all your new songs.

You will never catch up.

 

Walk around feeling like a leaf.

Know you could tumble any second.

Then decide what to do with your time.

I can, to a degree, agree with what I perceive as the point of this poem. The last stanza really sums it up. “Walk around feeling like a leaf/ Know you could tumble at any second/ Then decide what to do with your time.” Our time is short. Our resources are limited. When we decide to “catch up” with one friend, we are simultaneously deciding not to do some other thing. So we must choose wisely.

But, to me, this poem seems to further cement us into the idea that meaning is derived from productivity. It is hard work that pays the bills, after all, not gabbing with old friends and eating greasy meatballs at bad parties. I get the point. I really do. I don’t even really think it’s a pitfall or bad advice. But in my current state of mind, I can’t seem to shake this thought: Labor is a result of the curse; communion is God’s design.

Genesis 3:17 says this:

And He said to Adam, “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:

The ground is cursed because of you

You will eat from it by means of painful labor

all the days of your life

This race of productivity, of making a life for oneself, of making a living, is traced all the way back to the garden. Before this moment, man had walked in communion with God and with his spouse. He lived in community with the Creator and all His creation. There was a harmony among all that was living – plant and beast. And then man brings this curse upon himself by wishing to be his own god. And God in His grace doesn’t pour His duties on the man and show him how hopeless of a god he would really make. He doesn’t make the man feel the weight of spinning the cosmos and breathing constant life into all that is alive. He doesn’t make the man crumble under the realization that he cannot make it rain or make the sun shine. God is gracious. God says “I will still bring life. I will still cause the sun to shine and the rain to fall and the plants to grow. You just work at feeding yourself. You want to be god? See if you can handle even a fraction of the weight of your own life. I will still give you breath. Just try to feed yourself. Then you’ll know who God is, and you’ll know that you are not Him.” And so it was that man stopped walking in communion and started laboring for life. And that’s where we find ourselves today.

We set our sights on our future, and we work to get there. The future we have set our sights on may be good. It may even be God-ordained. We may be following the path God laid out for us. But we revel in the labor. We forget that the labor is the curse. It is the communion that brings life. For my job, I may have to shuffle paperwork and put in hours I don’t really enjoy, but the joy is in the people I get to sit across a table from and talk with, the stories I hear, the people I pray with. The labor is necessary, but the communion is the real prize.

I agree with the poem. I must choose wisely how I spend my time. But sometimes wisdom is choosing bad parties and catching up with old friends who may never really be caught up. I hope I choose communion. I hope finishing the project doesn’t outweigh living life with the people who make the project worth it. I hope labor doesn’t strip me of communion. After all, what good will my life have been if I have attained my goals, if I have gained the whole world, but in the meantime lost my soul?