Love’s Labor’s Lost?

A Sermon for Labor Day Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
September 3, 2007 • Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

The alarm goes off—way, way, way, too early: 4:30 AM. “I hate my job,” she thinks. And then she’s surprised to hear herself say: “God, I think I hate my life.” No time to think about it…a quick shower, orange juice and toast snarfed down for breakfast. Gotta punch in at 5:30 AM. Breakfast shift at Gourmeli’s Restaurant in the Marriott Hotel in Copley Square. “I’m gonna spend my precious morning serving others—serving fresh squeezed orange juice and scrambled eggs to businessmen and women.” She thinks, “That’s what I do, serve, grovel for the tip. I’m just a waitress. Hey, it’s a job, it’s a job.”

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Another morning. Another waitress. This waitress is named Dolores Dante, forever immortalized in Studs Terkel’s classic book, Working. When her alarm rings in the early morning, this is what is on her mind: “I have to be a waitress,” she says. “How else can I learn about people? How else does the world come to me. I can’t go to everyone. So they have to come to me.” “Everyone wants to eat, everyone has a hunger. And I serve them. If they’ve had a bad day, I nurse them, cajole them. Maybe with coffee I give them a little philosophy. They have cocktails, I give them political science. I give service, I don’t feel lowly at all. I . . . feel sure.” (Working, p. 294-298)

Dolores Dante—her job is being a waitress, but her ministry is healing, healing the world. She says it so clearly, “Everyone has a hunger. And I serve them.” She sees the hunger. The hunger that is so deep, the hunger that cannot be satisfied food alone. They come into her diner thinking they need a meal. What they need is to be touched by her kindness.

Marianne Williamson, noted author and lecturer, says: “Our power doesn’t lie in our resume or our connections. Our power doesn’t lie in what we’ve done or even in what we’re doing. Our power lies in our clarity about why we’re on the earth.”

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The alarm goes off—way, way, way, too early: 5:30 AM. “I hate my job,” she thinks. And then she’s surprised to hear herself say, “God, I think I hate my life.” No time to think about it. A quick shower, just enough time for this businesswoman to run downstairs and be served fresh squeezed orange juice and scrambled eggs in Gourmeli’s, the restaurant in the Marriott Hotel in Copley Square. Forty-five minutes later, in front of her clients, the business woman herself begins serving—serving fresh facts and unscrambled statistics in the pursuit of something she lost sight of long ago. “That’s what I do,” she says, “Selling to others, groveling for the sale. I’m just a hustler. Hey, it’s a job, it’s a job.”

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Yet another morning. Yet another businesswoman. Her story hasn’t been recorded in any book by Studs Terkel. But it is remembered in the heart of someone she touched. It is remember by me.

Beth Hardin is a sharp, strong businesswoman. Her southern accent and her southern openness and her amazing southern soaked rum cake are refreshing in the sometimes stuffy halls of Harvard Business School. After earning her MBA, she could have gone on to any number of big companies; she is that sharp and skilled. But she chooses to stay on at the Business School. She is recruited to become Director of the Office of Student Career Services, helping freshly minted young executives in their first post-MBA corporate job searches.

During the busy recruiting season, Beth Hardin hires a recent college graduate to help manage the workload in the office. The tasks are grunt work: typing, phone answering, faxing, and managing the sometimes unruly and long line of anxious MBAs waiting to sign up for interviews or get resume advice. The temp, the young man, is hired through a temp agency, and the pay is hourly, with no benefits or sick pay. You show up, you get paid. You don’t show up, you don’t get paid. “Hey, it’s a job, it’s a job.”

After a few weeks of working at the Business School, this office temp is felled with the nasty flu bug that is racing through campus. After two weeks in bed, he returns to work at the office. The next day, Beth Hardin notices the usually energized and industrious temp seems distracted and unfocused. She sees a small, hidden terror in his eyes. Beth calls him aside: “Is anything wrong? Are you still sick? Do you need to go home?” The young man confides in Beth that the two weeks of being unable to work due to the flu has left his bank account empty. And he has no paycheck coming since he has no sick pay to look forward to. Rent is due, and he has no idea how he is going to pay it. I have no idea how I am going to pay it.

A few hours later, when I return from lunch, I find an envelope on my desk. Inside is a check for over $750.00. A note that reads: “This should cover your rent, as well as get you some food. If you need more, it would be my pleasure. Consider this a gift. Warmly, Beth.”

Beth Hardin—her career might be as a businesswoman, but her ministry is healing the world. She sees the need. The need that is so deep it cannot be satisfied by a job alone. I came into her office thinking I needed a job, and I left having been touched by her extraordinary kindness.

From an early age, everyone asks us, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” And we pick up the echo, and ask ourselves, “What do I want to do when I grow up.”

Later on, we ask “What do I want to do in the next stage of my career?” “What do I want to do now that I’ve hit 40?” What do I want to do now that I’ve passed 50?” “What do I want to do this morning when I wake up?” “What do I want to do when I retire?” “What do I want to do with the last remaining years of my life?”

We ask our own children or grandchildren or great grandchildren: “What do you want to do when you grow up?” What do you want to do?

Marianne Williamson says: “Knowing who you are and why you came here—that you are a child of God and that you came here to heal [others]…—is more important than knowing what you want to do. What you want to do is not the important question. The question to ask is, “When I do something, how should I do it?”

What would happen if this was the question we asked ourselves this Labor Day: “When I do something, how should I do it?” What would happen if this was the question we asked our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren: “When you do something, how should you do it? What would happen if this was the question we asked each other in this church community: “When we do something, how should we do it?”

Maybe we need to talk less about how we, at this church, need people to sign up to do things. Maybe we need to focus less on how many people we need to volunteer to do the many tasks, small and large, that sustain and enliven this church community.

Instead, perhaps, as we explore and learn together, as we work on committees (our shared ministries), as we greet a first-time visitor or a new member, as we take an ACTIVE VOICE in the decisions we make as a church committees, as we share a talent or passion, as we sing or make music, as we share as part of a Chalice Circle, as we try to pay down our huge construction loan from Reading Cooperative Bank, as we sustain our youth group, as we begin again to teach our children in our classrooms, as we rededicate our expanded Sanctuary in a special service this October, as we sign up for the first time to make the coffee for social hour, as we help water the newly seeded grass, as we sign up to usher at the front door and hand out orders of service, as we agree to organize or host or attend an Adult Enrichment class—as we laugh and play, and care and cry, as we question and complain and doubt and celebrate, as we live and die together—perhaps we should ask each other: “When we do something, how should we do it?”

The spiritual traditions of the world offer us a guide, a map, into the heart of that question. A Unitarian Universalist might say: “Do it with respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Do it with regard to the interdependent web of all creation.” A Hindu might say: “Do it with an awareness of your projection and your power to illuminate another.” A Jew might say: “Do it with the same love that your Creator has for you.” A follower of Jesus might say: Do it by loving your neighbor.” A Religious Humanist might say: “Do it with great care and intention, because our salvation lies in our hands alone.”

I like the directness and simplicity of how the Buddha might answer that question. The Buddha might say: Do it with loving-kindness. Loving-kindness does not mean pity or sympathy. Loving-kindness is not even an emotion at all. It is an awareness followed by an action. Loving-kindness is an awareness followed by an action.

Awareness. An awareness of each other. An awareness of the ache. An awareness of the need. An awareness of the hunger, the hunger that is so deep, the hunger that cannot be satisfied by food alone.
 
But loving-kindness is more than awareness. Awareness alone is meaningless. Awareness must be followed by action. Action turns our awareness from an internal experience into an external creation. Action lets us manifest our Oneness. Action lets us manifest our all-encompassing embrace.

Through action we help heal our broken sisters and brothers. Through action, we help heal our broken selves. Through action, we help heal our broken world. This is how Dolores Dante and Beth Hardin live their lives. And this is how our Unitarian Universalist faith challenges us to live ours.

Loving-kindness. Awareness and action. Healing the world.

The alarm goes off . . .way, way, way, too early. This time, it is our alarm. What is it we plan to do with our one wild and precious life?

May it be so. Blessed Be. Amen.

© Copyright 2007 Tim Kutzmark