Posted by Holly Ordway in Culture | 3 Comments
On Work and Writing
What does it mean to be a working writer and teacher?
Work is a good thing – one of the best things in my life, I have found: to do good work, work that uses my mind and imagination and strength to the fullest. Writing is a great joy in this regard: seeing ideas take shape before me, discovering more fully what I really mean even as I write.
Work is a good thing, instituted by God before the Fall: Adam tended the garden (and thus did good work in the cultivation of beauty – something to aspire to). It was not work itself that fell to Adam and Eve as a curse upon their sin and expulsion from Eden, but toil – that aspect of work that is unfruitful, depressing, grinding, depleting.
In our fallen world, even good work has its elements of toil. (To take a light example, I joyfully work at writing an analytical piece, but I toil at managing its footnotes.) But I would also say that all toil can be redeemed as good work if the task at hand is done well, and done to the glory of God. I cannot say that I have always lived up to this; in fact, I have often failed to do so, and failed as well to recognize the good work implicit in the toil of others. But one blessing of work is that there is always more to do, and so each day’s work is a chance to do it right – today.
As a writer and a teacher, I must always remember that this is my work, and I am charged with doing it well and to the glory of God. My own joy in it is His gift; my dedication to doing the work well is but the recognition of that unearned, undeserved gift.
Coffee at the Montague Bookmill, a bookstore in a converted water mill. A good metaphor for my life's journey.
I am of New England stock, running back many generations: Yankee farmers and mill-workers, who sunk deep roots into the rocky, recalcitrant soil of Massachusetts, and made a living and raised their families on hard work. I went off to college, and then to graduate school, picking up on that strand of the family history that produced schoolteachers. Now I work with words and ideas, writing and teaching and lecturing, rather than picking apples or working a shift at a paper mill. I used to think that this separated me from my roots, but now I think this is true only in the sense that a branch is separate from the hidden tap-roots. I am in part who I am because of those Yankee farmers, and before them, the courageous immigrants who came on boats to Ellis Island (on my father’s side) and Plymouth Rock (on my mother’s side).
My own journey has in some ways been a returning, though I did not know it at the time: a return to the faith of my family roots, to my great-grandparents (Protestant on the one side, Roman Catholic on the other). Affirming my Christian faith in the Anglican tradition was a joy to me first because of my affection for the Anglican poets whose words drew me to know Christ, and then because of the richness and beauty and depth of meaning I found there; but it also takes me back further, from New England to the England of my ancestors.
And so now I begin to understand something about the nature of work – to see that in the English poetry I love, and in the farms and mills of Massachusetts where my family has its roots, there is something in common, some deep essential vision of doing the good work that has been placed before me. I pray that I may continue to live out that vision.
I am commenting a lot on your site lately, but this post resonated with me in several ways. I love words, ideas, and reading. Unlike you, though, I am not gifted as a teacher (I tried to teach high school and did not like it, and I also taught at the community college level–which I did not like either). In addition, I do not have the way with words that you do. I think you are very fortunate and blessed to love what you do, but also to be able to share your faith (perhaps not always overtly) with others in your role as a teacher.
I know how to write grammatically correct sentences, and I can make a persuasive argument though it is not always easy for me to organize my thoughts. As you know, I currently write grants and do research for a University. Sometimes I wish I could be more eloquent in how I write or in how I say things. But I must remember that I have had a great deal of success in my time at my job, and I believe I have brought glory to God by bringing money to the school and making a better education available to the students through the work I do. I do not need to be the teacher in the classroom who makes the personal connection with the students because I am not gifted in that manner–but I can still make their lives better through my work.
Like you, I pray that I can continue to do good work for the glory of God though many times I fail at this task and it is not always easy.
Thanks for your words, Ali! I think you are right on target with your insight that your work improves the lives of many others. The teacher in front of the classroom may be more visible, but the smooth running of the school (most often behind the scenes) makes that teaching possible.
In some ways I think that failure can be sign that we are doing good work. If I never fail, then probably I am not expecting much of myself… but if I try to do better than what I am doing now (in whatever sense of ‘better’ applies), then I am sure to fail at least sometimes, since by definition I’m stretching past where I started.
Holly,
Thank you for the delightful and timely reflections! I often forget that the doing of the work has its own value. The outcome of the work, while also valuable, is not the whole of it!
I love the picture at the Book Mill. They have a lot of my money!
Greg