Blessing the Work of Our Hands
Do I receive all my daily moments as tasks to check off, or as encounters with the presence of Love?
Blessing the Work of Our Hands
It’s been almost 8 years since I published my book Found. While there are things I would change (I have fully rejected using he/him/his pronouns for God!), there is still so much I find in that book that makes my heart sing. One scene I sometimes come back to, just to remind myself, is one in which I cleaned the tiny kitchen of our San Francisco apartment, while Chris was putting toddler August to sleep. I had been reading Esther de Waal’s beautiful book, The Celtic Way of Prayer (still one of my favorites), and was so taken with a prayer she described that was often spoken by Celtic women as they subdued the fire in the hearth, blessing their home and family each night before bed.
De Waal explains in her book how a woman would pray this while “forming a raised heap in the middle” of the embers, dividing that heap into three sections, and laying down peat between each. As she did it she would call on the God of Life, the God of Peace, and the God of Grace. That circle, de Waal says, “would then be covered over with ashes sufficient to subdue but not extinguish flame in the name of the Three of Light.”
Then the woman would stretch her hand out over those ashes and speak this prayer:
The sacred Three
To save
To shield,
To surround
The hearth,
The house,
The household,
This eve,
This night,
Oh! this eve,
This night,
And every night,
Each single night.
Amen.
I was so drawn then, and still am drawn, to the beauty and simplicity of this language, and the physical act of calling on the three-person God — Life, Peace, & Grace — to come and inhabit our physical spaces. To bless the things and the people and the ideas we touch. I wrote in the book about standing before my oil-splattered old stovetop, and sliding the sponge down the iron between electric burners, making the shape of a cross, suddenly embodying what I hoped could be true: my tiny life was somehow transforming the world. It all mattered.
In the thirty-first chapter of St. Benedict’s rule, he instructs his monks that “all the utensils of the monastery and in fact everything that belongs to the monastery should be cared for as though they were the sacred vessels of the altar.” I remember in that season of learning to bless the work of my own hands, there was something remarkable to me in that statement, as if that old, somewhat cranky saint who lived 1500 years ago might be giving me permission to see all the mundane tasks of caring for a toddler, beginning a writing career, and learning to love the people in my daily life as they actually were in the realm of the divine: Significant, Remarkable, Holy.
What if we treated all the utensils of our lives as if they were sacred? What if we blessed the kitchens where we throw together our twenty minute meals, and make the bed we will sleep in as if we were cozying up our space for the divine? What if the computer keys where we tap out messages on Slack are an invitation to love? What if the meeting we lead for our team of colleagues matters, not just to our career, but to the flourishing of the world? There’s a phrase that keeps coming back to me from the Torah, the Hebrew book of Deuteronomy: “The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands.”
I imagine there are times when you feel like me, as if the work that comes from my hands each day is insignificant, monotonous, and may just evaporate before it even matters. I talk with so many fellow writers about the feeling of wanting our work to reach further and knowing that it might just not be in the cards for us. I wash the same bowls and pots every day, the same human bellies in my house fed. I wash the same clothes and (eventually) fold them every week. And I watch other hands serve me: my husband’s morning ritual of pouring hot water in a circle over the ground coffee beans. The hands of Ace when he reaches for me, asking me to tickle his palms. August’s moments of connection, when he sits down at the foot of my bed, places his hand on the covers where my feet lie, and tells me everything I never knew I needed to know about Off-White sneakers. I can receive the daily moments as tasks to check off, or as encounters with the presence of Love.
Last night I took Brooksie to see the local high school musical, and part way through the performance, my 11-year-old had his arm stretched across the back of my seat, as if he were my guy, my protector. He kind of was. And I imagined his grown man body, which will be there beside me soon enough, doing the same thing ten years from now. That’s the work of my hands too, isn’t it? The humans whose needs I attempt to meet each day.
How do we live like all of it is holy work? How do we rise above the monotony of our daily lives and see our work as it actually is and can be — transformative, restorative, packed full of meaning?
I think to those Celtic women closing down their days with prayer over the center of their homes, finding purpose in the task of keeping the embers warm and ready for the sun to rise again. I think of the safe comfort in holding on to a three-in-one-God: Life, Peace, and Grace. A Divine-Love that invites our hands to be intentional in all we do, the kind of slowness that transforms monotony into purpose, pouring love into our inbox, our vacuuming, our happy hour with friends, our garden-making. All of it is meaningful. And all of it can be blessed.
Because our hands are holy, and they are invited by the Life-Peace-Grace-Maker to create meaning out of everything.
A Slow Practice
What is the work of your hands? Lets take some time to consider what in your life deserves blessing. You are worthy of pronouncing your work good and worthy of honor. How might you begin to see all of your life in that light?
Let’s start by taking a breath together.
Breathe in .
Breathe out.
What is the work of your hands? Will you take some time today to write down what you are making with your hands? Include everything. Not only the physical tasks: sweeping the floor, throwing together meals, typing out that memo. But also the mental and emotional work of your day: ideas you’re forming, relationships you’re making time for, even the music you’re dancing to.
Take a few minutes right now to list out everything in the past day that your hands touched. Don’t worry right now about whether or not there is meaning to be found in it. Just write it down: Driving your car to the coffee shop, meeting your mom for lunch, turning on a show on Netflix after dinner. What did your hands touch today?
After you’ve made that list, I want you to pray with me and all those ancient Celtic women:
“The Sacred Three / To Save / To Shield / To Surround…” This life. My life. Take a moment to read out loud the tasks you wrote down on your list. Pray this prayer with each thing: “Oh Sacred Three, save, shield and surround my reading time. Save, shield and surround my relationship with my mom. Save, shield and surround the casserole I make frantically on Monday nights…” Go through that list, no matter how silly it seems. Say it aloud, because all of it matters.
As you come to the end of your list of your daily tasks, pray this with me: “Oh Maker of Life and Peace and Grace, bless the work of my hands. All the work of my hands.”
A List of Things
This past Monday was World Down Syndrome Day. In the Down syndrome community, it’s such a day of fun. My friends Heather and Josh Avis have recently established The Lucky Few Foundation, which is telling beautiful stories of people living with Down syndrome. If you want a sense of the level of care and quality storytelling they’re doing, take a peek at this beautiful video they released Monday. Also, we recorded a special episode of The Lucky Few Podcast that goes in there with some of my favorite of our episodes. If you want an introduction to our community and why it matters, it’s a great place to start.
This Atlantic article by Arthur Brooks about choosing enjoyment over pleasure doesn’t necessarily say anything completely new. But it is an important reminder of the value of savoring goodness in our lives.
This thread from JS Park on Twitter was powerful to me this week. He told the story of the evangelical megachurch he was part of and left once Trump was elected. He spoke about the small group he and his wife attended and how the banter and sarcastic humor of the group made no space for pain, vulnerability, or people who simply don’t have something clever to say. To me it’s an important example of how the problems of evangelical Christian culture go way deeper than theology or politics. It has to do with how culturally rare it can be to see church culture make space for every person, to welcome others into conversation, to make space for sadness or slowness, to turn off our performative posing and simply invite one another to be human.
I had a book mail day yesterday and shared about it on Instagram. Next in my queue of books: I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet from Shauana Niequist, God is a Black Woman by Christena Cleveland, Sing Wrestle Spin: Prayers for Active Kids from Jennifer Grant, and Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. Excited to dig into these and see where they take our conversations!
Thank you for this beautiful essay. Something was telling me to go back in my inbox (I was away this weekend) and read it now, and I'm so glad I did. Your words struck a chord in me as I contemplate days filled with lots of tasks, like picking up my child from school and making weeknight dinners and loading and unloading the dishwasher all while eyeing my own writing project that lays waiting to the side. The idea that it's all sacred work that we can bless -- it's heart changing.
This was such a beautiful and thoughtful letter. I’m looking forward to contemplating and discovering all the ways in which my work can be blessed and experienced with the Three-in-One. Thank you, Micah!