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| ISSUE NO. 691 |
| WHAT IS WORK? . . . it's a question we've always felt called to answer expansively. But this week I've been thinking over one particular answer from Kahlil Gibran's classic, The Prophet: "Work is love made visible." The copy I have is a 1959 hardcover edition from Knopf that I was grateful to take home from my dad's house a couple of years after he died. He probably picked it up at a used bookstore or a garage sale - it smells a little musty and the pages are brown. I loved finally opening it up to find that it includes twelve illustrations reproduced from original drawings by the author - a quality that told me why my poet/artist dad had felt connected to it. In a world driven so relentlessly by capitalism, it's hard to find the meaning in Gibran's words: "work is love made visible". It seems like the word 'love' should be replaced with greed, cruelty, exploitation, dehumanization... And yet, there is something that seems so true about the original words. They remind me of Michelle Alexander's writing on work and dignity in The New Jim Crow: "Work is deemed so fundamental to human existence in many countries around the world that it is regarded as a basic human right." It strikes me that when we expand our conception of what work is, we have the potential to expand how we value that work, as well. We are all - and all the time - doing work that makes love visible, and it is often the unpaid or underpaid work that transmits love most clearly. Things like caregiving, cooking, making art of all kinds, picking flowers, packing lunches, endless hours of driving made to get to someone who needs your company. I would add to that: listening. And, in the beauty of the harmonica shop window in the photo above: opening our hearts. I had the privilege of attending the 71st annual Jane Addams Children's Book Award ceremony in my home town last week. Among the many necessary and impactful things that award recipients - authors and illustrators - had to say, Katherine Marsh, whose book The Lost Year won the chapter book category, shared that, “Activism and humanism come from the same wellspring, which is faith in people.” We are all existing within systems that require us to place our own safety above the safety of others. For example, as a citizen of the United States, I live on stolen land. And while I can't alter the past, I do believe in doing the work to imagine a better future, starting with the work of taking better care of others in my life and my community, right now. Death is perhaps the best teacher of the lesson that we can't change the past. What we do today matters. "And what is it to work with love?" Gibran asks, at the end of the section on work. The answer he gives: "It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.” In community, Tay + Dor |
tidbits...resources on anti-racism, environmentalism and food culture AKA stuff we're reading / listening to / watching / noticing / thinking about / captivated by this Tuesday . . . The Okee Dokee Brothers make music for families meant to encourage a greater respect for the natural world, communities, and ourselves. Brambletown has been on steady repeat to the enjoyment of kids and adults alike. This recipe for Sautéed Baby Boy Choy was a real stunner on an otherwise ordinary weeknight. |
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