The three of us enjoying last summer days at a Minnesota lake.

Friends and fellow travelers,

On the cusp of this Labor Day weekend we greet you from the lake “up north”, as the Minnesotans have it. So yes, we finally made it back to MN! With grateful hearts and slightly ruffled feathers.

How has your summer been?

On home coming

Do you know the tale of the two monks who travelled the world in order to find the place where heaven and earth meet? The two monks journeyed far and wide, they took on challenge after challenge. Finally, they arrived at an old, ornate door. When they opened the door, they found themselves at home, right in the monastic cell from which they had started.

We felt like them when we finally arrived home after nine months in Germany (having caught the new Covid on the last few meters!).

Was their (and our) journey then in vain? I don’t think so. Our lives’ journeys can send us on many paths untrodden, so that when we arrive home nonetheless, we do so as renewed beings.

As we journeyed through our sabbatical, facing expected and unexpected challenges and adventures, searching for new places of belonging, we now delight in our homecoming in our little college-town home. And just as the monks arrive at the same place with new eyes, we are not the same people any longer. The journey has reworked our hearts and given us new appreciation for old places.

And so we arrived with wonder and awe in our new/old home which had been quietly waiting for our return. Joyfully we entered each room, touching and remembering all the little things that make home a home. And the garden!!! How I have missed walking out the back door barefoot in the morning with my precious daughter to pick wild flowers for our home altar. How we have missed seeing Hannah running around in circles through the vestibule singing at the top of her lungs without being a bother to stressed out city dwellers who share our walls. And how we have missed our kind neighbors and friends who welcomed us with food and good words.

Oh, sweet home coming.

And so, being grateful and glad to be back home, we hope to meet some of you in person again right here in our home (and our garden)!

Our first sunrise back home. Jet lag helped us to enjoy it.

Pondering our labor on Labor Day

I have too often tried (and failed) to fit into a mold, for instance, the having-a-career mold. I was raised in the homeland of the “Protestant Ethic” philosophy of work as the meaning of one’s life, as the measure of one’s worth, with a narrow meaning of work as valued by money or status or both — or in a phrase, success as competitive achievement.

Odd as it sounds, this East German pastor’s daughter, whose parents did not seek worldly success (though this in itself can become a religious measure of “success”), still later felt compelled by the idea that my value was best judged by my work, and my work best judged by peers or family or a zeitgeist that expected some measure of “success.” This year, I have been reminded anew of the difference between work one is called from the heart to do and work that is required by one’s role or circumstances. It is a painful and alienating experience to be measured by some external standard of how well you fit into a system rather than by the vision or gift one brings to one’s work. When work starts foremost to serve systems instead of people, it can become toxic and burn people out quickly. They work to feed their bodies while their souls break. The same is true for creative or artistic souls, which do not fit well in a box or a job description either. As many of you, I have always longed for work that relates to my deeper self, and to which I can bring my heart more fully. And so it is good to be home, and to be called back to a work of caring, guiding, and teaching — to fostering the internal work of becoming more whole.

As Hannah and I were often in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals this year, I have become very grateful for all those kindred souls who work long hours in hospitals and clinics caring for others. But the same is true for people who work unseen from others on projects which seem not productive or valuable in the eyes of others. In a just world, we would all have work that was valued, and would value our work.

St. Benedict reminds us that ALL work is valuable and meaningful and can be done as sacred labor. Harvesting and cooking, cleaning and serving, studying and teaching, mothering and gardening, caring and discerning. All work.

The sacredness of work

Many of you might be pondering at new junctions of your life, what your work has been, what your work is and what your work shall be. You might have left a career behind and then wondered if simply enjoying a full life is a proper “work.” Or if working on gaining wisdom holds value, too. Internal work is often seen as some sort of luxury which comes after all other work is done. It is not. It is, in fact, the heart of all work. Without it, other work is hollow.

And so, as the sun sets on this Labor Day, we offer you a piece from our archive which says in brief:

“One’s passion for work should be the compassion one has for the community and for God. Different people are fit to do different work, at different paces, ... and all work , ALL work, is sacred when it is so focussed.”

— from Seeking the heart of our daily work