Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the brothers should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading. We believe that the times for both may be arranged as follows. …
With these sentences St. Benedict begins chapter 48 of his influential Rules. I’ll spare you the history lesson except to say that his short guide to running a monastery launched the Western monastic tradition and is still the guide for monasteries around the world.
In fact, its general principle of “pray and work,” ora et labora in Latin, is the motto of Clan Ramsay and countless other organizations. (More about that in an earlier Labor Day post.)
The monasteries’ main purpose was to glorify God by Opus Dei, the “work of God,” constantly praying and meditating on God’s Word essentially around the clock. But Benedict says working with one’s hands is mandatory to being a part of the community.
Why? What does this have to do with praying?
As my great-grandmother, and Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, put it: Idle hands are the devil’s playground.
And that is Trouble with a capital T.
Sometimes the Trouble of idleness screams at us. King David’s downfall–what eventually caused his entire kingdom to split–all started “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle.” David should have been leading his army. Instead:
“David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.”
Thus began a tragic sequence of events: adultery (if not rape), deceit at the highest levels of government and murder. All of this was to be followed by David’s offspring wrestling with similar issues, leading to civil war.
David was “a man after God’s own heart,” and God promised his descendant would sit on the throne forever. But David’s idleness gave opportunity for tragedy.
Things have not changed. Idleness has led to adultery and drug use at many workplaces I have visited. It has destroyed careers and families. It is not to be taken lightly. We need work to keep us from idleness.
Sometimes the Trouble of idleness is much more insidious. I recently read former Florida state senator John Grant put it this way:
Work is the channel through which God blesses us. There is dignity in engaging yourself in any form of work. You lose your dignity when you are idle and lazy.
Dignity means “worth.” That is, there is a natural worth to us working–to us bringing value into the world. It is part of how we are “made in the image of God,” who spent six days making the world (and then “rested” from that work–yes, God works, and so did we in the Garden).
When we don’t work, we deny a part of us. And deep down, we know we are not bringing value. We feel less useful–at worst, useless. We are no-count.
This is not a way to go through life. You can be rich or poor and bring value to the world. You can also be rich or poor and bring no value to the world. Perhaps unconsciously, you will be haunted by that idea: I’m just taking up space.
That kind of thinking leads to self-destructive behavior. Tragedy.
The good news: All you have to do for the remedy is go work. Follow Benedict’s advice and go work with your hands. See a need and fulfill it. Serve.
For example: weeding. You don’t have to have any skills to weed. You just have to be willing to get down on the ground and pull up the weeds.
It’s a job that never ends, and it always improves the scenery for anybody who has to look at the landscape. (That’s all of us.)
Have you noticed how many places need weeding? Parks, business landscaping, the patch of no-man’s land in your neighborhood.
From welfare recipients to kings, we can all weed. It allows us to be valuable to the world around us, and it keeps our hands busy.
And, bonus! It keeps us from spying on naked people and sparking tragedies.