Sabbath Thought: The Blessing of Good Work to Do

    Connemara Mowers, County Mayo, Ireland ©A. Rutherford

                                      
In Ireland every time you go around a new bend in the road, there is something which takes your breath away.  And the people, too, seem to be filled with it, a sensitivity to wonder and delight.  Not so jaded as most Americans who are so intrenched in the material world, most of the Irish still seem able to connect in some deep way with the world around them, above their heads and under their feet, the same connection as the mower in Frost's poem from Thursday felt with his world and his work.

The day I took the photo above I was walking on a graveled path above these fields with a local artist who was guiding me to find some ancient Celtic ruins, a burial dolmen on a hill beyond the farmer's field.  As we walked along, we came upon these men scything their fields, working away in a scene of incredible beauty.

As we passed by close enough, my fellow artist raised her hand in greeting to them, and her voice sang out across the field in a lovely lilt, "God bless the work," which she explained to me was the traditional Irish greeting to those engaged in their daily chores.

I loved it, and I thought how wonderful to have someone pass by you who didn't even know you and sing out to you, "God bless the work!"  How affirming that would be!  How it would connect you to your fellow man, to your work, and to God . . .  how very real . . . and what a blessing to feel connected to God in the labor of your work week as well as in your Sabbath worship and rest.

The One

Green, blue, yellow, and red—

God is down in the swamps and marshes

Sensational as April and almost as incredible

the flowering of our catharsis.

A humble scene in a backward place

Where no one ever looked

The raving flowers looked up in the face

Of the One and the Endless, the Mind that has baulked

The profoundest of mortals. A primrose, a violet,

A violent wild iris—but mostly anonymous performers

Yet an important occasion as the Muse at her toilet

Prepared to inform the local farmers

That beautiful, beautiful, beautiful God

Was breathing his love by a cut-away bog.

-Patrick Kavanagh, Irish poet

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?  

                                                                                   -Ecclesiastes 2:24-25
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