This week I reflect on the dignity of labor, inspired by the observance of Labor Day.

While in Maine last month I set in motion plans to add a mudroom (a New England essential) and a barn-garage to my little cottage next spring. I spent over a week wrangling commitments to meet with my plumber, excavator, concrete fellow, and builder. I had staked out each structure in the mowed grass of the pasture, including such details as doors and windows, plumbing, and stairs. I wanted all those involved in bringing my drawings life to stand on that ground at the same time so they could discuss together grave matters like the slope of a wastewater line and how far a concrete slab should stick up above a frost wall.

Tradesmen are notoriously impossible to reach in the summer, laboring as they do dawn till dusk during the short northeastern building season. Wise old Maine neighbors cautioned me against being optimistic that any of them would actually show up at the negotiated date and time. The appointed morning arrived and I confess I was (pleasantly) surprised when one pick-up truck pulled up to the house, and then another, and then a third, and finally a fourth. I made my “presentation”, giving a guided tour of the stakes in the ground (which they observed, quite correctly, looked akin to a pet cemetery) answered questions, and then the tradesmen worked out the details of this and that together, just as I had hoped they would. Everyone exchanged business cards and now my task is to finalize the drawings for submission with a building permit application—a packet I will run by all these fellows beforehand for their review and approval.

I will likely not tell them this until the job is over and done, but I regard what they each do as utter magic: the man who runs backhoes as if he was waltzing with them; the strong man with the finesse of an artisan baker who will turn sacks of powdered stuff into a smooth floor I can drive my truck on; the man who will crawl around in the dirt whilst doing complex math to assure that water comes up out of the well when I call for it, and pipes drain without issue to the septic tank; and the greatest magician of them all—my patient builder, who will literally make my careful and imaginative renderings into something real.

These are the people I am celebrating this Labor Day—these and also some of my neighbors in Longmont: the South American man across the street to the east who makes his living as a handyman, and the Iowan across the street to the south who makes his living as an arborist. I can hold in my hand the replacement kit for a troublesome toilet flapper valve and stare helplessly at the tank, but I cannot actually deploy the thing. So I am profoundly grateful there are men and women for whom this is all in a day’s work; for whom this is satisfying and—dare I say it—actually enjoyable work.

Holy Scripture commends and applauds labor and the work of the laborer. The dignity and value of a laborer, the necessity of treating a laborer fairly, and the role that manual labor plays in calibrating our minds and hearts are all common themes. And yet one thinks of the divine monologue in Genesis 3, where the Lord God is angry at Adam and Eve for eating from the forbidden tree and condemns Adam to thereafter toil or labor to bring food from the land. But what is easy to miss is the verse (15) from chapter 2, where Adam has just been created and God places him in the garden to work it and preserve it. In other words, labor in and of itself is not a punishment from God. Rather, labor is what we were created to do. The difference in language between chapters 2 (we were created to labor) and 3 (as a punishment Adam will labor) seems to be in the feelings labor produces in us. Chapter 3 (verse 17) suggests Adam’s labor will produce sorrow (or pain, affliction) in him, instead of (presumably) the joy he had previously experienced.

Perhaps that is the impetus behind a line in one of the prayers of thanksgiving in our Book of Common Prayer: “We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.” [BCP p.836] In other words, thank you, God, for the gift of satisfaction in what we do—we know that because of Adam (and our own disobedience) we cannot take this gift for granted.

So on this Labor Day week, I invite you to join me in giving thanks for the laborers who “work magic” in your life, for the work that you do in this world, and for the gift of satisfaction that such work can bring. This collect from our BCP is appointed for Labor Day:

Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. [BCP p.261]