August 2023

I helped create a worship service last week at the Unitarian fellowship I belong to. In so doing, I found words of wisdom from a number of inspirational leaders on the subject of quality work, and I want to use this blog post to share them.

I slightly modified this quote from Robert F. Kennedy (not junior) to be more inclusive. He said, “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

The service featured a talk by the leader of a local social service agency that supports victims of domestic violence, homelessness, and food insecurity. We talked about how this leader, and front-line social service workers in general, sustain their mental, physical, and spiritual health while working every day with people who are struggling, and the role that faith plays.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

The main message from the speaker was that no matter your status and no matter how grand or how limited your resources and capabilities are, if you are offering your work from a place of love and good intention, then you are doing quality work and it matters. There are rewards from helping others – both intrinsic and extrinsic. You feel good when you know that your efforts have made someone else’s life a bit easier. And there is external recognition and appreciation from donors, bosses, and the recipients of the services. Some even believe that their good work will build credits for heavenly salvation or karma to enable them to be reincarnated at a higher level. But for many of us, myself included, the motivation is not some uncertain future payoff. It is the knowledge that what we are doing is right and good.

Wendell Berry said, “The old and honorable idea of ‘vocation’ is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.”

And the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

This week we saw the results of much work by special counsel Jack Smith and his team, building on the good work of the January 6 Committee, to hold the former president accountable for his numerous crimes against our nation. Now it is our turn to do quality work and get out the truth and get out the vote. As John Pavlovitz wrote, “The only thing that can keep him from prison is the White House. The only thing that can keep him from the White House is us. Show up, good people.”