Work. It’s occupied my thinking and my writing for a long
time. Disillusionment with my work as a nurse, work I had seen as a calling,
spurred me to a family sabbatical in 1994. Photographs of hands engaged in work
inspired me to put into words the satisfaction that can come with manual labor
and resulted in my first book,
Hands at
Work. Now, as I write my memoir, I’m uncovering even more about the meaning
of work in my spiritual journey.
I’ve been re-reading journals from the two years my family
and I lived in the isolated village of Stehekin in Washington’s North Cascades.
Those years of 1994-96 frame my memoir, Hiking
Naked—A Quaker Woman’s Search for Balance. One of the books I took with me
to Stehekin was The Reinvention of Work by
Matthew Fox. Published just months before I acknowledged my burnout and quit my
job as a public health nurse, The
Reinvention of Work was a timely guide in my search for “soul work.”
In his book, Fox, a theologian and Episcopal priest,
considered that we were in a radical and creative moment to redefine work
itself. I believe we still are. Fox recounted the impact of the historical
shifts of the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, shifts
that pushed us to focus on productivity and consumption. He called readers to
attend to our inner work, “…that large world within our souls or selves,” in
order to change the ways we define, compensate, and create work.
Health care was one of the areas of work that Fox believed
needed reinventing, and I couldn’t have agreed more. Even though my nursing
education in the 1970s and 80s acknowledged the connections between mind, body,
and spirit, I worked in systems shaped by the industrial revolution’s emphasis
on technology and its view of the body as a machine. Five years into my nursing
career, I witnessed the beginnings of health care becoming privatized and
for-profit. This shift wasn’t doing anything to assure access to health care,
and public health seemed the safety net best equipped to catch those who would
fall through the inevitable cracks.
I viewed public health nursing as a way to promote justice, especially
for the poor and underserved, and I embraced it. Eventually, public health,
too, was undermined by the breakdown of the entire health care system.
I’d broken down, too, from not attending to my inner work.
So, in 1994, instead of just vacationing in Stehekin, my family and I moved
there. My husband and children welcomed the adventure of living in a community
to which no roads led, just a ferry stop at the end of 55-mile long Lake
Chelan; the wonder of bear cubs digging for grubs outside the cabin; the drama
of being at the mercy of a finicky hydroelectric plant, a river flooding its
banks, and forest fires. I embraced adventure, too, but even more, I sought
escape. In Stehekin, there would be no newspapers, radio, or TV newscasts to
link me to the rest of the world.
No phone service for updates about families I had worked with or the
latest communicable disease outbreak. And no doctor or public health clinic. I
took a job kneading dough into loaves at the local bakery. I also delved into Fox’s book and
filled the blank pages of four journals with questions about what work I was
called to do.
Nearly twenty years after first reading Fox’s vision that “…work
is an expression of the Spirit at work in the world through us,” I continue to
experiment with my own vision. I have gotten clear that writing is at least a part of it. So, each day, I light a candle, grasp a pen or place my fingers on the
keyboard, and go to work.
