Issue 301
Are you the kind of person who likes routine? Do you get a sense of order if there are regular patterns in your life? You may, on the other hand, find routine tedious, boring and counter-productive. Either way, life and work is bound to contain repetition and recurring activities. There are bound to be daily occurrences such as meals, journeys, phone calls, emails or conversations which – whether you want or not – just keep coming. There may well be a threshold of routine without which a kind of timetable anarchy would take over leaving you in a chaotic and amorphous state of mind. This can be emotionally unsettling and contribute to lowering levels of physical well-being.
What is true mentally, emotionally and physically is also true spiritually. Jesus of Nazareth specifically, and biblical advice generally, recommends daily intakes of certain activities which are designed not to imprison, but to release our diaries into reality and power rather than chaos and confusion.
One such discipline is described as taking up your cross. Of all the things to take to work with you every day, along with whatever are the tools of your trade, this is quite shocking.
If you change the image you can gauge the strangeness of this discipline. Suppose you were told to take an electric chair to work with you each day – or a noose? The cross is a tool of criminal execution and Jesus wants you to take one with you.
The extra strangeness of this discipline is that it is meant to be repeated. But you can’t be crucified more than once any more than you can be electrocuted more than once – unless there is a return to life each time.
And here is one of the clues to this discipline: it moves you beyond your humanity into the supernatural arena. This is an invitation to the inexplicable, paradoxical and impossible. When you arrive at your office, study, school or site your to-do list, inbox or schedule contains a command to be inexplicable. Each day is to be lived in the energy that is only sourced from beyond the visible. Today you will die and rise again – not just from sleep but from a kind of perpetual dying discipline which each time results in you returning more alive, authentic and real.
Taking up a cross will also mean a hundred other things – insights which are explained in the WORKTALK course – but before we move on much further may I mention just one?
Whatever else this cross- carrying means, there is one feature that is clear:a cross is a place of pain. This is an inconvenient but useful truth. WORKTALK stands for the removal of unnecessary pain from life and work but there is no getting away from the fact that real work and achievement always involves an element of pain. If you don’t care about anything you minimise the risk but it still won’t disappear.
Pain in physical, mental or emotional spheres is part of the deal if you want to follow Christ. Each day will have its quota of pain related to your carrying of your cross. Some days the pain will be hard to bear, others you will hardly notice, most will be in-between.
This is an important fact to remember. The quest for pain-free working is futile. Stress professionals talk about factors intrinsic to a job. It is an intrinsic part of taking up a cross to experience pain, and it cannot be removed. As you read this piece you will know where your pain is, and you may even know which part is self-inflicted, unnecessary or avoidable. There will remain, however, the element connected to the cross. This is the place of learning; this is the borrowed tomb where your story unfolds and you leave behind the cloth and the spices on your way to a renewed life. The pain is part of the path to a range of other surprises – don’t waste it.
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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