11. A Prayer for Honest Work
R
May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:17M
Y son Curt made an interesting comment recently. “I’m
afraid that we are becoming a race of ‘virtual’ men and
women,” he said, “doing no real physical labor, only sitting in front
of our computer screens, tapping keys, sending our putty-soft bod-
ies out on virtual expeditions.”
I knew what he meant and that it was true. Last night after work-
ing into the late hours on this book, I lay in bed and could not rest.
Something was wrong. What was it? Flicking rhythmically behind
my closed eyelids was a cursor. I could not turn off my internal
screen!
This morning when we were sitting on the porch at our river
house, Spike read to me from Wendell Berry’s book of short stories,
Fidelity.In “A Jonquil for Mary Penn” were beautiful descriptions of
work—real physical work. I love this one about Elton Penn’s plans: