Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Careers, Workplace and Religion
The Little Jobs Who Won’t Sing

The Little Jobs Who Won’t Sing

Last updated on: October 16, 2016 at 10:50 am by Jennifer Woodruff Tait

The Little Jobs Who Won’t Sing 2016-10-12T10:54:01-05:00 Jennifer Woodruff Tait

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

robin-bird-on-branch-in-the-garden

Reprinted from The Green Room.

A few months ago, I attended the Acton Institute (you can read more about my trip here) as part of my work with the Theology of Work Project. One of the things I did was attend a lunch where some other folks from TOW presented some of the resources on our site and talked about how they could be used in the local church. We concluded the lunch by singing a hymn called “God of Offices and Kitchens.” It attempts to bring the experiences of the modern workplace in contact with the praise of God:

Ploughing, seeding, patient waiting

For the harvest of the soil;

Typing, phoning and collating

You are with us in our toil.

In the workshop, store and office,

Classroom, kitchen, garden, too,

Help us see your gift and glory,

Serve you well in all we do.

My husband was at the conference but not at the lunch. I told him about it afterwards and said, “I felt really weird about singing about typing, phoning, and collating in a hymn. Is this just because those are new things to sing about, or is there really something different about those things than about ploughing and seeding and harvesting, which sounded perfectly normal to sing about?”

He said “It’s all in Barfield.” (He’s an Owen Barfield scholar, among other things.)

Barfield, who was one of C. S. Lewis’s oldest and dearest friends, wrote a number of books that are a good deal less famous among Christians than Lewis’s but are well-known to a number of philosophers. One, called Saving the Appearances, argues that humans once

had an awareness (termed original participation) of nature and reality that ended as human consciousness has grown increasingly self-aware and analytical…

Saving the Appearances is dense (I’ve read it!) but I can tell you that some of the things Barfield thinks “did in” that sense of original participation are the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. He doesn’t think we can get back there–he thinks we need to move towards a “final participation,” for which in some way the avenue was cleared for us by the Incarnation. But his arguments explain why singing about ploughing, which humans have done for millennia back when we were aware of ourselves as part of nature, feels different than singing about typing, which humans have done for about 100 years long after our divorce from a mostly-nature-focused way of life.

I filed this thought away until recently, when I ran into some thoughts from an essay called “The Little Birds who Won’t Sing,” from one of my favorite writers and one who also influenced Lewis (though he was of a previous generation): G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton asked the same question I was asking at Acton:

How did people come to chant rude poems while pulling certain ropes or gathering certain fruit, and why did nobody do anything of the kind while producing any of the modern things? Why is a modern newspaper never printed by people singing in chorus? Why do shopmen seldom, if ever, sing?

If reapers sing while reaping, why should not auditors sing while auditing and bankers while banking? If there are songs for all the separate things that have to be done in a boat, why are there not songs for all the separate things that have to be done in a bank?

True to his indomitable form, Chesterton attempted to provide a few:

Up my lads and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o’er.
Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: ‘Two and Two are four.’
Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the
sophists roar,
Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four.

[and, for the post office,]

O’er London our letters are shaken like snow,
Our wires o’er the world like the thunderbolts go.
The news that may marry a maiden in Sark,
Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park.

He presented some of these lyrics to a banker of his acquaintance, who responded that there was

an indefinable something in the very atmosphere of the society in which we live that makes it spiritually difficult to sing in banks.

Chesterton goes on:

And the more I thought about the matter the more painfully certain it seemed that the most important and typical modern things could not be done with a chorus. One could not, for instance, be a great financier and sing; because the essence of being a great financier is that you keep quiet. You could not even in many modern circles be a public man and sing; because in those circles the essence of being a public man is that you do nearly everything in private.. . I had really got no further than the sub-conscious feeling of my friend the bank-clerk—that there is something spiritually suffocating about our life; not about our laws merely, but about our life.

It’s been one of the cardinal principles of the faith and work movement that all work, except that work which is obviously immoral or illegal, is equal: all work derives from God’s command to us to keep and steward creation, and every job can be done to the glory of God.

But Barfield, Chesterton, and my own experience all have me wondering. Do we need to acknowledge that work may be different since the Industrial Revolution? That it may be less back-breaking, but it also may be more soulless? Or if the faith and work movement goes on long enough, will we all someday find it perfectly natural to sing about typing as an ennobling vocational act? (I already find Chesterton’s intended-to-be-funny verses less funny, and more possible to conceive of singing “straight,” than I did 20 years ago. I am not sure that is an improvement.)

History of Work and Vocation

Industrial Revolution

Previous Post

October 14, 2016

Getting Your Head Out of Your Bottom Line

Next Post

October 20, 2016 These Problems Are Solvable

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Audio posts Bible and Work Book Review Books Budgeting Calling Common Good Community Development Conferences Discipleship Economics Entrepreneurship Ethics Faith and Family Faith and the Marketplace Faith and the Workplace faith and work History of Work and Vocation Leadership Local Church Meaning New Blogger News Prayer Relationships Seminaries Theology of Work Uncategorized Video posts Vocation Worship Resources

Select a Month April 2026 October 2025 September 2025 July 2025 April 2025 January 2025 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 May 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 August 2023 July 2023 April 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 June 2021 May 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 January 2020 December 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What Hebrew word, meaning "vanity" or "meaningless," is frequently used in Ecclesiastes?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Hevel Shalom Torah Ruach