Crafting Joy

We live within an economy that expects us to mimic its ruthless efficiency. The skills that we’ve honed over the years aren’t enough… machines may replace the need for that skill set or, just as true and just as frustrating, our skills may be sent overseas to someone who will work for one quarter the rate we make (And they, like us, will likely eek out a subsistent living on that wage).

The answer we’ve been given is that we need to adapt. To learn something new. To give up what we do and evolve into something different, even if that means we have to give up a career we love.

When I started working at Great Harvest, I was given a gift that has slowly dawned upon me with the increasing beauty of a sunset. I have been given the opportunity to step out of that economy and into something archaic: a craft.

As long as humanity has pounded wheat down to flour and had fire and a little water, we have made bread. Yes, there are machines that can do my job, which means my pay is lower than it used to be. Yes, it is a “simple minded” job that anyone can do. However, I find it to have an honor every job I’ve had before –jobs with more prestige, power, and money– can ever boast.

Baking is life-giving.

Every day, as I make dough, knead it into a loaf, decorate that loaf, and bake it, I am creating something that will have a tangible, felt result in someone’s life. This bread that I co-create (with my coworkers, the farmers, miners, bees, yeast, and the God who made the wheat, honey, and salt) will give life and strength to everyone that eats it. I find a holiness in my work that looks like Jesus. It is an easy connection to make since he called himself the Bread of Life. At some point in the creative process, I pray a silent prayer over these loaves:

God,
Thank you for so abundantly providing these ingredients.
Thank you for the strength to prepare them.
May all who touch them be blessed.
And may Jesus, the Bread of Life, nourish me this day.
Amen.

This is one way that my calling –who God is shaping me into– bleeds into my vocation –the work that God has set before me– and it is silent and subtle and invisible to everyone around me.

Another way my calling is bleeding into our bakery is in the joie du vie that being a follower of Jesus produces. I love pulling my coworkers, and myself, out of the monotony of the work and into laughter. [Aside: That is quite easy. As I've moved "down" into the blue collar world, I've discovered that there is a comraderie and joy that the white collar world lacks and cannot reproduce.] One of the ways that I’ve done this is by instituting Sing Along Saturday. It started as kind of a joke in which I blurted out, “Hey, let’s only put songs we like to sing on the playlist!” and eveyone agreed. We’ve been doing Sing Along Saturday for about a month now and it is a blast . I mean an absolute blast.

This past Saturday, I was belting out some song at the top of my lungs, grinning from ear-to-ear as I iced King Cakes. As I put the orders onto the order rack, one of the customer service staff told me about an exchange that had just happened. “Someone offered me five dollars if I could make you stop singing while he ate. The people behind him said, ‘That’s why we come here every Saturday!’” I died laughing, as did all the other staff who heard the story.

I’m amazed at how much life there is simply in singing and dancing like an idiot to songs like Tom Sawyer, Hey Ya!, The Love Shack, and Benny and the Jets. It is even more funny to watch a customer start singing and dancing with us. The act of celebrating good music turns a drudgery like the one day I have to ice three different kinds of King Cakes into my favorite workday of the week. Today, at my church’s gathering, I felt it again while I sang the ancient truths about our God and what he has done. I didn’t dance this time, though.

Wow. That’s A Giant Pink Elephant.

Let’s begin by petting the elephant: January 2nd, 2007 is the last day that I spent as a vocational minister. Drew affirmed the decision and we finalized it inside Chick-Fil-A while a light rain fell on Lafayette.

Two days earlier, I sat under the shade of a huge oak tree outside Mission Burrito with my friend, who is an Elder at Ecclesia in Houston, and ran through the situation. “I’m tired, Paul. Really tired.”, is the quick-and-easy summation of our hour-long conversation.

When I said it, he kind of smirked –not at me but at the situation– and said, “You’re two months removed from a sabbatical, Dallas. What does that say about how you fit this role?”

It said a lot.

I thought that the word Pastor would allow me to speak into people’s lives in a way that I couldn’t before being given that title. I thought that people would come to me with their questions and faith (or lack thereof) and I would be able to affirm that the pain their souls felt was real and speak the reality of Jesus into that pain. The exact opposite seems to be the reality I experienced. I became a kind of novelty act. A Rev-In-The-Box where you could crank the handle and I would pop out and say a “nice” prayer before a meal.

That’s not a totally fair description. I will admit that right now. However, I found it true more often than not. The title… the office… separated me from people. It instilled a heirarchy with me being Man Who Hears From God and my friends and neighbors taking on the role of Me Who That Man Makes Uncomfortable. A perfect example of this is what my friend, Chris, calls “the rewind”: You say you’re a pastor and watch the person mentally review every word they’ve said since they met you to see if anything they said is something they wouldn’t have said in a church building. Some people love the conversations that happen after that. I never did.

I pushed against their mental boxes as hard as I could. No matter how hard I pushed, though, I couldn’t get outside of the preconceived notion. It is a situation I know quite well after spending two years as a foreigner in China. I was an outsider in that land by race. Now, I found myself an outsider in this land by way of career. Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Robert Tilton were my peers in the minds of my non-christian friends. I was a pervert, a thief, a hypocrite, and a bully all rolled into one. To my christian friends, I was the junior varsity version of Joel Osteen, Billy Graham, and Rob Bell. I was supposed to entertain and comfort. Friendship was allowed, as long as I, The Pastor, didn’t have to appear imperfect.

In the middle of my time as a vocational minister, I was directed towards Eugene Peterson’s stories of pastoring in Under the Unpredictable Plant. They were transparent and inspiring but, in the end, I realized that I’m not one of the people that loves the challenge of Vocational Ministry. Nor am I called to it. In the end, however, I lined up totally with one of Peterson’s excerpts:

Every few days or so another pastor gets out of bed and says, “That’s it. I quit. I refuse to be a branch manager any longer in a religious warehouse outlet. I will no longer spend my life marketing God to religious consumers. I have just read over the job description the culture handed me and I am buying it no longer.” Every few days another Jonah, realizing that his or her vocational disobedience is endangering everyone else, that this careerist professionalism is in large part responsible for the wretched character of American religion, says “take me up and throw me into the sea.”

One of the more poignant things I’ve internalized over the last year, as opposed to just reading and knowing the concept, is that a calling is bigger than a vocation [Aside: vocation's root word is vox, meaning call.]. Abraham wasn’t told, “Go start a big flock and get some employees.” His identity –his call– was bigger than that. He was the father of a nation and that impacted everything he did.

I’m still not sure what My Grand Calling is but I do know that I feel like I am living it out more in a bakery than in the confines of ministry. I feel it when I start a veggie co-op. I feel it when I talk about environmental stewardship with people. [Another aside: John 3:16 says that God loved the cosmos and gave it his son when you read the original Greek. If that's the case, I think it's safe to say that the way we treat the planet he gave us to rule over is a deeply spiritual, deeply christian issue.] I feel it when I tell stories, like this one.

I am out of the boat, swimming in the sea, and absolutely love it.