LIFE COMMAS

Words by Joel Salatin.

Do you ever finish? No, not really. The old adage “A farmer works from sun to sun, but the woman’s work is never done” speaks to the untold expectations, demands, and busyness of life. Without strategy and structure, work can easily hurt ourselves, our families, and our spiritual development with an over-achieving, obligatory, frenzied mindset.

To come apart, to rest, to recharge requires setting a pace and creating memorials. To be sure, nobody perfectly balances life and work. Our vocations and household duties shape who we are and our life’s legacy accomplishments. Few of us want to be considered lazy or half-hearted workers.

When we greet each other, we don’t ask “What did you do last week to recharge your emotional batteries?” We ask simply, “What did you do?” The implication is that if we didn’t accomplish a project, we didn’t do anything. If we don’t have checkmarks down our To-Do list, we squandered our time. As humans, perhaps our greatest temptation is to be successful at good things and not the most important things.

The interchange between Jesus, Mary, and Martha challenges me as a borderline workaholic. That Jesus chides Martha for bustling about serving guests instead of sitting at his feet, like Mary, almost gets my hackles up. “Well, who do you expect to feed these folks? After all, Jesus, you’re here and all the folks want to see you, so somebody has to be hospitable to them, don’t you think?” That’s what I would say.

I don’t think Jesus is opposed to hospitality—in fact, it’s one of the gifts clearly designated by Paul. But Jesus, who could feed 5,000 with a little boy’s lunch box, could certainly take care of other needs. He wasn’t dependent on Martha’s busyness. Mary was focused on the moment, on immersing in something special. In this, we see both women had missions, but Jesus appreciated one more than the other.

You see, the tragedy of the human experience is not that we’re lazy, lack objectives, or are unsuccessful. The tragedy of the human experience is that too often we’re successful at the wrong things. We develop hydrogenated vegetable oil successfully and then find out it should never have been ingested—any of it. We develop glyphosate as a weed killer only to find out it’s carcinogenic and kills earthworms. My dad used to say that we humans are clever enough to invent and develop things we can’t physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually metabolize.

We invented fractional reserve banking. History is full of successful innovations that turned out to be a mistake. The question, then, is not whether or not we should invent, develop, and work, but what kind it should be. At the very least, whatever we’re working on should increase soil, breathable air, clean water, and functional immune systems. Known as “the commons,” these things measure God’s Return on Investment (ROI) in creation. The physical universe is all God’s stuff; increasing its vibrancy and functionality is a fundamental human purpose and mandate.

Specifically and practically, making a dead zone the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Mexico indicates tremendous success at destroying God’s stuff. How many people, for years, have devoted their life’s work toward making that dead zone possible? Does God care? Perhaps such a legacy is the result of too many Marthas and not enough Marys.

Being a Mary does not mean letting the cows go unmilked or eggs ungathered. It doesn’t mean letting the weeds take over the green beans. Don’t run away from the context. What it does mean is choosing the right thing at the right time for the right reason. It speaks to the why of our busyness. It dares to question the ultimate values that drive our mission. Farmers who send chemicals down the Mississippi to create the dead zone have a mission.

Their mission is defined by our culture’s agri-industrial orthodoxy, also known as official USDA policy. Here are some of those low-value missions: feed the world, cheap food, fewer farmers. May I suggest a different higher-value mission? How about building soil? Encourage earthworms? Increase nutrition? Develop more–and cleaner–water? Detoxify the environment? Build livestock immune systems? Give farmers access to neighbor customers by eliminating atrocious food police regulations?

I would suggest the first element in work-life balance is to eliminate the tension of purpose. Too often our vocations militate against what we know are higher purposes. My heart breaks for people who work for companies whose values don’t align with their personal values. “Well, it puts bread on the table,” seldom brings solace to the tormented soul. Abraham’s nephew Lot sitting in the gate of Sodom “vexed his righteous soul.” I’m incredibly grateful that I’m not growing chickens for an outfit that refuses to ask how to produce happy chickens. Or an outfit that stinks up the neighborhood and dumps poop in the streams.

For folks whose awareness now leads them to question their work situation, I appreciate your conundrum. But if you find your soul vexed, begin today looking for something that brings congruity to your belief-work life. If we’re honest with the deepest recesses of our soul, we know what feeds us versus what drains us. Finding what feeds us in all dimensions of life brings us to the foundation of balance because nothing imbalances us like constant tension between personal belief and public vocation.

In addition, few things are as enjoyable as complete symbiosis when our highest personal values express themselves through our daily work and vocation. In the sweet spot, our vocation becomes like a vacation. One of my mentors used to say, “If you have to take a vacation, don’t come back.” Another mentor told me that his life’s goal was to eventually get to a place where his daily routine did not require him to do anything he didn’t enjoy doing.

Unfortunately, Satan doesn’t take a break just because we get our beliefs and vocation aligned. He then tries to make us obsessive about our new-found noble and sacred work. He even tries to make us think God loves us more because we’re obsessed about it. That’s when I need the Mary challenge again. What is most needful?

May I suggest commas? In writing, a comma indicates a pause. When reading aloud, a comma indicates a good place to take a breath. Often it means a separation between closely related thoughts. But in its most fundamental form, it means a change of pace, a change of cadence. Too many people helter-skelter through the year in order to take a two-week vacation. We justify our busyness by anticipating the vacation. Here’s my confession: I’ve never taken a vacation. I’ve never been tempted to take a cruise, go to Disney, or go skiing. But I spend hours reading and visiting with people.

What I take are commas. God established a comma once a week. But even the rest day too often becomes the busiest day of the week. I recently spent time in Israel and enjoyed Shabbat with a Zionist family. Let me tell you, they know how to do a rest comma. My hostess had forgotten to bring in some tomato seedlings she had out on the back patio and suddenly realized it was going to frost. Her serious Levitical beliefs prohibited her from going out to rescue the seedlings. But then she mused, “I could wish for a Gentile to go out and bring them in.” I quickly rescued the flats by bringing them into the house and we had quite a laugh.

I’m convinced God’s plan for Sabbath and festivals was more about commas and memorials than extended vacations. Sprinkled throughout the year, these short interruptions were like signposts of celebration and rest. On our farm, we have several picnic spots. On the mountain, by the creek, in the backyard—these encourage commas in life. Rather than one big annual vacation, routine spontaneous commas a couple of hours long let everyone in the family know that right now, we’re going to focus on a relationship memorial.

Most of us as adults, thinking back on favorite childhood memories, find the best ones tucked along spontaneous commas. They weren’t major undertakings. They weren’t expensive. They were as simple as roasting hot dogs over a fire and finishing the evening off with s’mores. They were a simple picnic as part of a short outing. They were the lighthearted conversation around a hay wagon shoved under the barn roof just as the thunderstorm descended. Sometimes nature forces commas on us like that.

My dad had a habit of turning off the tractor after a frenzied hay-baling day, telling us to sit down and watch the sunset. A 30-minute comma. Some of the best commas are the ones commemorating a project’s completion. One of the ongoing rests that we began decades ago was celebrating the end of chicken processing with ice cream. We process in the morning, finishing by noon, and then clean up the scalder, kill cones, evisceration table, feathers, and guts for about an hour. With the freshly killed birds safely chilling in ice water and a cleaned-down floor, we all sit around and eat ice cream.

That’s a comma. And a memorial. Even though our crew is now far more than family and much bigger, we keep up the ice cream tradition. It’s a favorite comma and one of the best investments we make. You could call it a Mary moment.