Work is Love Made Visible

Submitted by Pam Shellberg, director of spiritual nourishment 

There have been many moments recently where our community has gathered in big numbers around several very special occasions. The sense of overflowing gratitude, joy and hope has been palpable. Palpable – and visible in the many photos people have taken in efforts to capture all that has been imprinted in memories and on hearts. 

One photo in particular touches me, because I was so deeply moved in the real time moment when it was taken. It is this photo of our new prioress, Sister Lynne Smith, standing alongside our new executive director, Erin Trondson, taken on the day of the spring solar tilt. 

I have been a coworker at Holy Wisdom Monastery for nearly two and a half years. My time here has coincided with the monastery’s coming out from all the constraints imposed by the pandemic, working through changes in organizational structures, anticipating a transition of leadership in the sisters’ community and the departure of one CEO and the arrival of a new executive director (with a substantial gap of time between the two). 

My experience of this time has been what I’d call a liminal time, to be sure. Betwixt and between. No longer but not yet. And as a relatively new coworker in a new position, I had more than a few days where I felt a little bit untethered in this liminal time and space. 

Sister Lynne’s election as the next prioress and Erin’s selection as our executive director is now a coinciding of a different kind, and I have already felt a tethering, a clarity of my own purposes emerging and a strong sense of moving through and beyond the liminal time.  

On the day of the solar tilt, seeing Sister Lynne and Erin side-by-side, my heart swelled a little bit – with joy, anticipation and confidence. Together they bring exceptional skill sets, gifts and talents, expertise, deep formation, wisdom. And yet, in that moment, what I saw – what I felt – was that the whole of their leadership, their work together, was going to be so much greater than the sum of those parts. 

Because what I saw in them, captured in this photo, is beautifully expressed in the words of Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran, who wrote this about ‘work’ in his book, The Prophet.  

     And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge, 
     And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge, 
     And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, 
     And all work is empty save when there is love; 
     And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. 
     And what is it to work with love? 
     It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear                    that cloth. 
     It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. 
     It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat
              the fruit.
     It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, 
     And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching. 
     Work is love made visible. 

So grateful my work in this place is joined to those whose love runs so visibly deep.