T-Shirt Wisdom

Yes­ter­day, when our Litur­gi­cal Dancers were per­form­ing at the local nurs­ing home, I noticed a worker with a pink t-shirt that has the three sum­mary phrases that cover entire courses in man­age­ment and much of the Ser­mon on the Mount (with a dose of Solomon tossed in for good mea­sure). The back of the t-shirt said, “Work Hard” — “Work Smart” — “Work Together” — and I have been think­ing about that ever since.

To top it off, I met the per­son (and I don’t give names in my arti­cles lest the press show up at their door), and she embod­ied the say­ings. Angels are peo­ple you meet each day along the way. She is surely one of them. I have always had a spe­cial place in my heart for nurs­ing home work­ers, and I think God does too. I have always felt that their names are at the top of the list in the Book of Life. Talk about “wash­ing feet” and doing good to the “least of these!” The t-shirt read:

Work hard! Proverbs says, “What­ever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might.” Good advice. Putting all of your heart into mun­dane tasks ele­vates them into super-hero actions. Plus, being half-hearted is a form of cyn­i­cism mixed with a trait of depres­sion. For some rea­son, we have to have all our soul in the ball­game.

Work smart! This applies all the more as we get older. We learn to go with the flow. It is an Ori­en­tal mar­tial arts prin­ci­ple. You use the energy of the aggres­sor to defeat the aggres­sor. Aging tells us to mas­ter it all by plant­ing seeds of energy here and there along the way, and let­ting the forces greater than our­selves do the really hard work.

Work together! Jesus sent out his evan­ge­lists “two by two” into the towns and vil­lages. Two head are bet­ter than one, and two hearts are all the more brave. Going it alone is for desert retreats and vision quests, not for accom­plish­ing great tasks. We humans were designed for com­pan­ion­ship in our work.

Get­ting the ego out of the way the is key. Not hav­ing to have the credit for an accom­plish­ment lends addi­tional energy towards the goal. We learn to bask in the out­come from the back row rather than the stage. God is a far bet­ter score keeper than we are. Divine applause is much louder and deeper than what you will ever find in a crowded sta­dium.

Read every­thing — includ­ing t-shirts and bumper stick­ers. Lis­ten to grand aca­d­e­mic lec­tures, chil­dren, and the birds chirp­ing out­side of your win­dow. There is wis­dom in it all.