Art is a redeeming force. It permeates calloused hearts and invigorates the darkest soul. Art can fill dark places with light, and it can be the medium of true change in a person’s life.
The liturgy of any church—music, prayer, preaching—is full of art. Church is chock full of poetry, song, pictures, memories, and story.
The liturgy of any home—hospitality, decor, chores, routine—is full of wonder. The home, is a place of grace, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, mystery, longing, good food, fellowship, laughter, design, and paintings.
The liturgy of the workplace, the common cubicle, is, well…
Is there art there? Is there life there? What, if any, redeeming force lives inside those carpeted walls?
Liturgy for the common cube is a way to remember that more happens at work than stapling, collating, typing, and coffee drinking. The common cube is a place many people spend a tremendous amount of time in… so why can’t it be part of the rest of the week, home and church, and give us glimpses of wonder and art?
How do we begin to form a liturgy of the common cube?
1) It’s a safe place to pray. Don’t let work be separated from “life.” Work is a part of life. So treat it like life and let yourself pray in the cube. You don’t need candles, an altar, or Hillsong United. I have a digital prayerbook sitting on my computer’s desktop that I can open and go through at noon each day. This helps me see work as just one part of my day the same as the others.
2) Surround yourself with wonderful things. The common cube is the modern day whitewashed fence. It’s utilitarian at its finest. Setting, as any good designer or writer knows, creates a mood. Don’t let yourself succumb to the utilitarian mindset the cube wants you to have. Fight back. Give your cube some flair. On my desk right now I have a Dodgers bobble head smiling at me, a french press, a fair trade poster, multiple pictures of my wife, a newspaper clipping from the Giants Super Bowl victory and ten Dilbert comics tacked to the wall. In other words, make your cube look like a dorm room, and you’ll change your mood.
3) Don’t compartamentalize. Cube culture is all about little islands of privacy amidst the ocean of productivity. We’re placed into a compartment that is separate enough to be productive in but not removed enough to not be distracted. We must fight against the temptation to think of the cube as a place where life stops and work starts. All of life is vocation, our duty before God. We might not think this is the best duty in the world, but each day time spent in a cube is a paragraph in the story of our lives. What we do in the cube does not stay in the cube—it effects our home life and church life.
It may be hard at first, but the cube can be redeemed and filled with wonder. Start slow, see what works for you, and be open how “just a day job” is part of God’s story in your life.
Editor’s Note: Read more from Thom at his network blog Everyday Liturgy.
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I like this “All of life is vocation, our duty before God. “. Very true and well stated. I don’t actually work in a cube anymore. However, “What we do in the cube does not stay in the cube” this is true regardless of our own workplace.
Thanks
Bill
thanks for this post. i think i hear one of my favorite writers here, wendell berry, only from an urban landscape.
your call to set aside everyday experience as holy — e.g. washing dishes or stapling papers — has a long history as an ancient practice of the christian church. interestingly, it also has a long history in nature writing. bill mckibben wrote a book several years ago called, “wandering home.” in that book he called us to look at the experience of nature as holy (my words not his). this idea really stuck with me. and, of course, wendell berry is the master here.
this idea of the everyday task as holy may be rooted in what the old timers used to call the “lordship of christ,” which i understand to mean that, for the follower of the jesus-way, the christ is lord over all of life — including, for example, our cube life or our home life.
what you write offers us a way to make holy each day, and not just some pounding-rush through it without thought. i think this is important & good & a critical reminder for me. again, thanks.
Great post, Thom. And great comments. You even got a trackback, sweet!
Bill picked up on “What we do in the cube does not stay in the cube.”
That is true–and it works both ways. What we do at home follows us into the office and then church and then to the grocery store…
Like Mark Powell said, each day is holy, each moment is holy, and each moment is connected to all moments.
Mark P, thanks for mentioning that book. I just ordered it from my library.
Thom, I wonder if you would like some of the philosophy and information in the books Last Child in the Woods and Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Both delve into the natural need we have not to sit around in a grey cube day after day. The design implications are fascinating (and in the second book, there’s a wonderful description of a factory that was built with some of these issues in mind… on a simple business level, all this affects productivity… then of course there is the issue of basic joy.)
Thought-provoking piece, Thom, dense with practical truth.
Fascinating, the connection between art and liturgy and a “life of one-piece.” Isn’t art our endless, natural response to the beauty of God? His beauty saturates all of existence — if we have eyes to see — and we answer Him in his own anguage: art, beauty, creating.
Changes one’s paradigm to think that all we do, everyday, can be an act of art, echoing His Daily Art.
My gratitude for sharpening, Thom…
Thom, what insightful thoughts. As a dweller in my own prairie dog habitat, I’m frequently challenged to do just what you talk about here, “fight against the temptation to think of the cube as a place where life stops and work starts.” The idea that we separate out work from the rest of life, or any part of life from the rest of life, needs to be challenged as you’ve done here. We have to see the connections better. Thanks for sharing this.
(I have my own collection of Dilbert cartoons, by the way, next to my kids’ pictures, choice quotes from Ted Dekker and John Ortberg, and a few pointed reminders from the Word of what life in, and out, of the cube is all about.)
Thanks Thom, way to inspire thoughts!
I too share in keeping thought provoking quotes, family pictures and and a few assorted cartoons posted that I often peruse daily. They are there like old friends, markers that God speaks to me through.
All thanks for the comments.
Mark P—I am a huge Berry fan and advocate of his thinking, particularly in an urban setting. The Essential Agrarian Reader is, well, essential for understanding how Berry’s thought is branching out into new urbanisms and ruralities.
L.L.—Thanks for the book suggestions. I’ll be adding them to my wish list.
Thom, and now I’m looking into The Essential Agrarian Reader! My favorite Berry is an old one: The Gift of Good Land
Good post. I’ve written your quote “All of life is vocation, our duty before God” on the little notice board on my cube to consider deeply and often. Oh don’t worry… I’ll give you credit each time I quote it to others.
The teaching/truth has gripped my heart about four years back about work also being part of my duty towards God. After becoming a Christian, I was afraid of the work that I used to do (Audit) especially in the cultural setting that I am in as they expected us to approve of frauds and misstatements. I allowed a mental block to set in and was unemployed for some time (this was main reason for me being unemployed).
But God pulled me back to work, taught me as to how I should do everything for the Lord. The Lord gave me the type of work where I dont have to wrong stuff and also beause I dont do unethical things, my growth is stifled. Being a witness to the Lord Jesus in the workplace is the most satisfying and the first factor that influences me there. The Lord will give an increase in His time. Our Christian world vew, however, inconsistent with the outside world’s thinking will influence people for Christ.
God bless you all.
I love practicing the liturgy of the common cube. It absolutely transforms the workplace.