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September 2, 2002
Belabored
On Labor Day we rest.We are told that God rested, in the wake of Creation.
We are made in God’s image, and we too need respite from labors.
But work we must; for us, there is no standing still; no letting the timestream part around us; we have to work; we must exert, merely to exist.
And God?
The Gnostic among us will say that there is something telling in God’s need for rest; something belying the image of effortless omnipotence that attaches to deity.
If God were really God, rest would be unnecessary.
In fact, Creation, which is to say, effort, would be unnecessary.
The only thing God would have to do is to be, and that would be enough; that would be Plenty.
The encompassing, unmediated presence of God is the Plenitude.
We only hear about it as something rumored after death, but I don’t think it would be withheld, had God the power to deliver.
It can’t be granted, by God or to God; it must be worked for, and we are the tools through which the work is done.
Which pretty much means that we are the ones who have to do the work, with no more help from God than the basic grace of our existence.
So we labor.
For today, that we may take a day off, and for a future beyond effort, when the work is accomplished, and there is one eternal Holiday, when everything is right, and nothing more needs to happen.
That's going to take a lot of work.
Better rest up for it.