Your Labor is Sacred

Part 3 of the 4-part series, Unlearning Capitalism. To receive the entire series - which includes guided meditations and reflection prompts - in your inbox, sign up here.

The zodiac sign Virgo is most often symbolized by a virgin or a woman holding wheat. In ancient Greece and Rome, the constellation of Virgo was associated with the goddesses of agriculture and fertility: Demeter and Ceres. While Virgo’s connection to virginity is an artifact of the patriarchal cultures that astrology is rooted in, we can tease out a more nuanced version of this concept and feel into the wisdom that it holds.

Martin Shaw writes, “Within mythology, virginity can indicate a kind of truth teller, one not caught up in the lusty grunt of life’s intoxications but sharp minded, fresh with a certain spiritual clarity. It is less about abhorrence of sex, more some part of us ‘set apart’, invulnerable to the influence of the things of this world.” This mythological concept of virginity echoes the solitude and sanctity of The Hermit, an archetype that we touched on in the previous piece on Time. The virginal invitation of this season, then, is to honor the part of us that is sacred and separate from dominant culture. To pull away and touch into the mysteries of the Earth and the divine is to reclaim ourselves and our right to be here in a good way.

Part of that work is learning how to effort in pursuit of something worthy of that effort. To labor can certainly mean to toil and be burdened by activities that we are forced to do, but labor is also the word we use to describe the focus and power necessary in order to give birth to new life. Our labor - the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy we put into creating a desired state of things - is sacred because we are sacred. The labor of the Birds building their nests is sacred. The labor of the hunting Orcas is sacred. I don’t mean that the result of human labor is always sacred, but I do believe that the act of offering one’s vitality to something is a holy thing that should be recognized as such.

Origins of Labor Denigration

Most of us have a hard time really seeing or valuing our own labor. We dismiss or denigrate the ways that we tend to ourselves, our homes, our loved ones, and our communities. We constantly tell ourselves that it’s not enough - that our labor must be toilsome and unending, never cherished or nurtured. We abandon ourselves over and over again as we work to prove that we are worthy of love, recognition, and a paycheck. It’s no wonder, then, that we allow ourselves and workers all around the world to be abused, overwhelmed, and sent to early graves because of stress, overwhelm, or job-related illness and injury. We have forgotten our own sanctity.

This collective forgetting wasn’t inevitable and it doesn’t have to be permanent.

With the advent of agriculture, private property, and wage labor, human work began to be managed, evaluated, and in many ways was made meaningless. The effort that someone used to spend harvesting wheat for themselves and their community, for example, was now quantified and managed, worth a certain amount of money at the end of the day and shipped off to unknown consumers. As civilization and industry grew, the concept of labor became more and more narrow, limited to work deemed valuable by capitalists. Only that kind of labor, done for a certain period of time (say, 8 hours in a day), and in a certain way, was worthy of payment (or not, as in the case of slavery). In order for capitalism to take hold and grow, millions of people had to be forced to labor for things they did not care about. In her book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici writes “Significantly, the tendency of the capitalist class, during the first three centuries of its existence, was to impose slavery and other forms of coerced labor as the dominant work relation, a tendency limited only by the workers’ resistance and the danger of the exhaustion of the work-force.”

Some of us have ancestors who bore the full weight of this violent coercion. Others of us may have ancestors who were part of the ruling class that benefited most from the advent of capitalism. All of us have ancestors who were harmed by the shift to wage labor, capitalism, and eventual industrialization, and we are harmed still to this day. Capitalism will always need a vast and deep pool of abused workers in order for prices to remain low and consumption to remain high. Even if you don’t see yourself as someone who is forced to work, it may just be that you are a few layers removed from the most desperate laborers in our global community. Almost all of us, for much of our lives, are forced to perform labor in order to earn the money we need to live.

If we do not perform this labor, however boring, painful, inconvenient, or meaningless, we cannot purchase the food, homes, clothing, or medical care that we need in order to survive. Some of us have the immense privilege of making the most of this situation and can do work that is both meaningful and that produces an income. That is truly a gift. And, even those happy in their work have little choice in the fact that it must be done. Having been inside this system for so long, it’s no wonder that we have come to resent and diminish our labor. For many of us, our labor has become a prison. It’s something we have to do just so we can live.

How do we make sacred something that’s being forced upon us, as victims and co-creators of an unjust economic system?

Many of us have been forced to forget that our labor matters and needs to be balanced with rest and leisure. We’ve forgotten that our labor is not all that we are, and that if one cannot labor in the ways that others can, they should not be confined to poverty or a limited life. We’ve forgotten that our labor includes the love we pour into our children, our gardens, and our friendships. We’ve forgotten how to labor in rhythmic ways that are healthy for our bodies and souls. We’ve forgotten how delicious it is to labor in honor of something that is courageous, vibrant, and life-giving. We’ve lost our sacred labor in the tangle of capitalism and its oppressive cronies, and it is time to take it back.

If your labor is sacred (which it is), then you (and all people) deserve to offer it up in the ways that align with you. You deserve to share it with others in a safe environment, where it is appreciated and reciprocated. You deserve to have your needs met regardless of how you labor or for how long. I believe that, when held within a safe and supportive container, people are naturally creative, imaginative, and caring. Our labor is intrinsically regenerative, and it can be offered up in resistance to the harms of capitalism and in service of a future wherein this economic system no longer exists.

Reclaim Your Sacred Labor

“When we perform an action, the invisible within us finds a form and comes to expression. Therefore, our work should be the place where the soul can enjoy becoming visible and present. The rich unknown, reserved and precious within us, can emerge into visible form. Our nature longs deeply for the possibility of expression in what we call work.” - John O’Donohue

The hermit living off of the land and the priestess tending to a holy fire in a temple know that to labor is to worship. Their work is intimately tied to their connection with themselves and something greater than themselves: their human and more-than-human community. The hermit and the priestess don’t have a spiritual moment in the morning and then become absorbed by meaningless work for the rest of their days - their spirituality is the work, and the work is spiritual.

In the same way, your labor - the energy you exert to create beauty, nourishment, and care for yourself and others - can be a form of worship and communion with the natural world and the divine. This is possible no matter what you do for work, how others feel about your labor, or how much you’re paid to do it. Your labor can become sacred if you simply intend it to be so. And, you deserve to labor in the ways that work for your body and are a reflection of your soul’s giftedness.

If you’re in the trenches of work that feels denigrating and meaningless to you, I encourage you to start where you are and hold steady in the belief that you are entitled to a life that includes soulful expression, as John O’Donohue writes about in the quote above. I am using the word “entitled” intentionally there, because we have become so indoctrinated in capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic that many of us still hold the belief that toilsome labor is simply part of life - or worse, that it is virtuous in and of itself. This is not true. Suffering is part of life, yes. But ongoing drudgery for no long-term, meaningful purpose other than our base survival? That’s bondage.

In addition to focusing your energy on relating to your body and time as sacred, I’d like to offer you two entry points into reclaiming the sanctity of your labor:

1) Do less of what you don’t want to do.

Your organization, your manager, and even your clients, no matter how wonderful they are, are steeped in a capitalist ethos and will likely try to get as much from you as they can, for as little as they can. This doesn’t make them evil, it just makes them a part of the system we’re trying to unlearn and disentangle from. If you receive an income through work that does not feel like it honors the wild spirit of you, it is okay to put as little effort into that work as possible.

I’ll say that again: it is okay to coast or do just enough to not get fired.

I understand that this may be an unpopular opinion and that you may believe I’m endorsing laziness or entitlement. Before you write me off as another annoying Millenial, please take a moment and breathe into the mindfuck of modern capitalism, which has convinced us not to expect more than our very comfortable chains. You are a wild being who evolved to follow your intuition, your desires, and the rhythms of the land. You are an unbound spirit in a body, who needs clean air, clean water, shelter, food, and care, for free, because no man can own the resources of the Earth. When you consider who is benefiting from your labor and the true cost of this system, which separates us from each of those needs I just mentioned, doesn’t it seem reasonable to mail it in when you need to?

2) Start doing more of what you want to do.

The energy you put into making your life is vital, precious, and it can show you where it wants to go. You have a finite amount of energy each day, so it’s important to do less of what the system demands of you and more of what honors who you really are. What you want to do today may not seem related to a larger calling or a pathway out of capitalism, but it absolutely is. The more that you can give your labor in service to something greater than the GDP, the less power this system has over you.

Your morning rituals, your need for a nap or a walk, your desire to take an hour to tend to your houseplants or a pet - all of these are expressions of your sacred labor. With a bit of intention behind them, they become potent declarations of the kind of life you want to live.

What you want to do is the house of your giftedness.

Give it life. Live there. Build your trust in it.

Megan LeathermanSeptember 5, 2023Comment