The Good in Brick Laying

Last week I spent back at my parents helping my father with some jobs around their house.  It was a planned week to break free of my normal routine, get out of my head a bit, and reset - to say it was needed might be an understatement.

We moved dirt and laid bricks - lots of them.  My hands became rough, my body ached and through it all between tasks and lunch breaks my thoughts wondered - on the person who lays brick for a living to what is the greater meaning of vocation, amongst other things.

So today, what is the good news of brick laying (subcategory: what is the greater meaning of vocation for a person and for a people?)?And I won't even unpack that Jesus was probably a mason (i.e. brick layer) and not a carpenter. There is a scene from Good Will Hunting that quickly came to mind, in which the protagonist, Will, is in a session with his therapist, Sean, who is pushing him to articulate where he hopes to be, to do, and ultimately where he feels his life is headed:

Sean: You can do anything you want, you are bound by nothing. What are you passionate about? What do you want? I mean, there are guys who work their entire lives laying brick so their kids have a chance at the opportunities you have here.

Will: I didn't ask for this.

Sean: No, you were born with it. So don't cop out behind "I didn't ask for this".

Will: What do you mean 'cop out'? What's wrong with laying brick?

Sean: Nothing.

Will: There's nothing. That's somebody's home I'm building.

Sean: Right, my dad laid brick. Busted his ass so I could have an education.

Will: Exactly, that's an honorable profession. What's wrong with fixing somebody's car? Someone can get to work the next day because of me. There's honor in that.

Sean: Yeah, there is. And there's honor in taking that forty minute train so those college kids can come in the morning and have the floors clean and the waste baskets empty. That's real work. And that's honorable. Sure that's why you took that job, for the 'honor' of it.

I just have a little question here. You could be a janitor anywhere. Why did work at the most prestigious technical college in the whole world? And why did you sneak around at night and finish other people's formulas that only one or two people in the world could do and then lie about it? 'Cause I don't see a lot of honor in that, Will.

So what do you really want to do?

What are you passionate about? What do you want to do? These are questions that more recent generations of Americans have had the privilege of asking and considering.  They, we have been both freed and bound by these possibilities.  No longer are we attempting to figure out what one single trade we might pursue and instead have the world at our feet.   We seek honor and meaning - our vocation does not define us but it does speak to the world who we are.

We may not be a brilliant mind like Will - but we all have passions. From artist to the bricklayer, our work and our vocation have the ability to allow us to come alive in ways we  often only realize in hindsight.  We might hate the toil the work does on our bodies but the satisfaction of a job well done,  that our simple act has the ability to empower someone else to do their job reminds us of some thing greater.

We struggle to accept this, don't we? We struggle to fully engage the life, the person, we were meant to be.  We doubt and are reluctant to name that thing for fear of the broader implications it has on our lives. If we were ask the people closest to us, they would tell us who we are when we aren't trying.

They may say - connector, socialite, thinker, builder, artist, writer, listener, caregiver, or cook among other things.

These are broad terms.  But when we see them at work, when those close friends experience us living into who we really are we all celebrate, we all come alive in some greater manner.  The more you live, work, and be who you truly are empowers those around you to do the same because it challenges us all to move beyond the facade we have come to live into.

That is the good news of brick laying - that is the good news of what we do, our vocation.

We forget that. Will forgot that until the blunt words from his bestfriend, Chuckie, was he was able to realize that his fear of living into the person everyone saw him as was selfish and even pained/frustrated his friend.

Chuckie: Look, you're my best friend, so don't take this the wrong way but, in 20 years if you're still livin' here, comin' over to my house, watchin' the Patriots games, workin' construction, I'll kill ya. That's not a threat, that's a fact, I'll kill ya'.

Will: What you talkin' about?

Chuckie: You got somethin' none of us have...

Will: Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don't want to?

Chuckie: No. No, no no no. You don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do anything to have what you got. So would any of these guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a waste of your time.

You owe it to yourself.

You owe it to me.

I owe it to you.

We owe it to one another to lean into our passions, to take pride in the skills we have been given.  For in doing, we help to usher some thing greater than us all and this is only possible together - and some might even call this the Kingdom.