Retirement at Forty?
“Yes, you can retire before your 40th birthday.” So tooted Kate Ashford in an article that appeared recently on the BBC web site. I didn’t bother to read the entire article, because I don’t read science fiction. But it did prompt me to pose a couple of questions that I wish Ms. Ashford would tackle for me. First, where were you with your grand advice when I turned forty? And second, had I taken your advice, what in the world was I supposed to do with the rest of my years, other than dream about getting my old job back?
Perhaps you too have noticed the cultural inconsistencies in our attitudes toward work. As good fortune would have it, I found myself in France on May 1st — May Day — the day on which people in the socialist tradition honor work and the proletariat that does it. I couldn’t help but notice that an awful lot of people failed to show up for work that day. But I shouldn’t have been surprised, since that’s how we celebrate Labor Day in the U.S. If we were true to our convictions, on Labor Day we should work to the point of exhaustion, or at least two or three hours into overtime. But we don’t. Instead of finding another day to fritter away, we celebrate Labor Day by doing the complete opposite.
Our attitudes toward labor no doubt have roots in our religious traditions, though common misperceptions still prevail. Not a few still believe that capitalism rose from the Calvinist work ethic of the Low Countries. But don’t tell that to the merchants of Renaissance Italy. They may have celebrated the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi with special gusto one day a year, but on the other days they imitated his father. As far as the merchants were concerned, Francis’s hard-working and long-suffering father was the real saint in that family.
Saint Benedict, of course, predated those Renaissance merchants by many centuries, but in so many ways there is a kinship that exists among them. For his day, Saint Benedict managed to be both practical and idealistic in his teaching on work, so much so that he seems somewhat misplaced in the sixth century. In an era in which Roman attitudes toward work (bad) and leisure (good) still prevailed, Benedict expounded the value and sanctity of work. “They are truly monks when they live by the work of their own hands.” Such a concept likely sent shivers down the spines of the idle nobility, but it also left out in the cold those who had to till the fields. In a subsistence economy in which those who did not work did not eat, such encouragement was scarcely necessary.
Ever the practical man, Benedict also saw the positive value of work, a point that has carried great weight in monastic circles ever since. As monks have tended to notice, monasteries both then and now can make use of any and all of the talents that novices might bring with them to the cloister. And within any community, be it monastic or otherwise, every bit of talent and every bit of work counts for something. We all depend on each other so that everything gets done, and that the tasks be done by the people who can do them far better than I. That’s the point and the benefit of living in community.
That all sounds pretty reasonable, but Benedict also knew that work was an effective antidote to getting into mischief. He did not devote a chapter in his Rule to the aphorism that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” but he certainly knew it to be true. For that reason, work was also utilis occupatio — useful activity. That was not the noblest of incentives to get a monk’s nose to the grindstone, but it had the desired effect of curbing gossip, backbiting and the like. So if work kept a monk on the straight and narrow, fine. If it made a monk happy, even better. And if by chance it allowed a monk to demonstrate his love and support for his fellows in community, then best of all.
Most monks in most monasteries have their default buttons set to work, above and beyond all other activities in the monastery. And that explains why one scenario will never occur in any abbey, anywhere. If our abbot — or any abbot, for that matter — were to stand up and announce to the community that retirement at forty was now optional, we’d all laugh. If he got up to announce that retirement at forty was now mandatory, then we’d vote him out of office that very day. And then we’d have a really good laugh again. For we know full well that we are truly monks when we live by the work of our own hands. And of all the chapters in the Rule of Saint Benedict, that perhaps is the easiest one to live out.
Notes
+During my recent time in France, I had the chance to visit with one of my first students at Saint John’s University, Jack Ehlers. Jack’s story is by no means unique these days, but it dizzies me to think about his life since graduation as a chemistry major. After Saint John’s Jack earned an MBA at NYU, married and lived in the Bay Area, where he worked for Paypal. Paypal took Jack and his family to Luxemburg four years ago, and just this month he took a position with Alipay in Europe, part of Alibaba of China. At school and on the playground Jack’s two children speak Luxemburgish. At home they speak English, when they want to include Jack in the conversation; but they can also venture into French and German. They switch into Mandarin when their grandmother visits from China, of course. For his part, Jack rates his skills in English as arguably the best in the family; and in French his skills are not so bad, as I can attest. To put our mutual facility in English to best advantage, we met in nearby Trier, where we ordered lunch in German. Considering that Jack grew up in Los Angeles and Detroit Lakes, MN, his life continues on the most unexpected of trajectories.
+The pictures in today’s post illustrate the architectural cornucopia that is Trier. Sited near the French border, Trier boasts some astounding remains from the days when it served as the northern capital of the Roman Empire. The first of the photos is the ancient Roman gate, which had to astound the barbarians who came calling in later centuries. Throughout the city are amazing structures from the Middle Ages and later, while little touches of piety abound all over the place. In Trier lived the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena; and among other famous residents were Saints Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria; Martin of Tours; and Jerome. Saint Ambrose of Milan was born there; but in later centuries the creativity wore thin. In the 19th century citizens were left to boast that Karl Marx had been born there. Along with a small museum, a woman’s fashion house is all that bears his name today.
