With summer well underway, I know many people are already heading off on long awaited vacations – to the beach or the mountains, for cruises or family gatherings. Our Abbey campus is no different, with faculty and staff taking advantage of the comparative quiet to book travels or simply enjoy a few long weekends before classes begin again in August. But as we look forward to our various summer adventures, the prospect has made me think not just about work and leisure but more particularly about the difference between fruitfulness and productivity.
I suspect this is something many of us struggle with. In our work-oriented culture, we’ve been trained to believe that if we’re not producing something or bringing about immediately tangible results, we’re not doing enough. We need to accomplish some number of concrete objectives before we feel that we’ve justified our time. But the busier we are, the harder it is to make time for anything “unproductive”… and when we do block off a week for vacation, it can take days to reset and actually embrace the opportunity to rest.
Certainly productivity is important in the exercise of our day-to-day lives. It’s good to complete tasks and to seek to do so well: whether cooking a family dinner or drafting an email to a colleague, creating a spreadsheet or mowing the lawn, paying the electric bill or finishing a homework assignment. These are among the means by which we respond faithfully to our states in life – the places and circumstances through which God calls us in small and large ways.
But while visible productivity can be an encouraging gift, it can also be tempting to view such periods with a kind of complacency that attributes the good to our own efforts. When we can’t see the concrete result of these efforts, we’re being invited to turn to God and affirm the essential reality that all true fruit comes by His grace.
Ultimately, the Benedictine emphasis on ora et labora, prayer and work, reminds us that, as important as faithful effort is, it’s only half (and the secondary half) of the equation… and we are so much more than the sum of our productivity. We are made to love and serve, part of which is resting in conversation and in silence with the beloved.
During those periods when even making time for prayer – with so many things going on in our lives and work – is an act of trust, try to remember that placing ourselves in God’s presence, even for a moment, may not “produce” anything concrete, but by His grace it always bears eternal fruit.
No matter how much you make or how far you fall short of your own aspirations… you are deeply, eternally loved. And the God who loves you will always bring about true fruitfulness in the life that seeks Him. In the end, He’s the only one who can.
All will be well.
