The Work I Love

Giorgio Ramondetta views Jan van de Cappelle’s Shipping in a Calm at Flushing with a States General Yacht Firing a Salute (1649) at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

It’s Wednesday, and the week is almost half over. I’ve spent only one day in the office so far, but it was a very busy one. Today will likely be no different. In fact, I doubt there will be a single day this week when I find myself wondering what to do. Emails, meetings, training sessions, and preparations for upcoming classes are more than enough to fill my days.

Don’t think I’m complaining. I love being busy with these kinds of tasks. They make the day pass much faster. I often become so absorbed in what I’m doing that when I finally look at the clock, I’m surprised by how much time has passed. If my days were filled with activities I dreaded, it would be altogether different. Instead, much of what I’m doing this week—and, I hope, throughout the semester—is the part of my job I enjoy most.

Things are not perfect at work, but I genuinely love the work I do.

Part of my job involves welcoming our guests. Sometimes it is a special dignitary visiting campus who wants a tour of the museum. Other times it is a scholar who has come to speak as part of our lecture series, and I have the opportunity to entertain them, show them some of Vermont, and take them out to dinner. It is a role for which I am particularly well suited. Being from the South and growing up in an environment where good manners and hospitality were expected prepared me well for this aspect of my job. I have a reputation within the university for being able to welcome and entertain dignitaries, while our museum has earned a wider reputation among some prestigious cultural institutions for the hospitality we provide our guests. I take a great deal of pride in that.

Then there is the academic side of my job. I get to teach history through artifacts. In some classes, I teach students how to analyze and interpret objects. Sometimes, I tell the history of particular artifacts, while other sessions involve tours of the museum or its collections. Each class is different, and each gives me another opportunity to help students understand that objects are more than simply things displayed behind glass. They can reveal stories about the people who made, owned, used, exchanged, or preserved them.

I enjoy working with our students because, for the most part, they are well behaved, polite, and willing to engage. Best of all, I get to teach and prepare lessons without having to grade papers and exams, which was always the bane of my existence when I taught in a more traditional setting. I receive the parts of teaching that I love without being burdened by the part I dreaded most.

Of course, there are difficult personalities to contend with from time to time. I’m not paid enough, and there are certainly mornings when I would rather remain at home with Isabella. No job—and no workplace—is perfect. Still, when I consider the work itself, I know how fortunate I am.

After all, how many people can genuinely say, “I love the work I do”?

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The Cocoon

The Cocoon

By Robert Frost

As far as I can see this autumn haze
That spreading in the evening air both ways,
Makes the new moon look anything but new,
And pours the elm-tree meadow full of blue,
Is all the smoke from one poor house alone
With but one chimney it can call its own;
So close it will not light an early light,
Keeping its life so close and out of sight
No one for hours has set a foot outdoors
So much as to take care of evening chores.
The inmates may be lonely women-folk.
I want to tell them that with all this smoke
They prudently are spinning their cocoon
And anchoring it to an earth and moon
From which no winter gale can hope to blow it,—
Spinning their own cocoon did they but know it.

About the Poem

There is a difference between loneliness and solitude, though from the outside they can look very much the same. Frost’s speaker sees a small, isolated house at dusk. No lamp has been lit, no one has come outside, and even the evening chores appear to have been neglected. He imagines that the people inside—perhaps “lonely women-folk”—have withdrawn from the world.

Yet the chimney tells another story. The house may be quiet and its inhabitants hidden, but there is a fire burning within. Its smoke does not simply rise and disappear; it spreads across the evening sky, softening the new moon and filling the meadow with blue. Something produced by one poor and seemingly insignificant house transforms the entire landscape.

That image changes the meaning of the house’s isolation. The people within are not merely shutting themselves away. Without realizing it, they are “spinning their cocoon,” creating a place of warmth and protection against the winter soon to come. The cocoon is delicate, but Frost imagines it anchored to both earth and moon so securely that no winter gale can carry it away.

We often speak of withdrawing into ourselves as though it were always unhealthy. Sometimes it is. Loneliness can become its own kind of winter, especially when we feel forgotten or disconnected from the lives continuing beyond our walls. However, there are also times when retreat is necessary. We need places where we can close the door, kindle a fire, and shelter ourselves from what is cold and exhausting outside.

A cocoon is not merely a hiding place. It is where a living thing protects itself while undergoing a transformation. From the outside, nothing may appear to be happening. Inside, however, life is quietly preparing for what comes next. Rest and solitude are not always signs that we have stopped living; sometimes they are how we gather the strength to begin again.

Perhaps the most comforting part of the poem is that the people inside the house do not realize what they have created. “Did they but know it,” Frost writes. We may not always recognize the warmth, safety, and resilience of the small life we have built for ourselves. We may see only four walls and feel that the world has passed us by. Someone looking from a distance, however, might see our chimney smoke spreading across the sky—a quiet sign that there is still warmth within us and that our small lives touch more of the world than we know.

“The Cocoon” is composed of sixteen lines arranged in eight rhyming couplets. Frost’s steady meter and paired rhymes give the poem a feeling of enclosure: each line is joined to another, much as the house and its inhabitants are wrapped within the cocoon of smoke.

The poem also gradually expands its scale. It begins with an autumn haze spread across the evening sky, then traces that haze back to the chimney of a single house. Having narrowed our attention from the sky to the home, Frost expands the image once more. The smoke connects this otherwise isolated dwelling to the meadow, the earth, and even the moon. What initially appears small and lonely becomes part of something immense.

The cocoon metaphor also contains a subtle promise. Winter is approaching, but a cocoon suggests that winter will not last forever. Within its shelter lies the possibility of survival, transformation, and eventual emergence.

“The Cocoon” was first published in The New Republic in February 1927 and later included in Frost’s 1928 collection West-Running Brook.

About the Poet

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. Following his father’s death in 1885, Frost moved with his mother and sister to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Although born in California, he became closely associated with rural New England, whose farms, forests, villages, and changing seasons provided the settings for much of his poetry.

Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard University but did not earn a degree. Over the years, he worked as a teacher, farmer, cobbler, and newspaper editor while continuing to write poetry. In 1912, he moved with his family to England, where his first two collections, A Boy’s Will and North of Boston, were published. By the time he returned to the United States in 1915, he had established the literary reputation that would make him one of America’s best-known poets.

Although Frost often used traditional meter, rhyme, rural settings, and conversational language, his poems are rarely as simple or comforting as they first appear. Beneath their familiar landscapes are questions about isolation, grief, human relationships, mortality, and our uncertain place in the natural world. He received four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry and served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959. Frost lived and taught for many years in both Massachusetts and Vermont. He died in Boston on January 29, 1963.

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A Lazy Labor Day

It’s Labor Day, which means a holiday from work—and you really shouldn’t have to work on a holiday that celebrates workers.

Isabella got me up at an ungodly hour to feed her, but afterward, I went back to bed. I could sleep in today, so that’s exactly what I did. As I write this, I’m obviously awake, but I still haven’t gotten out of bed. I haven’t decided whether to take care of the hard dilemma at hand, go back to sleep, or get up and make coffee. Whatever I choose, it’s nice knowing the choice is entirely mine.

Have a great Labor Day, everyone!

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Come to Me

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

—Matthew 11:28

Labor Day weekend is often treated simply as the unofficial end of summer. It gives many people a three-day weekend, one last opportunity to travel, gather with friends, cook outdoors, or rest before autumn begins in earnest. Yet the holiday has a deeper purpose. Labor Day was established to honor the contributions of workers and grew out of the labor movement’s struggle for fair wages, reasonable hours, safer workplaces, and humane treatment.

These concerns are not separate from our faith. The Bible repeatedly affirms the dignity of labor, commands justice for workers, and reminds us that no human being should be valued only for what he or she can produce.

Work itself is not a punishment. Before humanity’s fall, God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Human beings were created to cultivate, create, care for, and contribute to the world around us. Honest work can give us purpose, allow us to serve others, and make use of the gifts God has given us. As Colossians 3:23 tells us, “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.”

But the Bible does not praise work without limits. Scripture also condemns those who exploit workers or deny them the fruits of their labor. Deuteronomy 24:14 commands, “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy,” while the following verse instructs employers to pay workers promptly because they depend upon their wages. James offers an even harsher warning: “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth” (James 5:4).

God hears the cries of those who are overworked, underpaid, mistreated, or regarded as disposable. A person’s labor may be bought, but that person’s dignity never can be. The worker behind a counter, the person cleaning an office after everyone else has gone home, the farmworker harvesting our food, the nurse finishing an exhausting shift, and the teacher carrying work home at night are all created in the image of God. Their worth does not depend upon their job title, salary, education, or social standing.

Jesus Himself knew what it meant to labor. Before beginning His ministry, He worked as a carpenter. His disciples included fishermen who understood long hours, physical exhaustion, and the uncertainty of whether their work would provide enough. When Jesus spoke to ordinary people, He did not speak from the comfort of a palace. He lived among those who worked with their hands, struggled to provide for their families, and knew what it meant to be weary.

That makes His invitation in Matthew especially powerful: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

The burdens Jesus described were not limited to physical labor. He was speaking to people weighed down by sin, sorrow, fear, religious demands, and the struggles of life. Nevertheless, His words speak to every kind of weariness. Some burdens come from our employment, while others come from caring for family, worrying about money, living with illness, hiding part of ourselves, or trying to meet expectations that no human being could ever satisfy. Some people carry burdens invisible to everyone around them.

Christ does not tell the weary to work harder so that they might finally deserve His care. He simply says, “Come unto me.”

Our culture often treats exhaustion as evidence of virtue. We admire people who are constantly busy and sometimes feel guilty when we are not accomplishing something. Even rest can become another task to perform correctly. Yet God never intended us to labor without ceasing. After six days of creation, God rested. The Sabbath was given not because God needed humanity to become more productive, but because human beings need restoration. Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

Rest is not laziness. It is an acknowledgment that we are human and have limits. We need sleep, quiet, recreation, companionship, prayer, and time in which our value is not measured by our productivity. Rest reminds us that the world continues to turn even when we stop working because ultimately the world rests in God’s hands, not ours.

This Labor Day, we should be grateful for the work others do and mindful of those whose labor is too often overlooked. We should support fairness, safety, dignity, and adequate compensation for every worker. We should also remember that God does not love us because of what we accomplish. Our jobs may describe part of what we do, but they do not define who we are.

Jesus continues His invitation by saying, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.” A yoke ordinarily represents work, but Christ promises that we do not have to bear it alone. “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29–30).

God does not promise us a life without labor or responsibility. He promises His presence within it. He calls us to work honestly, treat workers justly, help carry one another’s burdens, and recognize when it is time to rest.

Whether this weekend finds us working, relaxing, caring for others, or simply trying to make it through another difficult day, Christ’s invitation remains the same:

Come to Me.

Bring Me your work, your worries, your exhaustion, and every burden you were never meant to carry alone.

And I will give you rest.

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Moment of Zen: Football 🏈

Football season is finally here, and these guys are ready to leave it all on the field—quite literally. Now, this is what I call a winning formation.

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