Comic Spirituality

Coyote is a key trickster figure in Native American mythology. He’s a shape shifter, part human and part animal, combining within himself all that makes up the human character. In numberless exploits, he is portrayed as greedy and gluttonous, thieving and lecherous. Clever and foolish at the same time. Yet he is the one who created the world, created people, stole sun and moon and the seasons and made them available to the people he created, shaped the very character of the land. 

Here’s one story about this fascinating being: Coyote is sealed up in a hollow log as punishment for some trick he played. Once again, he’s been too smart for his own good. So he’s caught in this log and he tries with all his own personal power to escape but it’s useless, he can’t move an inch, the fit is too tight. He’s stuck.

Which makes what happens next so ironic. There he is, stuck in the log with no way out, and all of a sudden he hears the sound of a woodpecker pecking away at the hollow log. And while you’d think that Coyote would be overjoyed at this possibility of release, he’s cranky instead. “What a racket!” he says to himself. “What an irritating sound,” he says. Doesn’t even occur to him that Woodpecker was going to be his salvation. He just hates all the noise. So he shouts at Woodpecker to get away. “Stop that!” Luckily, Woodpecker keeps on pecking. He can’t hear Coyote shouting from within the log. He keeps on pecking away until he’s drilled a small hole that lets in a bit of the light.

And Coyote sees the light—in more ways than one. Suddenly he’s not at all irritated by the sound. Now he wants more of it! He starts shouting again, but this time, it’s to say, “Hurry up! Get me out of here!”

But now that there’s a hole, Woodpecker can hear Coyote more clearly, and Coyote’s shouting scares him away. He just flies away. It’s only when Coyote begins to appreciate the humor of his situation and disengages from all his anger and irritation and just shuts up that Woodpecker feels safe enough to come back and start pecking at the log again, according to a pace and a rhythm that is natural for him. Coyote just shuts up. Doesn’t say another word. Just waits until enough of the log is pecked away, and he is free, and then … he laughs! 

For me, a story like this suggests some of the central themes of comic spirituality, which is what I want to talk about today. Comic spirituality is about being at home in the world amidst all its conflicts and struggles and dangers. Comic spirituality counters the temptations of the tragic point of view. Comic spirituality also says that, when life is at its worst (or when it just happens to be another round of Daylight Savings), a sense of humor saves. Laughter saves. Asbestos gelos. The person and the community and the world that laughs, lasts.

One of the things I love about Coyote stories is that they give us a behind-the-scenes look at how things came to be and how they are—which is playful. Coyote represents an unquenchable lust for being and life, and he creates and acts out of this lust, but he does not do this like the God of the Hebrew Bible, who always seems to know what he is doing and has everything in control. Coyote acts, but he is vulnerable to the surprising and unexpected consequences of his actions, so he can find himself stuck in a jam, and he’s got to figure a way out, and he does, and this results in yet another close call, leading to yet another burst of creativity, and on and on, and such is the process of the evolution of the world. Not by long-range planning—design established from the very beginning and then executed ideally without flaw—but experimentation, throwing yourself into it, seeing what happens next, facing loose ends and incongruities, experiencing breathtaking beauty and meaning but only to the degree you expose yourself to risk and therefore to pain. Shrugging shoulders at this fact of life; perhaps even laughing at the joy and absurdity of it all….

This is what Coyote stories reveal to us, as they take us behind-the-scenes of our everyday here-and-now. The heart of reality is not serious, but playful. Incongruity and pain are an integral part of the deal; sometimes it’s our fault, sometimes it’s not, and our best bet is to stay cool—to resist nurturing resentments and rage—to go with the flow, stay creative and loose. “One day,” goes another story, “Coyote was walking along. The sun was shining brightly, and Coyote felt very hot. ‘I would like a cloud,’ he said, so a cloud came and made some shade for Coyote. But he was not satisfied. ‘I want more clouds,’ he said, and more clouds came along, and the sky began to look very stormy. But Coyote was still hot. ‘How about some rain?” he said, and the clouds began to sprinkle rain. ‘More rain,’ Coyote demanded. The rain became a downpour. But now Coyote wanted a creek to put his feet in, so a creek sprang up beside him, and Coyote walked in it to cool off his feet.’ It should be deeper, said Coyote, and so the creek became a huge, swirling river, and now Coyote got more than he bargained for. He found himself swept up into the currents, rolled over and over, thrown up on the bank far away, nearly drowned. When he woke up, he saw buzzards circling him, trying to decide if he was dead, and he shooed them off. He looked around him. He had made the Columbia River. This is how that great river began.

I always think of Coyote when I sing “Bring Many Names,” #23 in the grey hymnal. There’s a verse that captures his essential spirit: “Young, growing God, eager still to know, / willing to be changed by what you started, / quick to be delighted, singing as you go: / hail and hosanna, young, growing God!”  This is the only kind of God I could ever believe in, I think. Not a God that somehow stands outside of the natural order of the universe, who intervenes supernaturally in ways that favor one person over another or one tribe over another. Not a God that is locked inside the metaphor of maleness, or the metaphor of the human. Not a God that is all-powerful, with unlimited ability to act and yet appears to remain passive and uncaring when evil in the world is truly excessive, far beyond what seems needful for people to grow strong and wise. Especially not this last part, since then, how could the heart of reality be playful? How could anyone truly feel at home in a world in which a God existed who had the power to prevent evil but held back from using it? Allowed the very worst to occur?

There is a current in contemporary theology, called process theism, that takes very seriously the idea that behind-the-scenes is a playful force like Coyote, or the “young, growing God” of our hymnal. Process theism sees God as the creativity of the universe, and there are two sides to this. One is the body of the universe, the evolving interdependent web of all existence. Process theology tells us that it is sacred: galaxies and stars, trees and animals, you and I. All of it is part of God’s growing body. The world is God’s body. That’s the first side, and here is the second. God is a consciousness over and above the universe, just as you and I have a consciousness that is over and above our own bodies. You and I feel our bodies and think about them; we hope things for them and envision goals and futures; and it’s the same thing with God. God has a conscious side to complement God’s physical side. God is both the world and the consciousness of the world. Put the two together, and this is the kind of God that process theology envisions.  

One of the immediate implications of this picture of things takes us right back to Coyote, and to comedy. God simply cannot force the universe to do whatever God wants. Therefore, things can get tangled up. Slapstick happens. Evil happens. God’s power is not unlimited. The universe has creative independence and freedom, just like your own body when it gets sick. Your mind doesn’t want it to be sick, but it is anyhow, and you have got to deal. Same thing with God. God doesn’t want the world to be sick, and yet the world has creative independence. God simply can’t enter into the world supernaturally, like a bull in a china shop, and stop this and start that. All God can do is influence the world from the inside—and I know this might sound strange, but think of how cancer patients participate in their own healing. Cancer patients visualize their immune system as strong, as powerful, as potent, and the immune system responds. Similarly, God visualizes blessing and healing for this world, and if we are open to it, we can respond and receive. Nothing supernatural here at all. God influences the world from the inside, showers continual blessing up on us, impartially, universally, and does it without us having to ask. But the world has creative independence too, and so the blessing might not be received, we might be so stuck in the log of our fears and angers and resentments that we can’t hear God’s still small voice…. The blessing might not be received. That is simply the reality and risk of freedom.

And by now you may be noticing something about comic spirituality. It’s not frivolous. It’s a way of being in the world richly, in the midst of incongruity of every kind—pain, suffering, death. It says, if the heart of reality is like Coyote, or like the God of process theism, then there’s nothing malicious behind-the-scenes for us to resent and rebel against, like some tragic existential hero. Life is an open adventure. Accidents do happen. We can get firmly stuck in logs of all kinds. But don’t forget about the woodpeckers out there, who are on their way. All we have to do is stay calm, and let them do their work to free us, so we can continue the adventure.   

And this takes us to the next theme of comic spirituality, which has to do with resisting the temptations of the tragic point of view. The temptations are great. Two quick illustrations are in order. One has to do with an observation about kite string. Ever gone kite flying, and (wind being the trickster that it is) your kite takes a nose dive, and in the process of reclaiming your kite, you tangle up the string? If you are like me, trying to untangle it can make you impatient, and then angry, and suddenly you feel like a tragic hero. The world is unfair, the world is against me, the world is doing this to me … and before you know it, you have forgotten that your best bet is to finesse things. You are pulling on the tangles way too hard, jerking and tugging them, making a bad situation worse. What was originally just tangle is now a hard knot, an unredeemable mess. 

Second illustration. Think Achilles, from ancient Greek mythology: his famous rage. Rage is the fundamental emotion that moves Achilles in the Trojan War—rage at being dishonored by the Greek general Agamemnon, so he will not fight; then rage at the Trojans who killed his close friend Patroclus, so now he will fight. Rage has him in its grip, and he is bursting with it, and not once does he question whether the Gods are on his side. He does not think: he acts. His deeds are larger-than-life and always to be remembered, but no one would call Achilles wise. The tragic mindset is not wise. Fundamentally reactive as it is, it simply cannot step back from the righteous heat of the moment and cool off; and this means it has a hard time being self-critical, or empathetic towards a different point of view, or creative. Every problem is a nail, to be solved by hammering. Our world—with all its curves and complexities and behind-the-scenes jitters—is just not a good fit for straight-arrow people like Achilles, and that’s why the traditional ending of a tragic story is not the journey that runs ever on, but the journey stopped short by the death of the hero. Tragic heroes are swept under and destroyed by the very life that they are so ill-equipped to understand and work with.

Succumb to the temptations of the tragic point of view, and the result is disaster. We never get out of the log, in one sense of another. Emotions like anger and sadness and fear sweeping us away, and out of these we react to whatever life sends us; we become so noisy we scare away savior woodpeckers for good. This is the key ingredient of the tragic mindset: stuckness in difficult emotions, endless rumination, which makes it difficult to stay loose and creative in our thinking, keeps things way too serious, causes us to feel discomfort with ambiguity and complexity, prevents us from being able to walk a mile in another’s shoes. In other words, low emotional intelligence. People finding themselves in a tangle, challenged by a diversity of valid perspectives and valid concerns, and before you know it, the tangle, which could have been finessed, has become a hard knot, another Middle East conflict. Well intentioned people wanting to fight for justice and for peace, but somehow they bring the fight to each other, and there is petty bickering and posturing and rigid political correctness and a party line; and suddenly these well-intentioned people, wanting to fight for justice and for peace, find themselves in the middle of a circular firing squad of their own creation. If you have ears to hear, then hear this.

But a comic perspective keeps things sane. It keeps us working together in world that is impure, keeps us hopeful even when the system we can’t extricate ourselves from is compromised and flawed. In this regard, I like what Chinese writer Lin Yutang has to say: “[T]he tremendous importance of humor in politics can be realized only when we picture for ourselves … a world of joking rulers. Send, for instance, five or six of the world’s best humorists to an international conference, and give them the plenipotentiary powers of autocrats, and the world will be saved. As humor necessarily goes with good sense and the reasonable spirit, plus some exceptionally subtle powers of the mind in detecting inconsistencies and follies and bad logic, and as this is the highest form of human intelligence, we may be sure that each nation will thus be represented at the conference by its sanest and soundest mind. […] Can you imagine this bunch of international diplomats starting a war or even plotting for one? The sense of humor forbids it. All people are too serious and half-insane when they declare a war against another people. They are so sure that they are right and that God is on their side. The humorists, gifted with better horse-sense, don’t think so.”

Amen to that. The temptation of the tragic point of view is ultimately a temptation to do violence and war—especially in the name of our highest and noblest ideals. But comic spirituality counters it. A sense of humor saves us. Which leads to the third and last theme of comic spirituality I want to address today: the power of laughter—unquenchable, invincible laughter. Asbestos gelos. The person and the community and the world that laughs, lasts.

Consider the experience of Captain Gerald Coffee, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. After three months in captivity, Coffee’s Vietnamese jailor ordered him to wash in a rat-infested shower room littered with rotting things and garbage all around him. As he felt the stream of cold water against his body, he was overcome with despair. There he was in a dismal hole, body broken, totally uncertain of his fate, pressure to do this, do that, hostility his daily fare, men dying every day, the fate of his crewmen unknown. That’s where he was, mind, body, spirit, as the cold water washed over his body. Then he raised his head, and saw something. There at eye level on the wall in front of him, scratched in by some other American who’d been there before him, were these words: “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!” And he couldn’t help but smile. In that crazy place, woodpecker had come for him, and he laughed out loud. He felt such gratitude for the spunk of that unknown American who was able to rise above his own dejection and pain to inscribe a line of encouragement. And Captain Gerald Coffee, there in captivity in a Vietnam prison, found strength to go on.

Sometimes laughter takes us by surprise, and we find strength to go on. Better yet, though, is a conscious intent to nourish our sense of humor regularly. Never allowing the humor tank in us to go empty. Brush your teeth every day, top off your humor tank every day. Watch John Stewart, or Bill Maher, or South Park. Read The Onion. Whatever. Whatever can puncture our self-righteous pretensions, loosen us up, bring us back down to earth, keep us energized and plucky. We laugh so that we can last.

I want to close with some humor aerobics. It’s just like regular aerobics to get the blood pumping—humor aerobics to get the sense of humor pumping. To do it, you don’t have to feel particularly happy beforehand; although by the end, you might just be laughing like crazy, and it feels so good….

Here’s the exercise. It’s one of my favorites—it’s called The American Bat Face. It’s especially good to do right before you are about to enter into a difficult conversation. Let me describe it first: 

1. Place your hand on top of your head, with the fingers pointing straight forward

2. Reach down with the middle two fingers and touch the tip of your nose—pull the nose up, flaring the nostrils

3. Flap your tongue in and out of your mouth while making a high-pitched squealing noise

4. Think to yourself repeatedly, “This is not stupid, it’s silly.”

If this feels too uncomfortable for you, you absolutely have permission not to do it. But I hope as many of you as possible will try it and see what happens. As you do it, see if you can hear Coyote laughing with you…

Ready? Let’s go on three…..

*

You see, there’s an important difference between “stupid” and “silly” that comedian Steve Allen’s son, Steve Allen Jr., points out. He says that “stupid” means ignorant and uneducated. But having fun and playing is not stupid—it’s “silly,” and “silly” is a word that comes from the Old English, meaning completely happy, completely blessed. Silly was a blessing you wished upon those you loved.

I wish that upon you today, and forever. Be more silly in your life, and be blessed.

 

 

The Elves and the Shoemaker: Exploring the Spirituality of Work

Once upon a time, the country was in a recession, and a shoemaker and his wife fell upon hard times. One day, the cobbler found he had enough leather for only one more pair of shoes. The cobbler did not despair, but sat down, cut the leather carefully, and started to sew. When evening fell, the new shoes were still unfinished; and, as it was time for dinner, he put his work to the side and went home, intending, in the morning, to pick up where he left off.  

What he found on the following day astounded him: the new pair of shoes completed, so expertly made that there was not one bad stitch he could see. Far better made than any of his. Soon enough, the new shoes were sold, and the cobbler had enough money to buy leather for two more pairs. He spent the rest of the day cutting the material. When evening arrived, he put his work to the side and went home for dinner, intending, in the morning, to pick up where he left off.  

Waiting for him this time were four pairs of shoes! The mysterious helper had come again. The shoes were even finer than the first ones. They quickly sold, allowing the cobbler to buy enough leather for eight shoes. As before, he spent the day cutting the material, and when evening came, he put his work to the side and went home. Next day, there were 16 shoes of all varieties and kinds, arranged neatly in his shop.

This kept on for some time. Each night, the cobbler left pieces of leather out in his workshop. Each morning, he found beautiful shoes, in rapidly increasing numbers. Very soon the shoemaker prospered, and his reputation for marvelous shoes spread far and wide.

One day, near Christmastime, the cobbler said to his wife, “We must find out who is helping us, so we can thank them!” His wife agreed. That evening, they hid in the workshop, and waited anxiously. Right around midnight, the shoemaker and his wife heard singing, and saw two elves leap through the open window. The elves were naked as the dawn, barefoot and carefree. They sat down and immediately started making shoes and boots, and the cobbler and his wife were amazed at how joyful they were at their work. Singing constantly—at times suddenly getting up and dancing, or doing a somersault. In no time at all, they finished their work, skipped around the room and vanished on a moonbeam, leaving behind them more than a thousand expertly made shoes.

The shoemaker and his wife could scarcely believe their eyes. They said to one another, “Our mysterious helpers have been elves! We must give them a gift, to thank them for their kindness.” Since it was winter, and the elves were naked, the shoemaker and his wife thought that clothes would be the perfect gift. The shoemaker stitched two tiny pairs of boots, lined with fir, while his wife sewed two tiny jackets and two pairs of pants, fleecy and warm.

On Christmas Eve, they laid out the gifts in the workshop, then hid themselves and watched. At midnight, the two elves leapt through the window, and they looked around in bewilderment. Where was the leather for them to sew? Where were the tools to use? But then they saw the gifts. “Ooh!” exclaimed one elf, as he picked up a tiny shoe and tried it on. “Ahh!” cried the other one, as he squirmed into a shirt and coat. All the clothes fit perfectly. The elves admired each other as they danced with glee, then vanished into the moonlight. The shoemaker and his wife were delighted, and went to bed as happy as they could be.

The next evening, the elves did not return. Nor the night after, or ever again. “What have we done?” cried the shoemaker and his wife. But they were practical people, so the cobbler got right to work. He did not despair. He studied the work of the elves very closely, and with practice, the quality of his shoes got better and better. He also found himself growing into a habit of singing while he worked, just like the elves. In time, he was making shoes as beautiful as theirs. This is how he and his wife lived happily ever after.  

So ends “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” A fairy tale—a piece of fiction—yet like all good fiction, it tells the truth about our lives in a profound and memorable way. “The pitcher cries for water to carry,” says poet Marge Piercy; “the person [cries] for work that is real.” In a language of imagination and symbol, our story today is about this cry. It explores essential issues in the spirituality of work: coming to terms with the realities of everyday life; learning how to tap into inner creativity; fulfilling our deep desire to bless the world. Issues that have everything to do with growing our souls and growing good in the larger world.

It all starts with shoes. Psychiatrist Allan Chinen, in his fascinating book called Once Upon a Midlife: Classic Stories and Mythic Tales to Illuminate the Middle Years, takes special note of the fact that the protagonist of the story is someone who is married and has learned a practical trade. This marks it as very different from tales like Hansel and Gretel, or Tom Thumb, in which the themes are clearly youth-oriented. He calls “The Elves and the Shoemaker” a “middle tale,” one which focuses on the tasks and challenges of growing into maturity. “Behind the divine inspiration of youth,” he says, “lies an image of perfection—the hope of establishing a perfect society, playing a perfect game, finding a perfect love. Innocent and inspired, young men and women assume that perfection is possible. Experience with the real world eventually shatters that dream…. Young men and women surrender the idols and ideals of youth, and settle for doing what is good enough.” We become shoemakers, in other words—but not of the kind that can transport people to distant lands, like seven-league boots, or Dorothy’s ruby red slippers in The Wizard of Oz. Growing up is about making shoes that ground us in the here and now, with all the commitment and hard work that’s required. Comfortable for long hours of standing or walking; durable enough to weather lots of wear and tear. Made to get dirty.

It’s about coming to terms with the realities of everyday life. Real work. That’s what the shoemaker in the story represents. Giving up the fantasy of not having to take responsibility, not having to deal with adversity, not having to show up every day, regularly, to get the job done. And when we can’t give up the fantasy—when the only shoes we can ever be satisfied with are seven-league boots, or Dorothy’s ruby red slippers—we suffer from what’s called the Peter Pan Syndrome. Perpetual immaturity. Relationships that are for good times only, and whenever the commitment gets to a certain point, dropping it and looking for another. Seeing oneself as exempt from the rules and exempt from criticism. Inability to make promises and fulfill them. Withdrawal from the world, bitterness and cynicism, when things turn hard. This is so destructive in our personal lives, in this congregation, and in the larger world. Peter Pans going nowhere. And then there are the Wendys that must exist to support them, the Wendys that burn out in the task of enabling Peter Pans to keep on avoiding their responsibilities.  

But the shoemaker is no Peter Pan. Perhaps the most telling example of this is how he responds, in the story, to economic adversity. With just enough leather to make only one more pair of shoes, you’d think he’d just stop trying, step back, freeze up in despair. Fly up in the air, like a Peter Pan, away from the problem. How is one pair of shoes going to solve anything? But he doesn’t give into the fantasy that life should be easy. He doesn’t give into that. He’s grounded in an acceptance of real life. That’s what being a shoemaker symbolizes. He’s going to keep showing up, no matter what.

The wonderful irony in all of this is that, by refusing to give into fantasy, the shoemaker invites magic into his world. Isn’t that wonderful? Exactly because he does not give up, but gives himself to real work and dutifully starts on that last pair of shoes, the elves come. This reminds me of something that Barbara Sher talks about. Barbara Sher is a therapist and career counselor, widely known for such books as Wishcraft and I Could Do Anything (If I Only Knew What It Was), and one thing she likes to tell people when they are facing adversity in their worklife is this: “good luck happens when you are in action.” Don’t allow Peter Pan fantasies of perfection to make you stop caring about your life here and now. Keep moving, keep going, put yourself out there. She says, “If you go to the library and look up articles, call people, join organizations, go to appointments, [volunteer at your congregation!], something can happen to you. Try it. Set a goal, any goal, and start doing everything you can to think of achieving it. You might not get where you thought you were going, but you could easily wind up somewhere better. You’ll get breaks you never could have planned for because you never knew they existed.” “Good luck happens when you are in action.” The elves will come, if you can accept your life here and now and bring yourself to face, with courage, the last piece of leather you have.

Which takes us directly to the next spirituality of work issue: tapping into inner creativity. When it happens, work is uniquely fulfilling and productive. So how do we do that? How do we tap in?  

The story illustrates that there can definitely be a vital partnership between our conscious selves and our creative depths—and what the conscious self does is paramount. If the shoemaker works hard to prepare the leather each day, then he has something to hand off to the elves, who complete the work at night. If he stops, they stop. All he has to do is get things started in a particular direction, and then hand off.

The picture is true to life—although things are more complex. Lots more drama. I like how writer Anne Lamott suggests this, in her wonderful book entitled Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. To the question of how she writes her stories and novels, she says, “you sit down. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file….” In other words, the process begins with preparation. You have to purchase the leather and cut it, get it ready for sewing. Set the stage the same time every day, invite the elves to get to work, and then let it happen. Don’t force it. The gift must come to you, like grace.

It means that you have to get out of your own way, and this is actually very difficult. Right on the heels of the preparation phase of the creative process comes the frustration and messiness phase. “You are desperate,” says Anne Lamott, “to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen.” Desperation must contain itself, desperation must calm itself, yet at the same time it must still want a result, it can’t become complacent—and in this is a kind of insanity. You turn on your computer, says Anne Lamott, “and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge … child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised at the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind—a scene, a locale, a character, whatever—and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what the landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also hypochondria. […] There is a vague pain at the base of your neck. It crosses your mind that you have meningitis. Then the phone rings and you look up at the ceiling with fury, summon every ounce of noblesse oblige, and answer the call politely, with maybe just the merest hint of irritation. The caller asks if you’re working, and you say yeah, because you are.” Anne Lamott is right. Work infused with creativity is extremely hard. A desire to say something or solve a problem or see something in a new light moves you into a state of uncertainty, and this brings with it voices of anxiety and judgment, perhaps guilt, perhaps even doom. You sense a creative possibility, but you aren’t sure about where to go with it, how to proceed, what approach to take. It’s why another writer, Kurt Vonnegut, would say, “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

Oh, the end result is amazing. The shoes the elves finish are amazing. But the process of negotiating between conscious self and creative depth is extremely challenging. Yet another dimension of real work, and it can twist us up like a pretzel. And while this drama is clearly not evident on the surface of the “The Elves and the Shoemaker” story, it’s there between the lines. The shoemaker and his wife giving gifts to the elves can be interpreted as an attempt to domesticate them. To cover up their nakedness, tone down their wildness, even to try remaking the elves in their own image—insofar as they presume to think that what the elves need is similar to what they need. All of this is suggests the very real, very common temptation to try to control things, force a premature result, stop the creative process from following its own inner logic. It’s Peter Pan again diverting us from real work—the ego fantasy that creativity should be easy, and that we should be able to produce poems or papers or projects or solutions effortlessly. Get it right the first time. “People,” say Anne Lamott, “tend to look at successful writers and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter.” That’s the kind fantasy we can fall into, about anything, and so, when the writing or whatever it happens to be ends up feeling like pulling teeth and the first draft is triple dog drat horrible—what then? The voice of the inner critic, getting louder and louder. Do you know that voice? The voice of anxiety, shame, condemnation. Wow, that sucked. What do you call that? People are gonna think you are an idiot. The end result is paralysis. Or, I should say, the beginning result. Because this is the kind of unhealthy thinking that prevents people from acting in the first place. It is what is behind that ancient complaint in families and businesses and congregations when change comes knocking on the door: If you don’t get it right the first time, people say, or imply, then don’t do it at all. No mistakes allowed. Or the corollary: We’ve never done it like that before.

The Peter Pan fantasy of perfectionism. Creativity puts us face to face with it because it is a journey that moves us through realms of messiness, to the cliff’s edge, and if we are going to go any further, if we are gonna get to the other side, where the inspired solution to an old problem waits for us—beautiful new shoes, in increasing numbers—then we must let go and let God and take the leap of faith and jump.

But I don’t want to be too hard on the shoemaker and his wife. While it is true that, from one angle of vision, we can see the act of gift giving as manipulative, there is yet another, more positive angle of vision to consider. In other fairy tales—youth tales in particular—the protagonists lose the magic because they’ve been greedy or wicked; but here, the shoemaker and his wife are doing a good thing. Maybe there is a shadow side to their motivation, but we can’t ignore their clear generosity and gratitude. So, here we have a puzzle: the shoemaker and his wife doing good things but losing the magic anyway. What can explain it? Above all, what in real life might this be referring to?

This brings us to the last spirituality of work issue that the story speaks to: our deep natural desire to be a blessing to the world. In this respect, psychiatrist Allan Chinen makes the key observation: “Husband and wife lose their magic when they shift from receiving gifts to giving them.” And then he says: “This is a good measure of when youth ends and maturity begins. Modern psychology corroborates these fairy tale insights. Erik Erikson was one of the first psychoanalysts to explore adult development [and he discovered that] the fundamental issue for the middle of life is developing generativity. This is a nurturing attitude directed first toward one’s children, and then towards the whole next generation…” In other words, from this more positive perspective, the shoemaker has not so much lost magic as he is growing into his own magic, and thus we see him at the end of the story, learning to make shoes as fine as any the elves created, singing as he works away, living happily ever after.

That’s what I want for all of us. Growing into our own capacity for magic. Our real work is not just about giving up Peter Pan fantasies and showing up for life, or learning how to be in creative partnership with our inner depths, but also this: paying attention to how our psyches and souls grow over time, paying attention to our steadily increasing hungers to bless the world. “What we do for ourselves dies with us, but what we do for others and the world remains immortal” (Albert Pine). “We have not lived until we have done something for someone who can never repay us” (Anonymous). This is what generativity is all about. It’s the song we sang earlier: “Wake Now My Senses.” And unless we get this, life is misery. We can be on the receiving end of all sorts of pleasures, all sorts of good things, but the restlessness will increase, the pain will only redouble. There’s a story of a man who died and found himself in a beautiful place, surrounded by every conceivable comfort.  A white-jacketed attendant came to him and said, “You may have anything you choose—any food—any pleasure—any kind of entertainment.”  The man was delighted, and for days he sampled all the delicacies and experiences he had dreamed about while alive. But finally one day he grew tired of all this. “I need something to do. What kind of work can you give me?” The attendant sadly shook his head and replied, “I’m sorry, sir. That’s the one thing we can’t do for you. There is no work here for you.” To which the man answered, “Well, that’s just great. I might as well be in hell.” The attendant said softly, “Where do you think you are?”

For you, I hope for heaven, a happy-ever-after of real work. Finding a place to serve out of your strengths and talents in this place and elsewhere. Being a shoemaker. Growing into the magic that is your own.