All through the woods around our house in northern Vermont we run across remnants of old stone walls—the legacyof rugged settlers who raised sheep on this land a century or more ago. As we strain to clear heavy stones from our garden and to set up our own crude retaining walls, we begin to appreciate the amount of skill, time, and energy that generations of unknown pastoralists once put into making and maintaining these massive, meandering enclosures. This kind of hard work was part of a traditional connection to the land that has not only provided subsistence but purpose and meaning to the lives of countless generations.

Some people trace of today’s environmental problems to the urbanization of much of the world’s population over the last century, with the result that fewer and fewer people have enough contact with nature to understand such basics as where their food comes from and where their wastes go. But we must point out that those sheep herders and farmers of yesteryear didn’t necessarily act out of ecological consciousness. Following the prevailing practices of their day, they largely deforested the landscape and extirpated the native populations of deer, bear, moose, beaver, and wild turkeys. Only after following generations were lured westward has the Northeast been able to recover much of its natural wealth of native forests and wildlife.

So all of us, both rural and urban dwellers, need work that is not only financially worthwhile and personally meaningful but also promotes the long-term health of the larger community and natural world. We, Ruah and Louis, feel very fortunate that we both currently have the opportunity to do paid work that we love while contributing to a saner, healthier world. But many people are less fortunate, tied to jobs that are underpaid, unhealthy, unfulfilling, and ultimately environmentally destructive. They may long for a way out, but their addiction keeps them from seeing the solutions are available.

One solution is suggested by the book, The European Dream, by Jeremy Rifkin, who notes that compared to most Americans, Europeans today are better able to enjoy family activities, leisure time, and healthy recreation because they are better at keeping paid work from intruding on their personal lives. There is no reason, other than our culture’s time-honored obsession of keeping up with the Joneses, that people can’t choose to slow down, to reduce their financial requirements, and cultivate relationships, and thus createg more time for authentic living while reducing their ecological footprints. (There is an excellent pamphlet from QEW titled, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, by Carolyn W. Treadway, on how to get started simplifying your life.)

But in a larger sense, our real challenge is changing the role of work in our lives. As Matthew Fox wrote in The Reinvention of Work, a New Vision of Livelihood for Our time, we need to put our daily work into the context of a larger, cosmic purpose. “A cosmology teaches us that there is only one work going on in the universe, the “Great Work” of creation itself—the work of creation unfolding… Just being able to name the reality of a Great Work in the universe has the power to restore our dignity and to restore dignity to our work.

Meaningful work isn’t defined by professional or highly paid work. It can be service-oriented, such as trash removal, cashiering, or serving in a restaurant. All of these can be meaningful work with a change of attitude by both workers and the receivers of the service, because they are serving the community. •