Is it work?

Is It Cake?

In the annals of creative achievement, few masterworks have attained the pathos and delicacy of a program entitled, “Is it Cake?”

For twenty-two exquisite minutes, purveyors of truth slice into guileful frosted objects to determine whether they are Styrofoam, vinyl, or – o mysterium tremendum – cake itself.

In addition to providing an outlet for unexplored rage against carbohydrates, this spectacle offers a deeper opportunity. While meringue-minds like me prefer to conquer by contemplation, quite often the only way to reach the answer is knife-first.

This is particularly the case in the case of work.

Is it work?

Anguish has iced this question since the age of Moses, when Sabbath came as a bittersweet command. Mandated rest sounds delicious until you dig into the details and discover you are not permitted to boil orzo or even make a macaroni sculpture of Mr. Rogers. It is a fine thing to be freed from toil, but liberation gets stale when you have laundry to do.

We’ve traveled many miles since Moses, from the burning bush to burnout. The prophet and liberator would weep for us, air-conditioned success stories whose sixty hours a week collapse into a box of Cheez-Its and greasy-fingered guilt over not setting the alarm clock. How quickly we have gone from working for our bread to wondering if we are terrible people for eating an extra slice. It is not many generations from deliverance to enthusiastic self-enslavement.

We know we aren’t our work, but we don’t know who we are without our work.

We need Sabbath, or at least sleep, or at least something that shakes the sand from our shoes and reminds us that we are standing on holy ground.

Many somethings step up to bat. We must ask of each: is it work?

Is it work if it makes us feel good about ourselves? This is sticky business. Moses’ six hundred thousand best friends felt productive and potent when they went out to harvest manna on Day Seven. It was a form of self-care, really: doing something satisfying that might also save them time during the busy week ahead.

But potent turned putrid faster than off-day manna turned to worms and mold. Pride and self-preservation are ogrish overlords. If it’s spicy with distrust, be assured: it’s work. If we’re answering emails with the jam-faced fear of a toddler, it’s work.

Is it work if it works? Now we are hitting dangerous nougat, which would also be a magnificent name for a band. No less than Team Moses, we want to be diligent colleagues and dutiful helpers. Our rest-day labor helps! It saves others the trouble of toil! It has the buttery side effect of showing that we are tireless and valuable! It keeps us safe!

It does not keep us safe. It is wormy whipped cream piped onto work.

Is it work if it is the hardest thing we do all week? This one appears as obvious as a cinder block on which someone has scrawled the word CAKE. We should not be making bricks from mud and straw on the day of rest. We should not be slopping hogs from sunrise to sunset when our bodies are screaming for sundae. We should not persevere through painting uncooperative gardenias or writing exasperating essays when the Artist has decreed peace.

Right? Moses? Moses?

I don’t hear an answer, only questions.

Is it work if it calms you Godward?

Is it work if you lose yourself in joyous toil?

Is it work if it claims peaces?

Is it Sabbath if it can’t do this?

I can’t answer these questions for you, and not even Moses can slice them neatly for me. All I know is that there is a form of feral fervor that finds us all, asking everything while giving us the rest that answers.

When I write, I am a woman alive. It is the most exasperating activity of my week, many layers more demanding than my hardest work day. It may go well or poorly. It may leave me exultant or exhausted. It may all come out as a scorched souffle of dreck. No matter. It leads me into a crowded kitchen of bewilderment. There is holy flour on my apron.

It is not drudgery but sacrament, not duty but liturgy.

Struggle does not always mean work, any more than frosting proves the presence of cake.

We’re going to have to cut this one open every time.

If you’re doing it to deliver yourself from guilt, put down the fork.

If you’re doing it because it delivers you back to the door of your life, dig in.