For Those Who Have No Work 

Excerpt from The Comb (A Novel, Coming 2014)

It was First Communion Day, and each little girl got a prayer to say.

During intercessions. For the poor, for the hungry, for those ill and without hope. For those lacking shelter and shoes. Each girl, it was decided, would say “For those who have no…(prayer here)…we pray to the Lord.” The response from all assembled was, “Lord hear our prayer.”

So the prayers were given out just before Mass in a small room next to the chapel. And weaving her way through a lot of little veils and gloves and nervously tapping white mary janes, Sister got to me.

She said, “I have a very important prayer for you.”

This sounded good. I was listening. I folded my hands, as if to give worthy appearance for the task I was about to receive.

“Now what is most sacred of all?” she asked.

“Love?” I said.

“Well yes Lucie, but that is given to you fully, before you yourself give it. What do YOU give?”

I was silent for a moment, not wanting to give the wrong answer.

Sister said, “You give your work.”

She went on.

“Your work is sacred. Every person’s work is sacred. Sacred not for what it gets, but sacred in itself. It is who you are.”

She paused. To mark a quietly weighted moment. One that indicated that I was supposed to remember what she said for a very, very important test, to be given on an unknown date. Sometime later.

She had unexpectedly stretched out the words “in itself.” As if it was a definition. A credo. A line created to divide dark from light, so that you could know which was which, when it might not be immediately obvious which was which.

In itself.

Your prayer is, she said, standing very straight up,

“For those who have no work.”

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