Greg Epstein Secular Invocation

Mayor-Elect Walsh, and distinguished and honored guests of all backgrounds and beliefs: it is my great honor, on behalf of the Humanist, secular, and nontheistic community, to share this poem, “To Be of Use,” by contemporary Massachusetts poet Marge Piercy, in honor of the important work you and all of us will soon be called to do.

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field
deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Notes:

Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, was invited to give at the Interfaith Inaugural Celebration for new Boston Mayor Martin Walsh on January 5, 2014, at Old South Church in Boston.

Folksonomies: secularism

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 Secular Invocation Resources
Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article:  Society, Humanist (2014), Secular Invocation Resources, Retrieved on 2014-08-09
  • Source Material [humanist-society.org]
  • Folksonomies: invocations