Sacred Energy

A Shaker elder taught that hands to work and hearts to God were not two different callings but one single, undivided life

Shaker teaching refused to separate labor from devotion as two different kinds of time, insisting instead that a well-done chore and an act of worship belonged to the same single life.

Shaker teaching, traced broadly to the tradition's founding principles under Mother Ann Lee, held that giving one's hands to work and one's heart to God were not two separate obligations to be balanced against each other but a single, undivided calling expressed in two forms. This meant that a Shaker's labor in the fields, workshop, or kitchen was not considered spiritually neutral time to be gotten through before "real" worship could resume in the meetinghouse; the work itself, done with full attention and care, counted as devotion. The teaching reinforced the community's practical excellence in craft — furniture, tools, and agricultural methods the Shakers became known for — since sloppy or careless work would have represented a spiritual as well as a practical failure. Precisely because Shaker life was celibate and communal, without the competing claims of marriage and private family to divide a member's attention, this fusion of labor and devotion could occupy the whole of a person's daily life rather than a portion of it.