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The two methods by which we are allowed to produce events may be called work and prayer. Both are alike in this respect – that in both we try to produce a state of affairs which God has not (or at any rate not yet) seen fit to provide on His own'. And from this point of view the old maxim laborare est orare (work is prayer) takes on a new meaning. What we do when we weed a field is not quite different from what we do when we pray for a good harvest. But there is an important difference all the same.

• from “God in the Dock” - C.S. Lewis p105-6

“Benedict’s followers accepted the dictum that work is prayer, but they also felt a tension. They had come to the monastery to pray, not to grind grain. The theological factor that resolved their tension and drove technology was that the Bible distinguished “work” from “toil.” To work was to be like God, but toil was a curse on human sin. Toil was mindless, repetitive, dehumanizing labor. This distinction enabled Christian monks to realize that human beings should not have to do what wind, water, or horses can do. People must do what other species and natural forces cannot do—use creative reason to liberate human beings from the curse of toil. Lynn White Jr. summed up the biblical roots of Western technology:

The study of medieval technology is therefore far more than an aspect of economic history: it reveals a chapter in the conquest of freedom. More than that, it is a part of the history of religion . . . It has often been remarked that the [monasteries in] Latin Middle Ages first discovered the dignity and spiritual value of labor—that to labor is to pray.

Excerpt From: Mangalwadi, Vishal. “The Book that Made Your World.”

In 1858 Emerson wrote, "Your fate is what you do, because first it is what you are. " Think about this: we must invest as much energy and effort into what we are as in what we do because "if the whole man acted always, how powerful would be every act & every word. " Thus, for Emerson selfish prayer is beneath Man。“Prayer that craves a particular commodity-anything less than all good-is vicious... Prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. " Over and against this false dualism he sets a vision of divinely infused human agency that spiritualizes our secular works and recalls the motto of Benedictine monks, Laborare est orare（“To labor is to pray"), as well as the mindfulness of Zen Buddhists as they recognize ultimate reality in the most everyday activities.

Work is worship. "As soon as man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature. '

From “The Selected Writings of Ralf Waldo Emerson”

The idea of performance of one's duty within a moral framework, undertaken willingly and in full awareness, is absolutely fundamental to Gandhi's conception of what it is to be human. Put otherwise, it is work ethic that defines our humanity. For him, the propensity to work is ingrained in human beings. Self-incurred abstinence from work is a vice. Leisure is a physical necessity, but only within limits, for it is natural to experience fatigue in both intellectual and physical work. In this context, he accorded priority to physical over intellectual work. The most concrete expression of such a work ethic is 'bread labour', which, Gandhi wrote, literally means 'labour for roti’. He called it a 'divine law' and acknowledged in many scriptures (Gandhi 1971: 149). Time and again, he equated work with worship - drawing upon the Benedictine aphorism, laborare est orare (Gandhi 1969: 164) –and, indeed, with God himself.

"To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God dare appear is work and promise of food as wages. God created man to work for his food, and said that those who ate without work were thieves' (Gandhi 1966b: 289). The reference here is to the Bhagavadgītā: ' He who eats without offering sacrifice eats stolen food' (Gandhi 1971: 149).

from “Sociological Traditions: Methods and Perspectives in the Sociology of India” By T. N. Madan

Many great figures of the church, beginning with St. Paul, have combined both elements without conflict. "Laborare est orare," said St. Benedict (work is prayer).

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,891459-9,00.html

“Admirable was that saying’ of the old Monks, ’Laborare est Orare, Work is Worship.’ Older than all preached Gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, foreverenduring Gospel: Work, and therein have well-being. Man [...] lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a Spirit of active Method, a Force for Work; – and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent Facts around thee! What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable; obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy attack him swiftly, subdue him; make Order of him, the subject not of Chaos, but of Intelligence, Divinity and Thee! [...] But above all, where thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity, Brutemindedness [...] attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite, in the name of God! [....] Thou [...] shalt work while it is called Today. For the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.

Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher — The Condition of England - A review of Past and Present, by Thomas Carlyle, London, 1843 - by Frederick Engels

• written in 1844, a year after “Past and Present”