Productivity and Fecundity

Aided by some very nice reading (thank you Henri Nouwen), I'm thinking today about the difference between productivity and fecundity.  If you're not familiar with the word (I was not), fecundity has to do with being fruitful, bountiful, prolific.  While productivity, in the way that it is commonly used, could be thought of as a quantitative and technical category (one's productivity is equal to how much one has produced, and how efficiently one has produced it), fecundity is a qualitative and organic category.   A human who is productive accomplishes much; a person who is fecund is open and receptive to life in ways that allow her to be life-giving.

It seems to me that the distinction between productivity and fecundity is an important one for people on a sacred adventure.  I don't mean in any way to belittle the importance of productivity.  When the curtains of the day are drawing to a close and I reflect on the day just lived, it's rewarding to look back and note what I've accomplished. Businesses need to be productive, as do governments and churches.  I'd rather work with a person who is productive than one who is not.   It seems to me, however, that the importance of productivity is often blow terribly out of proportion.  In the worst sort of 'works righteousness,' where productivity is the most important thing, we judge people on the basis of how much they accomplish.  An unfettered quest for productivity can, as we have so often seen, easily overlook the human dimension of ours and others' lives.  How many people are forgotten, overlooked or used in the inexorable push to be more productive?  

Fecundity, on the other hand, is a profoundly organic category.  Remember, a fecund person is open to life in ways that make him life-giving. A fecund person will accomplish much, but not necessarily in ways the world would describe as productive.  One of my personal favorite examples is that of the late Henri Nouwen.  In the later chapters of his life, Father Nouwen left the university, where he enjoyed an important teaching post, to live and work in a home for mentally handicapped adults.  By the standards of productivity, his career move was foolish.  He left behind honors and prestige to embrace this simple way of living in community with the 'poor in spirit.'  But Father Nouwen wrote deeply and thoughtfully about the impact of that career move on himself and others.  His emerging clarity about life in the Spirit, about which he wrote so beautifully, has inspired thousands of readers.  He set an example and offered an invitation to be more fully human in a highly technological world.  A fecund life.

We heard a beautiful sermon this last Sunday (thank you, Paul!) in which we were reminded of those who are like trees, planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season (Psalm 1).   Jesus taught his disciples that those who abide in him as a branch abides in the vine will bear much fruit.  Here are two Biblical invitations (among dozens) to a fecund life.