Hi, friends. I'm sorry I've been away for so long. Words were not coming to me for a while. I was doing some temporary work & glad to be working. I wasn't a census counter. I work as a chaplain in hospitals and I've been trying to get a "big picture" view of the economic information I'm hearing on the news. Basically, what I hear is a vicious cycle of businesses of all sizes depending on consumers to buy so they can employ more people and consumers unable to buy much because they're out of work and have little or no money to spend. I'm wondering if this free enterprise economic cycle has got our vision locked in on the wrong or at least unhelpful values? The term I hear used to capture the value in this system is "strong economy". This value doesn't seem to share the with values that have been lifted in the past such as workers, creativity, service, or a new one that I name as economic integrity. For me economic integrity places the economic system employed by a nation into a larger context with values and goals built on enhancing human and environmental sustainability not wealth sustainability. We have labored under the impression that if the wealth of a nation is sustained the human rights, health, economic success and environmental health will be sustained also. This was the dream promoted by the industrialists of the early 1900's such as Henry Ford. I don't believe that this way of thinking about our economics will work for our post-industrial world where industry can no longer be viewed as the all-knowing god it once was. I don't think BP really does have the answers for stopping and cleaning up the oil spill. I don't think any human organization that has looked at the ocean and natural resources as a mean to service our economic purposes and the growth of wealth can have the wherewith all to "contain" oil from far beneath the ocean floor. We do not see ourselves as part of the natural whole so how can we see ourselves as part of the solution?
Thoughts are welcome.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
dreaming
When I read the Dr. Seuss book Oh the Places You'll Go! I celebrated that it was full of encouragement for young people as they dreamt the places they would go. I never dreamt of course of the roller coaster ride called “Looking-for-work”. It is a challenge to plump one’s ego sufficiently before leaving the house for an interview, if you’re lucky enough to get one. Only to nurse that ego along with creative reasoning as you wait to hear if you can move on to the next step in screening boot camp, jump the next hurtle that could move you closer to being hired. All the while trying to dream up plan M or T if this position doesn’t work out.
It’s an atmosphere where dependable allegiances are rare because the people I know and would call to make connection for possible employment worry about losing their jobs too. It’s hard not to take it personally and feel like I’m poison. When in actuality the atmosphere is poisoned. There seems to me to be a fear in the workplace—all workplaces that is more pervasive than the expansive dreams that Dr. Seuss encouraged us to dream. In my experience pastoring local churches, when finances and future are threatened people do not turn to expansiveness and creativity. They, instead, try to invent the wheel again and again. They turn to what used to work; what used to make sense when they were doing and growing and all was right with the world. Fitting the corporate culture and following the rules institutions have targeted as keys to their survival are keys to getting the job. Thinking outside of the box may be completely passé unless; of course that is the true corporate culture and not just lip service.
To dream of a place to go and work, I find myself needing to practice increasing clarity about who I am as a human being and where my true value lies It’s a much different me than the woman who first picked up and read Oh the Places You'll Go!. I also need to be savvy or at least knowledgeable about .not only the institutions/corporation where I dream of working, I also need awareness of our current cultural climate which creates an un/underemployed class to survive. The dreams of surviving that sustain the un/underemployed are the same dreams that sustain big corporations in their practices. It’s going to take people who can dream creatively to break up this road block. .
It’s an atmosphere where dependable allegiances are rare because the people I know and would call to make connection for possible employment worry about losing their jobs too. It’s hard not to take it personally and feel like I’m poison. When in actuality the atmosphere is poisoned. There seems to me to be a fear in the workplace—all workplaces that is more pervasive than the expansive dreams that Dr. Seuss encouraged us to dream. In my experience pastoring local churches, when finances and future are threatened people do not turn to expansiveness and creativity. They, instead, try to invent the wheel again and again. They turn to what used to work; what used to make sense when they were doing and growing and all was right with the world. Fitting the corporate culture and following the rules institutions have targeted as keys to their survival are keys to getting the job. Thinking outside of the box may be completely passé unless; of course that is the true corporate culture and not just lip service.
To dream of a place to go and work, I find myself needing to practice increasing clarity about who I am as a human being and where my true value lies It’s a much different me than the woman who first picked up and read Oh the Places You'll Go!. I also need to be savvy or at least knowledgeable about .not only the institutions/corporation where I dream of working, I also need awareness of our current cultural climate which creates an un/underemployed class to survive. The dreams of surviving that sustain the un/underemployed are the same dreams that sustain big corporations in their practices. It’s going to take people who can dream creatively to break up this road block. .
Saturday, April 24, 2010
"best & brightest"
I recently heard news reports about many school systems that are in financial trouble. So much so they are planning to lay off thousands of teachers and increase class sizes. Of course these municipalities are also planning on balancing their budgets by cutting their arts and sports programs. Music, drama and art have often been the first thing to go in schools when budgets are undernourished. Most people in these fields know and have testified to long stretches of unemployment and working in transition jobs just to keep food on the table. My daughter and I went to a restaurant in New York city where all the wait staff were aspiring young actors who would sing show tunes to the customers between taking orders and serving food. In a conversation about pastoral compensation I had some times ago with a parishioner, she told me that I went into the wrong profession if I wanted to make a living.
Why is it that people gifted in some professions are valued with compensations beyond my dreams and with job security and huge severance packages, while people gifted in other professions worry about having work at all? When I hear in news reports espousing reasoning for big financial field bonuses--"We need to pay this to keep the best and the brightest,” I get infuriated. There are “best and brightest” in all fields and our current system of compensation and reward does not acknowledge that. The current supply of workers is reaching toward outstripping the demand for workers, the number of jobs available. Is the mass of workers so large and the jobs so few that this argument of “the best and brightest” bubbles to the top to justify business practices without responsibility and without recognition that all human beings are of value and deserving of recognition for their gifts.
Compensation as a means of valuing what a person offers is out of balance in our culture. It seems to me that happiness and well being, not compensation, should be the means of valuing all gifts, talents, skills. Why is it we can not make it possible for all workers to offer their gifts and find happiness and satisfaction as well as a living? It’s the pursuit of happiness that we are guaranteed in our constitution, not the happiness itself. Does that mean that we are free to pursue work all we want only to find our gifts unappreciated and undervalued and our happiness illusive because we aren't compensated for them? One clear path to happiness for me is to offer my gifts in service to healing and health. A musician offers her gifts in service to her music and a poet to his poetry. Why should a banker’s gift of making money be of more value than these? What is a true sign of the happiness we pursue?
I like the egalitarian view that the writer of I Corinthians proposes for the faith community. The same could bring healing to our current economic culture. Here’s a peek…
If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?.... If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. (I Corinthians 12:15-18,20-24)
It seems to me that our economic body needs to live this lesson. Mutual respect and contribution to the betterment of the whole globe will make us stronger human beings and a body that values all healthy pursuits and happiness.
Why is it that people gifted in some professions are valued with compensations beyond my dreams and with job security and huge severance packages, while people gifted in other professions worry about having work at all? When I hear in news reports espousing reasoning for big financial field bonuses--"We need to pay this to keep the best and the brightest,” I get infuriated. There are “best and brightest” in all fields and our current system of compensation and reward does not acknowledge that. The current supply of workers is reaching toward outstripping the demand for workers, the number of jobs available. Is the mass of workers so large and the jobs so few that this argument of “the best and brightest” bubbles to the top to justify business practices without responsibility and without recognition that all human beings are of value and deserving of recognition for their gifts.
Compensation as a means of valuing what a person offers is out of balance in our culture. It seems to me that happiness and well being, not compensation, should be the means of valuing all gifts, talents, skills. Why is it we can not make it possible for all workers to offer their gifts and find happiness and satisfaction as well as a living? It’s the pursuit of happiness that we are guaranteed in our constitution, not the happiness itself. Does that mean that we are free to pursue work all we want only to find our gifts unappreciated and undervalued and our happiness illusive because we aren't compensated for them? One clear path to happiness for me is to offer my gifts in service to healing and health. A musician offers her gifts in service to her music and a poet to his poetry. Why should a banker’s gift of making money be of more value than these? What is a true sign of the happiness we pursue?
I like the egalitarian view that the writer of I Corinthians proposes for the faith community. The same could bring healing to our current economic culture. Here’s a peek…
If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?.... If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. (I Corinthians 12:15-18,20-24)
It seems to me that our economic body needs to live this lesson. Mutual respect and contribution to the betterment of the whole globe will make us stronger human beings and a body that values all healthy pursuits and happiness.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
networking
Last week I went to a professional conference in the hopes of networking and finding some work possibilities. It was energizing to go to the many workshops and meet new people. At the same time, I had this niggling thought at the back of mind, “Why don’t you hire me at your facility?!” I know there is an irrational quality to that thought and I worked to keep it from robbing me of the enjoyment of being among colleagues.
I’ve heard from job-hunting specialists that making contacts and creating a network of people to call to put one in touch with job opportunities is important in finding a job. This is hard for me. I am a listener and yet I have made cold calls and reached out to people when my work has called for it. I am more motivated to do this networking and contacting when I consider this a spirit-building experience. By that I mean the kind of 6 degrees removed connection that puts all of us in the web of life.
In my first congregation there was an old fisherman that died. At his memorial service I reflected on the different ways networking was part of his life. As a fisherman he would spend many hours repairing the nets after a fishing run. Net-working was part of his livelihood. If the nets had holes in them he would lose fish and income. He also had a hobby as an avid short wave radio networker—a CB’er. I heard from his family about all of the friends he made talking to people on the short wave and how they became a community that would care for one another and check up on one another. I heard about the interesting and humorous handles they had for one another. This was a network full of love and life. This network of CB’ers became the old fisherman’s connection to the world—his life line when his health worsened. Perhaps the networking we do now when looking for work is a life line for us and reminds us that we are valued and valuable persons. If only 6 degrees separates me from the person I call about a job that’s a little less daunting than calling a stranger and I can have a conversation with my cousin twice removed.
I’ve heard from job-hunting specialists that making contacts and creating a network of people to call to put one in touch with job opportunities is important in finding a job. This is hard for me. I am a listener and yet I have made cold calls and reached out to people when my work has called for it. I am more motivated to do this networking and contacting when I consider this a spirit-building experience. By that I mean the kind of 6 degrees removed connection that puts all of us in the web of life.
In my first congregation there was an old fisherman that died. At his memorial service I reflected on the different ways networking was part of his life. As a fisherman he would spend many hours repairing the nets after a fishing run. Net-working was part of his livelihood. If the nets had holes in them he would lose fish and income. He also had a hobby as an avid short wave radio networker—a CB’er. I heard from his family about all of the friends he made talking to people on the short wave and how they became a community that would care for one another and check up on one another. I heard about the interesting and humorous handles they had for one another. This was a network full of love and life. This network of CB’ers became the old fisherman’s connection to the world—his life line when his health worsened. Perhaps the networking we do now when looking for work is a life line for us and reminds us that we are valued and valuable persons. If only 6 degrees separates me from the person I call about a job that’s a little less daunting than calling a stranger and I can have a conversation with my cousin twice removed.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
considering pain
In many faith traditions (not all) the word “sin” is couple in some way with pain. Cain was in pain over the favor shown to his brother Abel and committed murder (sin). Peter was afraid of pain that would follow his acknowledgement of his teacher Jesus and denied this relationship (sin). There are many more examples in the Judeo and Christian traditions. As I understand the Buddhist tradition on pain there is a different perspective. [I am only beginning to learn what treasures can be uncovered in this ancient philosophy.] Pain is part of life and the key is to not be captive to the suffering induced by pain. Sin in the Buddhist tradition either doesn’t exist or has something to do with ignorance. [There are some good blogs on this topic at Buddhism.about.com] In the Islamic tradition sin is about defying or ignoring the will of Allah. Pain is a means of strengthening one’s faith in this tradition. (beliefnet.com, blog by Ellen Leventry, “Why bad thing happen”)
“Sin” is a word, a label. I would rather talk about the pain we experience in our lives. Pain—physical, psychic, emotional, mental, relational, spiritual—is a reality. It’s something we experience in life. To put the label sin on any of these experiences of life diminishes the impact of the experience in my way of thinking. Pain can take many forms from anguish to restlessness, fear to anxiety to distraction. There are many shadings to pain and the common denominator is that all pain can cripple us. It vies for supremacy in our mental functioning. Mental clarity and acuity is as available to us as our deepest fear. That is, the stronger our fear the less clear we can think about reality and action. Our pain and fear and anxiety can even lull us into thinking that we are seeing things clearly from behind the veil of pain and our actions and decisions become responsive to a skewed perspective.
So how do we work with pain? How do we get out from under its grip to a different reality? Athletes are often told to “push through” their pain. I believe this means that they are to ignore the pain and just keep moving, doing whatever exercise they are engaged in. This doesn’t mean the pain goes away. It means that they don’t give priority to it in their mind. They think about other things—the routines they have learned and practiced repeatedly or imagine themselves at the finish line, etc.
On the other hand, counselors will subscribe to the prescription of naming our pain so as to lessen its power over our actions and decisions. The theory and experience is that naming the source or origin of our pain, acknowledging its existence, gives us choices that do not exist if we merely react to the presence of our pain.
This search for employment that I am experiencing brings pain in the form of fear and anxiety. I fear not being able to work again because I am aging out of the market. I have anxieties that I am not doing enough to find work and that the meaning of my life will be lost. So I use both practices for dealing with my pain. I push through my fears each day to find things I can do and to look for signs of hope and meaning. I name my anxieties here and with friends and listen to their feedback. I work at discriminating what words and thoughts from others are life giving and which as life stifling. And I try to give priority to the life-giving words. I name the life giving ones out loud to others with the hope that they might be infused with life as well.
I think that probably both methods of dealing with pain can be put to good use in lessening pain’s power. Whatever tact you take to lessen the power of pain in your experience, know that sometimes pain can lead us to a window when doors are closed. Pain can and will serve a purpose, can and will serve life if we acknowledge it and work with it.
“Sin” is a word, a label. I would rather talk about the pain we experience in our lives. Pain—physical, psychic, emotional, mental, relational, spiritual—is a reality. It’s something we experience in life. To put the label sin on any of these experiences of life diminishes the impact of the experience in my way of thinking. Pain can take many forms from anguish to restlessness, fear to anxiety to distraction. There are many shadings to pain and the common denominator is that all pain can cripple us. It vies for supremacy in our mental functioning. Mental clarity and acuity is as available to us as our deepest fear. That is, the stronger our fear the less clear we can think about reality and action. Our pain and fear and anxiety can even lull us into thinking that we are seeing things clearly from behind the veil of pain and our actions and decisions become responsive to a skewed perspective.
So how do we work with pain? How do we get out from under its grip to a different reality? Athletes are often told to “push through” their pain. I believe this means that they are to ignore the pain and just keep moving, doing whatever exercise they are engaged in. This doesn’t mean the pain goes away. It means that they don’t give priority to it in their mind. They think about other things—the routines they have learned and practiced repeatedly or imagine themselves at the finish line, etc.
On the other hand, counselors will subscribe to the prescription of naming our pain so as to lessen its power over our actions and decisions. The theory and experience is that naming the source or origin of our pain, acknowledging its existence, gives us choices that do not exist if we merely react to the presence of our pain.
This search for employment that I am experiencing brings pain in the form of fear and anxiety. I fear not being able to work again because I am aging out of the market. I have anxieties that I am not doing enough to find work and that the meaning of my life will be lost. So I use both practices for dealing with my pain. I push through my fears each day to find things I can do and to look for signs of hope and meaning. I name my anxieties here and with friends and listen to their feedback. I work at discriminating what words and thoughts from others are life giving and which as life stifling. And I try to give priority to the life-giving words. I name the life giving ones out loud to others with the hope that they might be infused with life as well.
I think that probably both methods of dealing with pain can be put to good use in lessening pain’s power. Whatever tact you take to lessen the power of pain in your experience, know that sometimes pain can lead us to a window when doors are closed. Pain can and will serve a purpose, can and will serve life if we acknowledge it and work with it.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
heroes
I’m thinking of heroes. Not the heroes of popular culture or history. I’m thinking of the heroes of my life—the people who have inspired me to live hopefully and courageously even when the chips are down. The heroic qualities of these people are often hidden from the general public. And yet their lives and stories have the power to inspire and empower others. They may never know that they have given others the courage and inspiration to live lives of purpose and meaning. They have often been called “unsung heroes”. Unsung that is, until we speak their names and stories.
So I am speaking today of the inspiration I have received from my father who died too young and lived unfulfilled dream, who stood by a wife with emotional issues and raised two daughters to adulthood. His work was that of a time gone by. He was a tailor as was his father before him. He was also a member of what Tom Brokaw calls “the great generation”. He left his apprenticeship to his father to fight in WWII. There was no time to finish the many year course of a master trade with apprenticeship and journeyman to become a master tailor when he returned from the war. There was no time because my grandfather, Dad’s dad, died shortly after my father returned. I’m sure there was a period of sowing some oats instead of sewing coats immediately after the life threatening and altering experience, but by the time he settled down in married life and I was born my grandfather had succumbed to cancer. The master was gone. My father tried to make a go of made-to-measure tailoring, but we lived in the midwest in the midst of farm country. Needless to say there was very little call for tailor made clothing. My father often felt like a failure because he couldn’t make a living at tailoring as his father had. He regretted that he had not learned all he could from his father like how to make patterns. He did make me some coats and helped when sewing frustrated me as a teenager. Eventually he found a master tailor in a neighboring city and completed his apprenticeship. By the time this was done even wealthier people passed by tailor made clothing for the efficiency of mass produced, ever available clothes off the rack. My dad tailored for a large department store making alterations to ready-made clothing sold in the store until he too succumbed to cancer at age 63.
Today would have been my dad’s birthday. I’ve often wished he could have seen the bigger picture enough to understand that it was not his inadequacy as a tailor so much as a change in the culture and market that diminished almost all trades and crafts, including tailoring, in our society. This hero of mine fought valiantly to hold onto a craft that has become obsolete. To sit for hours and learn the feel of the needle and thread, to train one’s eye and touch to understand the weave and drape of material, this is art of a different age and time. But heroes can be like that. They not so much champion lost causes as they stand for the undervalued qualities that make life and work more a product of the best human effort.
So here’s to you, Dad, for offering your best effort to support your family and believing that work could and should feed the soul.
So I am speaking today of the inspiration I have received from my father who died too young and lived unfulfilled dream, who stood by a wife with emotional issues and raised two daughters to adulthood. His work was that of a time gone by. He was a tailor as was his father before him. He was also a member of what Tom Brokaw calls “the great generation”. He left his apprenticeship to his father to fight in WWII. There was no time to finish the many year course of a master trade with apprenticeship and journeyman to become a master tailor when he returned from the war. There was no time because my grandfather, Dad’s dad, died shortly after my father returned. I’m sure there was a period of sowing some oats instead of sewing coats immediately after the life threatening and altering experience, but by the time he settled down in married life and I was born my grandfather had succumbed to cancer. The master was gone. My father tried to make a go of made-to-measure tailoring, but we lived in the midwest in the midst of farm country. Needless to say there was very little call for tailor made clothing. My father often felt like a failure because he couldn’t make a living at tailoring as his father had. He regretted that he had not learned all he could from his father like how to make patterns. He did make me some coats and helped when sewing frustrated me as a teenager. Eventually he found a master tailor in a neighboring city and completed his apprenticeship. By the time this was done even wealthier people passed by tailor made clothing for the efficiency of mass produced, ever available clothes off the rack. My dad tailored for a large department store making alterations to ready-made clothing sold in the store until he too succumbed to cancer at age 63.
Today would have been my dad’s birthday. I’ve often wished he could have seen the bigger picture enough to understand that it was not his inadequacy as a tailor so much as a change in the culture and market that diminished almost all trades and crafts, including tailoring, in our society. This hero of mine fought valiantly to hold onto a craft that has become obsolete. To sit for hours and learn the feel of the needle and thread, to train one’s eye and touch to understand the weave and drape of material, this is art of a different age and time. But heroes can be like that. They not so much champion lost causes as they stand for the undervalued qualities that make life and work more a product of the best human effort.
So here’s to you, Dad, for offering your best effort to support your family and believing that work could and should feed the soul.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
life cycle & fallow times
The return of the sun is nourishing my soul. I am fortunate enough to have a place in my home when the sun steams in and I can sit her soaking myself in vitamin D and warmth. Nature is another tool of the spirit for me It’s a source of wonderment and mystery. I have always felt quieter inside when I am immersed in nature.
As a child one of my favorite places to play was a college arboretum a short walk from my home. There was a pond that froze in the winter and I learned to ice skate there. There were stone gazebos built among the trees and bushes where I would pretend to be a princess and my fantasies would take flight. There were paths weaving in and out of shadows where I was always surprised by the discovery of a flower or turtle when I turned the corner. There was a graceful old weeping willow at the water’s edge where I would sit and dream of a wonderful future. I found hope in my arboretum.
It’s the constancy of the life cycle in nature that I turn to now for inspiration about my own future. The cycle from dormancy to renewal, to bloom and flower only to wilt and die to outward appearances while in secret life indulges in regeneration. Our human lives require these fallow periods to regenerate and re-create and re-establish outward living. Work is outward living. Though circumstances in the public world may present us with a fallow period tending to our inner gardens just might be the best use of this time.
How does nature impact your spirit? Where is your green place? What have you benefitted from during fallow periods in your life?
As a child one of my favorite places to play was a college arboretum a short walk from my home. There was a pond that froze in the winter and I learned to ice skate there. There were stone gazebos built among the trees and bushes where I would pretend to be a princess and my fantasies would take flight. There were paths weaving in and out of shadows where I was always surprised by the discovery of a flower or turtle when I turned the corner. There was a graceful old weeping willow at the water’s edge where I would sit and dream of a wonderful future. I found hope in my arboretum.
It’s the constancy of the life cycle in nature that I turn to now for inspiration about my own future. The cycle from dormancy to renewal, to bloom and flower only to wilt and die to outward appearances while in secret life indulges in regeneration. Our human lives require these fallow periods to regenerate and re-create and re-establish outward living. Work is outward living. Though circumstances in the public world may present us with a fallow period tending to our inner gardens just might be the best use of this time.
How does nature impact your spirit? Where is your green place? What have you benefitted from during fallow periods in your life?
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