|
Sermon by Elisabeth Hathaway, MA, PhD Tomorrow is Labor Day. For us it marks the wistful end of the summer, typically the last long-weekend before school starts and the fall work season sets in. Ironically, we have come to associate this holiday with a day off of work, this holiday that was established to honor workers and give us all a so-called “workingmen’s holiday.” By design, initiated in the late 1880’s by the Carpenter and Joiners unions in New York, the American Federation of Labor, and some say the International Association of Machinists too, this day, in the words of the US Department of Labor, was intended “to constitute a yearly tribute to the social and economic contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.” Labor Day was supposed to give workers and their families a day full of celebration, with recreation and amusement, a parade, often speeches by prominent citizens. Samuel Gompers, founder and long-time President of the Federation, pointed out that Labor Day is unique as a national holiday: “all other holidays” he said, “are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.” This holiday, recognizing the vital importance of work, is devoted to all workers, to a community of workers. For Unitarians, this sounds in harmony with our democratic principles, our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all, and our awareness of an interdependent web of purpose and contribution supporting our culture. Now, I had never heard before I looked into the history of Labor Day, that tomorrow’s holiday makes today officially then Labor Sunday, which correspondingly was meant to be dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement. What a juicy topic! So today we take up this mandate. For me, because this is what my mind does, I become aware of the multitude of meaningful aspects of work, and what it means to be a worker. Three general areas come to mind: I. To Live is to Work (or To be Alive is to be a Worker) Thomas Aquinas wrote: “To live well is to work, or to display good activity…. Always rejoice in the good work that you do.” So first of all, for all who work, on this day, we celebrate you. All who work—this is all who exert strength and faculties, sustain effort, labor, create, do, toil, overcome obstacles to achieve; this is all who are occupied, employed, or who pursue a calling. We must rejoice in the good work that we do, we must honor our commitment to a job well done, we must take pride in the fine craftsmanship of whatever we create, whether object, task or system. Know that your work is noticed and valuable. Work is at the center of adult living. Think of it—house work, yard work, paper work, office work, home work, not to mention, the work of a job. A good percentage of our time—30%? 50%? 70%—we are engaged in working. And the work that we do, each person adding his and her own piece of the community puzzle, makes up our society. As Matthew Fox said: “Our work is the role we play in the unfolding drama of the universe.” II. To Work is Not to Live (or Which Comes First, the Life or the Work) Lets think how central is this question of work. What is the first question Americans usually ask a stranger? What do you do, what is your work. There is a fascinating recent book by writer Po Bronson, who, a la Studs Terkel, interviewed hundreds of Americans, all around the topic of What Should I do with my Life. He says: “’What should I do with my life’ is the modern secular version of the great timeless questions about our identity, such as ‘who am I?” and ‘where do I belong?’…asking the question aspires to end the conflict between who you are and what you do. Answering the question is the way to protect yourself from being lathed into someone you’re not.” ‘What should I do with my life’ is a spiritual question. This is the arena of the ‘Right Work’ odyssey, differentiating between ‘work’ and ‘a job’ and giving significance to our vocation, pursuing our purpose for living. It contrasts our life’s work, which is profoundly meaningful, with a job, which is simply a duty and a paycheck. We each recognize that as workers, the ultimate value is not necessarily the objective measure, the bottom line. We each have to ask, what is essential to me in my work? What is my “Life’s Work”? Have you ever let yourself take seriously the question: what should you do with your life? Po Bronson asks further: What is your passion? For you, what is success? Do you have a life not taken? And what impels you toward change? Is there, as Rilke wondered, “an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work”? This tension of fundamental questioning—while some consider it a luxury of western prosperity to even be able to engage in it—is not necessarily as selfish as the secular might judge it to be. Matthew Fox wrote: “Work comes from inside out; work is the expression of our soul, our inner being. It is unique to the individual, it is creative. Work is the expression of the Spirit at work in the world through us. Work is that which puts us in touch with others, not so much at the level of personal interaction, but at the level of service in the community.” III. Busy as Bees (or Exploitation, Distraction, and the Struggle of the Worker) Bees are the symbolic creatures of creativity, industry, productivity, dedication; they create heavenly honey and their intricate homes out of insubstantial grains of pollen. Devoted to their queen, they follow her anywhere and tirelessly do their…work? job? For there is also the aspect of the worker bee as neutered drone, interchangeable on the assembly line at the honey comb, they are anonymous, androgynous, known for faithfulness to their function in the ordered system but individually they are two dimensional, expendable. This is the connotation of work as drudgery, the worker a peon at the beck and call of manager, owner, queen, with the higher class making all the decisions, pulling all the strings. We have to ask, what is the need for labor unions still, literally and metaphorically. Capitalistic exploitation in our culture is rampant, the robber barons are larger than ever. Ours is an age of megalithic multinational corporations, mergers and downsizing, of centralization and global economy, of outsourcing, contracting offshore, an age of shameless profiteering at the expense of individual citizens. It is an age of denial of benefits, unemployment, underemployment, limited vacation, inadequate, inflatedly expensive or nonexistent health care, of mean justice for the worker. Culturally there is an ugliness of exploitation and corruption, a temptation which most organizations, labor unions included, have had difficulty avoiding. The collective has a hard time not sacrificing the individual to the industrial social pull. Even as individuals we are seduced by this corruption. For there is an exploitation of the body and soul, by the mind. How do we participate in treating ourselves as drones? Are you a harsh unjust taskmaster of yourself? Do you make yourself to go a job you do not enjoy, or which does not treat you with respect? Has work taken over, do you have a routine of workaholism with no sense of control, do you only feel good if you are producing something, busy with a clear task. How many days of the week do you feel pleasure and joy, satisfaction and fulfillment? Have you, as Po Bronson asks, “mistaken your career for your life”? Even if money is not the issue, they way in which we work can imprison us, we can exploit our own needs. We often are distracted from our own Life’s Work. The great achievement of the Labor Movement was to have it be legally recognized that individuals have individual needs and rights, and to wrest that protection and justice for the workers on a societal level. If there were a union, organizing internally in your being, what issues would you be agitating to have heard? What personal rights, human rights, are being trampled on in your daily toil? What responsibilities toward care of the laborer in you, is your internal supervisor ignoring? Po Bronson writes: “Failure is hard but success is far more dangerous. If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever. It is so, so much harder to leave a good thing.” The Dalai Lama says that the goal of life is happiness and his work is to do nothing. So let us fulfill the function of Labor Sunday in our participatory service today. Hopefully my thoughts of work have sparked some of yours, some aspect you particularly respond to, in all the many aspects that are held within the topic of work and workers. Collectively, let us open to each individual speaking to his or her own sense of what exactly the meaning of Labor Day is for us, spiritually, educationally, or philosophically. Please pass the microphone, and share with us your thoughts. “The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth. The inward work always includes in itself all size, all breadth and all length.” —Meister Eckhart “A person becomes a flowering orchard. The person that does good work is indeed this orchard beading good fruit…. Whatever humanity does with its deeds in the right or left hand permeate the universe.” —Hildegard of Bingen  |