So, how does God’s Spirit work in our lives? What are those nudges, happen-chances, and sudden revelations if they are not from above? Well, at least, I think I have learned over the years that an open, compassionate heart is the first step to living more spiritually – more God-like.
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a waiting room waiting for a doctor’s appointment at the Veteran’s Administration where I receive my medical care. Yes, I am fully at the mercy of a complete, government-run, socialized system of medical care. It’s been good for me and they’ve kept this old body functioning over the years.
Now back to the point. I picked up a magazine there and found it was an old issue of The Nation from last spring. But I decided to page through it. In it, I found an article by one of their editors, William Greider, entitled “The Future of the American Dream.” I started reading it and eureka! there it was a current essay which summed all that I both believed in and tried to accomplish when I was chief of the Madison P.D. During my last ten years, I was deeply involved in the Total Quality Management movement of the 1980s and 90s. Aha, I said to myself, maybe everything we learned during that era has not been lost and forgotten.
Work is important stuff. It give us not only income, but also a sense of accomplishment. Work is not only necessary for our bodies but also our souls and, yes, even our spiritual development. We live in a nation that declared over a century ago that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was our goal as a new nation. And work is certainly tied to life, liberty and happiness. Grieder listed two important things that America needs to do as we enter the 21st century and are recovering from the stunning realization that our economic system has collapsed due to a lot of dishonesty and greed.
Greider tells us that two things need to happen. First that
“every American who is willing and able ought to have the right to a job that pays a livable wage. If the private sector will not provide these jobs, then the public sector should be the employer of last resort.”
Work is important. It is so important that it must be a right and that right to a job must include a living wage (and health insurance!). If the private sector can’t make this happen, then the government should step in. Work is that important. Work is a right in America.
Secondly, Grieder said
‘that everyone who works, whether in the front office or on the assembly line, deserves to ‘own their work’--that is, the right to exercise personal responsibility for what they do and enjoy mutual respect and the capacity to contribute and collaborate in important decision-making within the firm. These elements of individual voice and status are critical to satisfaction in one's work, but democratic qualities are largely missing from American workplaces.”
Now here’s where the “rubber hits the road” and the screeching starts. Everyone not only deserves a job with a living wage, but also a job which fulfills the basic tenets of this society – that we all have voice, a right to be treated with dignity and respect, and we all can contribute to workplace decisions.
Far too long, American workers have been literally slaves to work that is pure drudgery, often abusive and, in some places, workers fear for their safety. Too often, workers are not treated with dignity nor respected. And their opinions on how to do a better job go unheard or trivialized. Democracy in America should not end at the doors of the factory or any American organization. Just because we can vote every two or four years doesn’t mean we truly live in a democracy if democratic practices don’t go on in our workplaces.
What I am talking about here is a system that can be crippling to a person’s spirit. We are all children of God, therefore, all people are worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. They deserve to have a voice and to be heard.
Now in our lagging economy, not many of us have any power to create jobs. But , for those of us who work (and especially those of us who supervise others) there are a lot of things we can do to humanize our workplaces. We can, ourselves, start practicing "mutual respect" for one another, gently press for more voices to be heard in making work decisions, and generously listen to those with whom we work. Everyone has a God-given right to be treated with dignity and respect and that includes people in the workplace!
This can be scary stuff when you stand up for this. Jobs come few and far between and fear permeates almost every workplace. But as Jesus said, what good is it if we gain the world and loose our souls?
[You can read the full text of Grieder’s article at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/greider. It appeared in the May 25, 2009 issue of The Nation.]
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