Didn’t See That One Coming…

Huh? What? Cairo’s falling? According to AlterNet, there’s “Breaking News: Cairo’s Falling!”.

OK. Tunisia fell. I don’t even exactly know where Tunisia is. I feel dumb not knowing about Tunisia, but there’s only so much a person can know while still dealing with the chaos that is regular family life, more snow than we’ve ever had, keeping a job, and being a good citizen by keeping up on the news.

But, as a reasonably intelligent and busy person, I know where Egypt is, I know that’s it’s frequently on the news, I know that Hosne Mubarak is it’s president, or prime minister or whatever they have there. It’s not a radical Muslim country with screaming terrorists in the streets — or it wasn’t yesterday.  It’s not a corrupt, evil power that we’re worried about — or it wasn’t yesterday. Mubarak wasn’t a well-known dictator who suppressed or made disappear thousands of people. Just yesterday, or two days ago, there was this stable government somewhere in the middle-east that had an incredible history, a booming tourist trade which went to see the incredible history, and so on. Today, apparently, there’s fighting in the streets, a curfew, the congress or whatever they have there is “sacked” and the world over there is nuts.

Part of me feels like I should seen this coming. Then the other part of me thinks, “what part of ‘they were stable and ok’ makes me think I should have seen this coming”? There’s only so much a person can cope with and — in the information age — we (or at least I) begin to think we should be up on all of it.  It’s enough to drive a person insane, but it doesn’t have to be.

One month ago, as the ball fell on Times Square, there was enough to worry about. There was recession here, failing markets around the world, a new Congress coming in, a president I supported apparently “dead in the water” as a leader.  there was Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea, trade deficits with China and human rights violations all over the world. Would I have predicted the greatest snowfall in a month on record? No.  A bad winter, yes, but a winter like this? Not even.  Would I have predicted birds just falling from the sky? No. Would I have predicted the fall of Tunisia? No. Had I heard of Tunisia? Yes.  Did I care about Tunisia? No. It wasn’t a threat to me.

So now, Egypt is in trouble and I feel troubled that I wasn’t well-informed enough to see it coming. Does Cairo’s apparent revolution effect me? Not yet, and not directly.  Heck, even if I lived there, I couldn’t have seen it coming, I think, any more than I could have foreseen guys in planes crashing into towers years ago or earthquakes happening in the middle of the World Series before that.

Quinnipiac University here in Connecticut has a global studies program I’m familiar with and people that study there probably know a lot more than I did about the subject. Would more global studies education have helped? Not that I can tell in this situation — at least in advance. Will it make a great deal of difference in sorting out what it means? You bet it will. People in those classes will have a much better understanding than I will of whether Egypt’s troubles are a problem for me or not — and what to do about it if they are.

But all the understanding in the world, all the quest for knowledge that we have, doesn’t mean we know everything and\or should. In the old days, before internet, TV, radio, or newspapers, countries rose and fell and people here never knew about it. Amazingly, they survived. Somewhere along the way, we began to assume that knowledge meant control. We began to assume that we could control everything and that control is the most important thing in life.  So, now when we feel out of control even the slightest bit, we seek more knowledge — more analysis, more pictures, more detail so that we don’t ever have to feel out of control again.

But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we should just get used to the fact that we don’t and can’t control everything. Maybe we should accept that we don’t know everything, even if we want to. Maybe we could try controlling what we can instead of trying, as limited human beings that we are, to control everything. Fear doesn’t help us. Choosing to fear because we can’t understand — and somehow having more to fear —   is one more example of the poor choices we make — choices that don’t work for us.

Let’s save some energy for “rolling with the punches” that inevitably come, rather than always trying to see them coming in our world. Let’s turn off the media at some point in our day. Let’s live in the world we actually live in. We can’t do that forever or we’ll end up being isolated people who only care about themselves. But, today I’m aware that we need a little more balance between control and acceptance, our heads and our hearts.  Just a thought.

Peace,

 

John

 

South Church — Better Than It Has To Be

I  live  in the “real world” every day — the world where people get what they need and deserve based on their actions. I work, I get paid. My kids do good things and my wife and I support them. Things happen because they should and don’t because they shouldn’t, at least most of the time. Tires wear out on someone’s car because they have 60,000 miles on them. The sun rises and sets daily, as it should.   I am aware of what life should –and mostly does– hold.

I work in the really real world. Again, I am aware of what life should –and mostly does outside of there– hold.  In my work world, I see people who don’t hold to those standards and the devastation that brings.  I see men who have children and don’t give them what they need. I see spouses who can’t understand why, if they put nothing into their marriage, their marriage is failing. I see people who can’t imagine that their nasty actions make other people sad. I see people who don’t the hard work of parenting and instead either neglect their children or buy them –seldom listening, seldom actually knowing their kids, often wanting what’s best for them, seldom wanting what’s best for their child or — worse yet — children.

Then, there’s my church world. I am a member of South Church UCC in New Britain, CT and today the church made me proud, even as I grieved for it needing to.  South Church, like many churches and organizations we all know is “downsizing”  – not to give profit to our stockholders, as they do outside of the church, not to to give an extra bonus to our CEO as they do in the corporate world, not to become a “more efficient” church, as though efficiency was the hallmark of an organization.  Today, South Church in New Britain CT downsized because we had to.  Quite simply, when the stock market crashed a few years ago, our endowment took a hit from which it hasn’t ever rebounded.  Now, in order to survive, we have decided to downsize the staff at the church and cut back in various areas of the church budget which mostly centered around people — staffing cuts, salary and benefit cuts for staff, etc.

The church also lives in the real world where, like it or not, bills have to get paid and people have to eat. I have sat through enough Trustees meetings over the course of my lifetime where people speak of running the church “like a business” to know just what that is. Today, South Church did just that — only better. We ran the church as a church — a business where people matter.

Two or three months ago, I was asked to serve on the Personnel Committee for the church because the employees wanted to be taken into account and the church wanted to take them into account as decisions progressed.  We listened as people talked. We did our homework and found that standard handling of a situation was one-month-salary-for-every-one-year-a-person worked. There were special circumstances involved in our decision and we sought — out of justice — to rectify issues the church felt bad about.  The Committee recommended a certain amount to be more than fair — we wanted to be just.  We wanted to take responsibility for our actions and give what was appropriate. The Finance Board at our church heard our recommendations and did even better than that — three months plus benefits for two-and-a-half years of service.  It wasn’t an incredible package, but in  a world where labor laws allow factories to close without warning and offer no benefits at all, this was not business as usual. The church was better than it had to be.

During today’s meeting and vote, it was discovered that one staff member had agreed to voluntarily do her part-time job at the church rather than let the work be left undone.  Even if we were cutting the money, she was going to do the job. Another staff member — rather than cutting the salaries or positions of those under him — took a cut in his own salary and benefits.  Can you imagine what the world would be like if a CEO said “rather than cut our work force, I’ll take a cut in pay”? The church’s people again were better than they had to be.  Two pastors at the church are going to shoulder more of the burden because the work of the church needs to get done — people need to get visited, youth need to be taught, and so on.  Volunteers on Committees effected by staffing cutbacks stepped forward and are doing the work,  because they also care for the church and its ministry.

Finally, at the end of the meeting, someone suggested that the pastor being “downsized” be acknowledged as doing good, creative, and at times, hard work and that the church didn’t want to make these decisions but felt it had to. Yours truly seconded that motion and it was agreed that the motion to discontinue the position could be amended to say that, but there was a better idea. Not on the agenda, but nonetheless planned in advance, a co-moderator read a page-long tribute to the outgoing pastor and her hard work. That was made into an official motion and put into the church record, as well as an acknowledgement that the church grieved that we had to let go of anybody. Once again, in the final analysis, the church — the body of Christ — it’s people, acting like Christians — was better than it “had” to be. South Church, in making a horribly difficult decision, acted graciously and -surpassing even calls for simple justice — was better than it had to be.

I am honored to be a member of such a loving and caring church — one which does the best it can in hard times, caring for people and living out the message of the gospel. I just wanted you to know that such things existed. It certainly exists here in New Britain and it probably exists at many churches. Among the news of mean-spirited theology, egotistic hate-filled pastors who encourage violence against others, and churches fighting against scholarship, which fill the airwaves and the press, I thought a reminder of what churches can be might be a reminder of why we Christians go in the first place.

Peace,

 

John