Book review: The Road to Joy by Kevin McClone

A chaplain's map for growing in wisdom

(Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2020)

Like many authors of psychology and self-help books, Dr. Kevin McClone writes as a working psychotherapist and educator.  But his voice brings something new to the genre – prior training and experience as a spiritual care provider.  The difference, while maybe not visible to the lay person, is refreshing and deeply nourishing.

The Road to Joy fills a gap in the popular literature of personal growth, and even meets a need for certain clinicians.  First of all, he is explicit with the term “psychospiritual,” which may be novel to some, but which is a cornerstone among the competencies of chaplaincy.   Spiritual care as a profession is too often obscured in the shadows of psychotherapy and conflated with denominational ministry in a church.  It is neither of those things, although spiritual care practitioners will often confer with professionals in both disciplines: this is the commitment to “whole-person care” in action.  As a relatively young clinical discipline, professional research literature in our field is sorely lacking, while it is virtually invisible to the self-help audience.  This book is a welcome exception.

Similarly, the author’s impressive resume as a hospice chaplain, clinical psychologist and educator, and addictions counsellor, reassures the reader of his experience and credibility in speaking of transformation that leads toward joy – even through, especially through, pain and fear.  But you won’t read this book because it’s professionally competent – you will read it for the same reasons people in pain or confusion, religious and not, open up and come to trust a good chaplain: humane and authentic listening. Connection, “deep unto deep,” as McClone acknowledges.

The Road to Joy is a hybrid self-help guide and personal reflection on navigating life, each of the two modes strengthening the other. The author illuminates the eight-step path he proposes with resources drawn from both psychology and diverse spiritual wisdom traditions; but he also draws from his own life path, through addiction recovery and up to mourning the recent death of his wife of 28 years.

There is no glib or cloying, shallow “positivity” here which can so often doom lesser writers.  Dr. McClone speaks from personal experience, yes, but perhaps more important, he speaks tenderly and bravely about the meaning of our wounds and “weaknesses.” Because he is a trained chaplain and counsellor, he understands their transformational power when we humans, being neither doormat nor drill sergeant, become willing to engage with life as a long journey toward truth and grace.  But he is also a person of faith, and so he experiences his own trials through the lens of spiritual formation, and shares what he learns.  

As a person of faith myself,  in the wake of my own partner’s death I was left with nothing but a ragged trust in the fact that I was alive: a living consciousness, a “proof” of God, as it were, waiting to learn anew why I should exist in the material world. It is not an easy journey. 

I have always been deeply offended by the facile notion that “things happen for a reason,” which is a secular echo of the cruel “God’s will” argument.  Rather, through my process understanding of God, I recognize that deep experiences may be used by us.  Trauma and tragedy are crucibles: they change life and consciousness (as do blessings and joyful discoveries). Inside that crucible, what shape might you take?  What sense of direction might you find, for how violently your life has been upturned? There are many stories of individuals who have suffered greatly, who were changed so much by their suffering that they left a mark on the world.  Some of those, in our news cycle daily, are black marks of rage and destruction; many (less “newsworthy”) became pathways of justice, charity, nourishment and healing.

Kevin McClone’s intention is to give readers the conscious tools to use our ongoing formation – through love and family, through risk and rage – to become more fully ourselves.  Not to become “perfect,” but to become ever more self-accepting, realistic, grateful, and joyful.

In the face of catastrophe, science can often tell us the “how” of our injury, our symptoms, even our recovery.  Spirit moves us to ask the “why” – precisely the point at which a patient might seek out the spiritual care provider, when the doctor and the social worker don’t know what to say.  That's when we chaplains might try to gently reframe the question: not "What did I do to deserve this?" but rather, "What shall I do with this changed universe?" Ultimately, how do I walk this human path without being corrupted by pain? 

McClone understands that this fundamental question applies to the religious as well as the atheist, and to everyone in between.

In practice, it’s important to note, a good chaplain will never share his own trials with you – your own story is the centre and the source for the work to be done.  But Kevin McClone’s book reveals the kinds of wisdom and emotional hygiene (otherwise known as the core competency of “self-awareness”) that fortify his service to our neighbours’ spiritual need.  A great addition to both my professional and personal libraries.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. #Roadtojoy

Book Review: Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints By Daneen Akers (Watchfire Media, 2019)

A joyful and necessary resource for progressives

            

This book is such a joy!  I don’t have kids of my own, but it was easy to return to the 10-year-old I was and find the pleasures in Daneen Akers’s ambitious reference book for young people.  In the world where I grew up in the 70s, there was of course no Google; there were books.  My family weren’t readers, but I was, and someone always arranged that books would come my way.  Two sets of encyclopedias lived in our house by the time I was born (purchased a month at a time by mail-order, I bet! But I never asked), and an array of educational books: one of dog breeds and one of horse breeds, complete with illustrated stickers to match to the right reference page; a shiny hardcover Readers Digest “omnibus” about everything interesting, from how to start a campfire to different kinds of clouds and how plumbing works.  I loved those books, immersed myself in their magical, glittering understandings of the world outside my little working class neighbourhood.

            Holy Troublemakers and Unconventional Saints is that kind of book, for a new era.  The author arranges her subjects alphabetically, rather than thematically, which is most appropriate – the lives of many of these un-conservative and un-conventional spiritual travellers encompass several overlapping themes, as do all of our lives.  Illustrated by soulful, joyous portraits, most of them are women, including trans women; many are clergy who moved from conservative faith communities to progressive and inclusive ones, with all the vocational trials that entails.  The LGBTQ community is beautifully represented here; politics and civil disobedience are part of many stories.  So too is sacrifice, and the costs of being true to oneself and to one’s love of God, often in opposition to one’s family traditions.  There are many names for God recognized here, as well, and representatives of a spectrum of communities, from global Indigenous to Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, and of course a significant cohort of progressive Christian traditions.

            Some of my favourite Holy Troublemakers are here: Harriet Tubman, Mr. Rogers, Thich Nhat Hanh, Kaitlin Curtice, Rachel Held Evans, even Francis of Assisi.  But more thrilling was the discovery of so many activists, called through faith, to agitate for the concrete needs and spiritual dignity of their people – however “their people” might be construed.  For a quick sense of the tone and scope of this volume, parents might simply skim the helpful glossary at the back.  Two examples: 

            Conservative: A person who tends to like things the way they are or the way they have historically been; conservatives work to limit political, theological, and social change.

            Womanist/Womanism: …  Black Feminism that listens for the perspectives of the people in texts who often are overlooked or unheard, usually the voices of women, enslaved people, and children.

            

I’m grateful for those congregations, many for which I preach, that teach and pray to an inclusive, welcoming God, One who rejoices and weeps with us on the messy human journey.  Yet there are also curious kids whose spiritual formation isn’t taking place in a faith community – and what’s more, who are surrounded by shallow and polarized media blather about “religious” people.  As parents and spiritual leaders -- where to find alternative narratives about the faith-filled, humane work we know to be going on all over the world for justice and neighbourliness?  Holy Troublemakers and Unconventional Saints is a brilliant start.

            In our current secular culture that too often mocks or caricatures religion, Akers’s lovely book is a light in the darkness for kids’ questions about religion and faithful practice. And I will attest, it also proves a balm for us confused and weary adults.  

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. 

#HolyTroublemakers 

Book Review: On Satan, Demons and Psychiatry by Ragy R. Girgis, MD

On Satan, Demons, and Psychiatry: Exploring Mental Illness in the Bible

Ragy R. Girgis, MD  (Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2020)

Thumbnail: "Mental illness is not moral weakness" - an important argument, imperfectly executed.

I come to this text occupying the same overlap from which Dr. Girgis writes: where Christian theology meets psychiatry.  He is a psychiatric clinician and researcher, striving to translate his scientific language for Bible-based Christian believers like himself, while I am a Christian theologian and multi-faith hospital chaplain, working as a spiritual care resident in acute and tertiary psychiatric care.  

While not a biblical theologian (political and applied theology is my field), I have found in caring for patients that biblical language is relevant and helpful - for them and for me.  The language of "demons" can be illuminating when, for example, we are trying to reconnect to a loved one, inexplicably lost in clouds of paranoia, or major depression, or refractory schizophrenia, or dementia.  However, most of us understand such language as metaphorical - it simply helps orient us to the play of invisible forces that disrupt the relational currents in human connections.  JK Rowling, in the Harry Potter series, depicted "Dementors" as predatory, dark, cold pits of despair personified; the films managed to visualize them with gut-chilling effect, sucking the colours of heart, joy, and self out of their victims.  Based on my own experience with a loved one's depression, and moreso since my clinical experience, she got it right.

Furthermore, it can be hard to square our scientific understanding of mental illness with the subjective, emotional experience of loss, anger, or resentment; the pre-scientific language of the Bible provides images and, more importantly, theological context for dealing with the functional and relational challenges posed by symptoms of mental illness. 

However, Ragy R. Girgis's book is not addressed to those believers who consider the "demons" of psychiatric illness metaphorically.  He is writing explicitly for a Christian population very different from my own progressive context: he - admirably - wants to challenge and modify an attitude among certain Christians that finds the existence of "serious mental illness inconsistent with a Christian worldview [emphasis mine]."  In other words, like the lepers of biblical times, the mentally ill may be considered as unworthy or somehow not right with God; even, as tainted by evil spirits. Can this actually be a problem, in 2020?  

In my own circles, perhaps not, although I've met many patients who doubt their own worthiness, mentally and spiritually burdened as they are.  And yet the public's willful ignorance and fear around mental illness is very real.  As a seasoned occupational therapist once told me, so many of our patients lack the supports of friendship, acceptance, just the simple freedom to be who they are because the people closest to them frankly wish them to be different, to be "easier."  The layers of sorrow go deep.

Thus, On Satan, Demons and Psychiatry attempts a noble and urgent project: to speak the language of the kind of conservative Christian who pits science against faith (Girgis is not that kind), whose religious priority is individual salvation (Girgis is that kind), and who may be inclined to read Scripture literally.  His mission is to convince such readers that mentally ill people are part of the biblical record -- not only the "damned" but also major characters in both the Hebrew and Christian testaments: King Saul, Nebuchadnezzar; several of Jesus' healings and more importantly, what they taught about God.  The author argues, successfully, I think, that the biblical writers simply used different, pre-scientific language to describe behaviours and afflictions that existed then as now.  

Girgis is clearly not a trained theologian - there is no indication here that there are many ways to understand God's power, to understand the mission and message of Jesus' teaching, death, and resurrection.  The author's job is obviously not to survey all those ways, but it matters to know which "Christian worldview" he represents - contrary to his unequivocal tone, there is no monolithic christology that speaks to all Christians.  

He is, however, an earnest student of scripture.  Girgis's theological approach seems to attempt to soften the more black-and-white views among some believers; but as a progressive, non-denominational Christian myself I was impatient with some of the christological claims  -- especially the Jesus-is-God equivalence,  and the emphasis on individual salvation. Astonishingly, Girgis insists that the Bible was written not for "groups of people" -- contradicting (at least) all the Hebrew prophets and most of Paul's teaching -- but for individuals intent on their own salvation, the exact opposite of my reading. In addition, oddly, he assures us that he isn't attempting to change the reader's view of the stories' meanings, only to propose that if we consider the characters through a lens of mental illness, we might understand more about mental illness.  This is a repeated, circular disclaimer that undermines his own conviction. 

And finally, this is a manuscript in desperate need of an editor.  This project was a labour of love, but it reads like a graduate thesis, not a mature argument. With my professional interest in spirituality and mental health, I was compelled to dig for nuggets in this book. But it is easily thirty per cent longer than it needs to be, and there are frequent, inexcusable repetitions of entire paragraphs, for example the opening paragraphs of several chapters; the summary of chapters in the Introduction is far too detailed -- verbatim paragraphs cut-and-pasted into the chapters themselves -- then it is largely repeated in the Conclusion's summary.   You won't read it for its crisp prose.

But for an audience resistant to theology that permits of science and grace, or an audience that wants to damn what it fears, Dr. Girgis might be a reassuring guide to the instruments of God's healing work in the 21st century.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. 

Review: Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plainsong, Paulette Meier

[Well, it's a resurrection time. As the world peels off its layers, its scabs, its blindfolds ... I will re-enter my inner world and see how it all looks from here.  To begin - the Speakeasy network invites me to review Christian and other spiritual works of interest to me.  It's a joy to begin with an a cappella singer!]

Paulette Meier: Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plainsong (audio recording)

A gentle space for contemplation

I am not a musician. While I enjoy many creative outlets in my life, the ability to make music is not one of them. Perhaps that's why composers, musicians and singers loom large on my spiritual path.   Whether it's Tom Morello or Sweet Honey in the Rock, there is an alchemy, a mystery in this performing art that might as well be the voice of God itself, as it washes over me, blissful in my mereness and in the grace of receiving.  

On the other hand, I am a trained theologian and a nondenominational preacher. Naturally, my passion for music spills into my vocation, through an eclectic, ever-growing collection of conventional gospel, spirituals and secular songs touching on spiritual themes.  The power of song has much to contribute, both to our fellowship at worship and to our private reflections on God's call to us.  As a theologian, I have studied Quaker history and tradition, and felt a certain kinship with its principles and practices -- but I am not a Quaker.  For me, then, Paulette Meier's a cappella solo recording Timeless Quaker Wisdom in Plainsong is an unexpected and joyful resource for learning more about the Society of Friends and the outlines of its spiritual principles.

But of course, it's much more than that for any of us whose hearts turn reflexively to God at the swell of a melody.

Technically, "plainsong" is not about a melody; it could be considered, rather, a musical form of speaking. It is characterized by an unaccompanied vocal line, and requires neither the rhythm nor the rhyme that we moderns expect of song.  Meier applies this technique to seminal writings from the Quaker tradition. Each track consists of a couple sentences, perhaps a paragraph, sung and then repeated once, all coming in at about 2 minutes or less. The focus is meant to be entirely on the text. Meier's voice is steady and pure - she takes no stylistic liberties with the form (with one lovely exception, the surprising 3-part overdub arrangement near the end of the album called "Seeds of War").  

This is not the kind of collection one would typically put on to play start to finish.  It is more like an anthology of meditations, and in the spirit of meditation, one might better choose one track as a touchstone; like lectio divina, each selection a frame for contemplating deeply the few wisdom words Meier has chosen.   Whether in a group retreat setting, or in one's own daily sitting, these tracks bring both substance and concision to support mental discipline and help keep monkey-mind at bay - for example, "This Present Time."

 As a chaplain and nondenominational celebrant, I am always on the lookout for music appropriate to the ritual or gathering I've been called to create.  There is much here that speaks outside denominational lines.  "Our Life is Love" reflects on the centrality of community; "Who Is It that Dare?" proclaims the radical equality of "male and female" as vessels of Christ's light; "They that Love Beyond the World" is a compassionate reminder that our departed loved ones are never truly lost to us.  The aforementioned harmony piece, "Seeds of War," arranged as a sort of round, challenges our attachment to things - whether "our furniture and our garments" representing Quaker simplicity, or all those tempting consumables of the more worldly life - not simply as spiritually shallow, but much more darkly.

Paulette Meier has offered a gift to the Quaker community, certainly; just as I weep to hear how certain African-American spirituals offer up scripture, so for Quakers the resonance of internalized teachings will be all the richer.  But Meier also blesses all of us seekers with a window on the path of silence, simplicity, and contemplation of God's call to human community.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this work free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. 

HAPPY LABOUR DAY, AMEN

It’s Labour Day! The day the nation acknowledges the contribution of waged workers, who are, by the way, the vast majority of us.
I was asked this weekend to be a guest preacher for Labour Day Sunday, with a congregation new to me. As much as I relished an opportunity to be explicit in the pulpit about my political affiliations, there’s always a significant uncertainty about how partisan language might be received in a mixed gathering. The term “Labour” alone is a red flag to some folks! To everyone’s credit – even those who disagree politically – we had a stimulating, respectful, and educational morning together.

Organized Labour – with the big L – is a significant part of my life, politically and spiritually.
But there’s also a conversation to be had about labour – the work we all do in the world – and our relationship with God. The notion of the dignity of labour begins within each individual, and in the ordinariness of the tasks we face every morning when we wake up. Is it chasing a toddler around the house for the next 12 hours?
Is it standing in a checkstand and keeping a smile on your face for 8 hours solid? Is it sitting at a desk, making enough phone calls and sending enough emails until something actually happens?

Yet all of these labours take place in the context of our relationship with the world. With the other people who live here. The meaning of everything we do derives from the effect it has on people around us. Think about it. Our labour, however “private” we may feel about it, has an impact on our community.
I’m a big believer in the “it takes a village” idea. From my perspective, society is not complicated: It’s a big village, and people chop wood and carry water to stay warm and fed. Everybody’s playing a part in this movie, with their own notions of feeling warm and fed. The most menial-seeming job, the most trivial-seeming turns the wheels of our social and family life. All our labours serve what society needs and wants; playing basketball on TV, for our entertainment (or raising 8 kids on TV); fixing elevators; or slinging groceries, which helps put dinner on our neighbours’ tables, and gives us an opportunity to smile and honour what is beautiful and holy in each other.

WAIT A MINUTE. WHERE IS THAT IN MY COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT??

Well, it isn’t explicitly in that contract. But I can look it up ... Love one another, as I have loved you. As you have done to the least of these, so have you done to me. From the Christian point of view, to serve God is to serve God’s Creation. So in our labour we may find our opportunity to serve each other in love, as Christ commands us. Love is an ethical commandment, for action. Love is not how you feel, it’s a relationship you live. And you know what? That message is easy in church, probably common.

But Labour Day … is not really about that. This national holiday is named for something that doesn’t get talked about in church! Wait: Labour Day is about the dignity of our labour, but particularly the collective – can I say “class?” – of people who labour in a capitalist economy. Labour, with a big L, is an economic, even political word. Why should we talk about that in church?
If the Prophet Amos is any example – because economics and politics and classes of people are important themes in the Bible. Especially in the Hebrew Bible, which tells us the story of how Israel became a community that was defined by a covenant with God. Throughout Israel’s story, we see how they, with God, worked out a new social arrangement. What to do, what not to do if they love God, and what they did that really really ticked God off.
We can hear the human side of that relationship, the love, the anger, in some of the Psalms … but to hear God’s side of things, we have the Hebrew Prophets. Jesus too stands in that line of prophecy – calls in God’s name to Israel as a people, to change their ways and get right with God.

But we in this century have a problem, before we even start: We’re not good at thinking like a community! It’s our greatest problem, our greatest blindness, that we have been schooled to think we function only as individuals, and that “participation” in community life is a choice we can make. It is not! We are all in this movie, as I said; we all affect the shape of the community, and it affects the shape of us. That’s normal, and natural, and profoundly human. To forget that, is to leave a great hole in what we can be as a society.
What’s worse is, many of us tend to read the Bible as if it’s written for us as individuals. As if the lessons in it somehow apply only to our own personal conduct and “choices.” And that … is to leave a great gap in our relationship with God. So much of what’s in the Bible is speaking to us as a society. How might we be God’s people? Do we even know how to answer that call?

When we talk about economics and politics, at least in the labour movement, we are talking about restraints on power and temptation -- justice. We are talking about relationships – ultimately, about respect. How shall we, as collectives of people – decision-makers and workers – how shall we engage each other in relationship? How might we serve each other, in love? Can we talk about that in church? Yes, because our Scriptures do.

Over and over we hear about the widow and the orphan – do they mean we just have to find the old ladies and fatherless children and give them food or money? No, the biblical words mean, as a community – look out for those who don’t participate in the mainstream of economic life. Look out for those who don’t have the normal means of livelihood (which in those days, meant an able-bodied husband or son).
We also hear about the poor and the needy … well, we don’t need a translation for that. In our time, as in Amos’s time, those people may well be able-bodied working people. So the problem is not ability, it’s oppression, it’s suppression, it’s exclusion. That’s pretty political.

Look at Amos 5, where the prophet is addressing the changing economic currents in the 8th century BCE.
Amos’s job is tell Samaria’s rich and powerful that they are betraying God. To Amos, we love God in JUSTICE. AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. He doesn’t care who you are or who writes your paycheque, he speaks for God and God says JUSTICE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. He tries to soften it up a bit when he says “Seek the Lord and live,” which really means – justice or death. If we are true to God’s love, we will act justly. Or we will really really try. Or be damned.

you that turn justice to wormwood,
and bring righteousness to the ground! …

He’s talking here to the “strong” and the influential in the cities. The problem is not simply that these people are wealthy. The problem is that they are exploiting the peasant farmers in order to live in luxury. So Amos has a few choice words for that group of people who tweaked the economy, not only to work in their own favour, but to actually do harm to the poorer folks.

[you] hate the one who reproves in the gate [the courts], and … abhor the one who speaks the truth.
Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink their wine.

Here’s a quote from a Hebrew Bible scholar, Robert Coote:
The elite often own not only the land but also the peasants, in varying degrees of serfdom and slavery. …There is too little margin for the difficulties that the single cultivator faces in the course of a few years of harvests. If there is a crop failure, for example, the peasant may be forced to borrow money, often at excessively high interest rates. The chances are that such a peasant may never get out of debt.

So I’m reading this little slice of biblical economic life, and I’m thinking … isn’t this what I’ve been reading in my research all summer? This is like 1934 on the Prairies!– This is Tommy Douglas’s Saskatchewan! Are we still trying to get this right?

Now, there are still folks in Saskatchewan who refer to Tommy Douglas, the man who brought electricity out to the country folk, turned the province’s economy around and got elected five times – and oh yeah, gave the nation MEDICARE … some folks in that province still call him “that socialist.”

Maybe they’re some of the people who don’t know how to think like a community, or who can’t imagine a “social vision” is something that matters. But isn’t the kin-dom of God a social vision? Isn’t love and the prevention of war a social vision?

Tommy had a big idea for how Canadian society should be: poor people who get sick or injured should have the security of knowing that can get well. People too elderly to work should be allowed to live in dignity and some independence.
Widows and orphans. The poor and the needy. Where did he learn crazy ethics like that? Well, in the Depression on the Prairies… and in his study of Christ’s great commandment. Not everybody knows that Tommy Douglas’ lifelong vocation was as an ordained minister – and he took his first church in 1930, in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
He ministered there for 5 hard years, before he finally determined that he couldn’t do enough from the pulpit. In 1933, Tommy accepted his first nomination to run for Parliament with these words:
“I am conscious of the fact that it is not customary for ministers to take an active part in the affairs of the nation; but I also remember that there was One who went about doing good so the common people heard him gladly. And I would not be worthy of His name if I did not take up the sword on behalf of the underpaid and underprivileged.”
A young opposition member one night in the Legislature [said]…it was too bad that you once had been a Baptist minister and you had turned into a Socialist premier. [Tommy] replied,
‘It’s true that 18 years ago I dedicated myself to serve the Kingdom of God, and if I didn’t believe I was still doing that I would not be standing here today.’ ”

Are we dedicated to serving the Kindom of God? Then how shall we serve, for our part? We are called to love, as Christ has loved us; that’s love with a big L. We are called not just to mercy and kindness but to justice. It’s complicated, I know – we’re no longer trying to get laws passed … we’re trying to get them enforced! That’s a much harder pitch. I have no illusions.

I’m not a Labour activist because I think Jesus was a Socialist, or because the Bible says collective bargaining is the answer. I work for Labour, because in God’s name we must work for justice. In God’s name we must stand against exploitation – including economic exploitation, as the prophets warn us.
Labour as a social movement is dedicated to precisely those things. With all its flaws, it lets me do what I pray is God’s work.

WHERE LOVE MEETS POLITICS 40 hours a week

I’m struggling with making the connection between love and politics. Strange bedfellows, you may say! But it is precisely the question God has called me to live inside. It is the question that burns in my belly. Love, according to the Jesus tradition, is an ethic; and ethics means social relations, and social relations means politics.
I write about performing artists in this “political” blog, I’ve realized, because their vocation calls them to proclaim love in the public square. Their role is to express a vision, a new or higher imagining of what we might be together. To inspire us forward, or chastise us when we stray. As an artist, it is a different task, a different sort of calling, from that of a social activist, who must deal in realities on the ground, in relationships and the logistics of change. Both are crucial.

The term “politics” in the broad sense I’m using it here means negotiation among competing interests in a community. In other words, in its generic, necessary sense.

Real social change entails a process that goes beyond what the people “want.” The mechanics of change move upon what people expect, or better perhaps, what they assume is possible, and what they’re comfortable with. Essentially, what social convention [experience, history, opinion-makers] tells them to expect, usually unconsciously.

Thus the history of social change tells us that “convention” changes, no matter what the conservatives would prefer. There is some comfort in that knowledge, but it doesn’t always make living in the sloooow transition easier. While I personally prefer to dwell in the rare creative air of social harmony and world peace, I am daily confronted, alas, with the failings of what we are together, at work and on the street. Yet this is exactly where we all learn the conventional “wisdom” society teaches.

So if we are going to change what society expects… we must first wrestle love and politics at work and in our daily lives, before the world will change. Rosa Parks, after all, simply got on a bus after work.


Politics Needs Love

What is a loving mediation between conflicting interests? As Sister Rosa and the civil rights movement proved, it is not being a doormat. And as a follower of Christ myself and a preacher of the Word, how shall I respond within a confrontational system, say, at work?
What if I don’t want to be confrontational, I just insist on being treated with respect… and that respect is not forthcoming? Where do I look for the lever of change? Some may suggest, another job! But there are thousands of people in the same position. What if we want respect for them and their work?

It strikes me that the “problem” is not the jobs per se, but the degenerating relationships between decision-makers and the people who implement the decisions.

The employment relationship is a political relationship, to the extent that the interests of workers and employers (and their designates) are distinct. “Love” is a meaningless concept if it is not tested against conflict. Jesus said, Anyone can love their friends – or those who agree with us. But Jesus recognized that life is much more diverse and uncooperative than that. We duck the issue if we apply his teaching merely to “enemies,” and not to those stubborn or unreasonable or unpleasant people we must tolerate each day. Can we even imagine a loving mediation of such differences?
We must -- because I suspect that’s where changing the world begins, in how each of us imagines an alternative to our own social strife. How we imagine a new possibility.

I confess, in my experience as a Union steward with a corporate employer, it’s tempting to make The Suits the “bad guys.” The situation at my workplace has become very tense, as we are methodically understaffed and overworked. Resentment builds as we watch managers (who work a salaried, unclocked day) do our jobs in addition to their own, while our coworkers sit at home with no shifts to work. In physical work like ours, the combination of increased speed and stress is not simply unpleasant, it can also be dangerous. It further saddens me that I am no longer able to find in my work an opportunity to be kind and helpful to people, but instead we as a team can only serve them shabbily and apologize all day. I am no longer proud to be working there. I know I am not alone.

All right then: what if I do move into a different job, in a completely different setting: not corporate retail, but advocacy, say, in a small private organization that pursues political action? What if I move to an enterprise that understands the costs of degenerating social relationships, and seeks a more equitable social structure?

So I make the leap – and what I find there, sadly, is an office culture not so different from the failures of respect in the corporate machine -- in a building literally full of people who want to make the world a better place! How does that come to be? I stayed there as long as I could, sure that the knots in my stomach and the constant, small slights and subtle accusations are all in my head, certain that I just need to work on my own attitude. But at last, I conceded that a place that does not demonstrate trust and creative optimism about its own people is not a place where I can follow God’s call. So I boycotted that bus.

I’ve been reflecting on that experience for a long time now. I have no doubt that virtually everyone there has good intentions. What they lack (like their corporate counterparts) is a grasp of the creative power of mutual affirmation. Having never worked in the crucible of an office environment before that one, I started to connect emotionally with the theories I’ve read about the need for new kinds of leadership [take a look, for example, at Leadership Can Be Taught, by Sharon Daloz Parks; or a small book close to my heart, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, by Rosamund Stone Zander, a family therapist, and Benjamin Zander, a musician and educator]. The urgency of the discussion became apparent as I experienced directly the crying failures of old-style, top-down organizational thinking.
It simply does not occur to some leaders (at any level), that collaboration is not a sign of weakness.

Love Needs Politics
I share this lengthy discussion here, because I know that many – most? – workplace cultures are very similar. And I argue that it’s because many of us, the frustrated workers, resign ourselves to “the way things are done.” We cannot imagine a different order of being a “society” of workers (or taxpayers). But there exist among us, around the world, organizations big and small that do things differently and successfully by more than one measure, by more than numbers or profits. They love people, they honour the planet, and treat relationships with respect.

BULLETIN: Good relationships are productive. Participation is a measure; moral investment is a measure. That is, good relationships are good for the whole system we live in – financially, morally, materially.

Of course, the workplace microcosm can and should be extrapolated to the social and political macrocosm: how do we decide how to treat people? How and what do we punish, how and whom do we support collectively? Put another way: in a democracy, where the job of elected servants is to implement our social values in the law of the land, how do we articulate those values? What measures do we take first of all, to clarify them?
What kind of society would make us proud to belong?

Just as new parents need to be clear with each other about the value system in which they will raise their children, so do we as participants in a democracy need to reflect on what we each want our society to stand for. Equally, just as many new parents don’t have that conversation and end up needlessly squabbling with the children or with each other through the years … so do many voters neglect to clarify their own values, privately or among friends, which they want to see on government’s agenda. Instead, they vote on emotion, not reflection; they respond to media-bytes rather than to convictions (as do many candidates, unfortunately). Or they don’t vote at all, which is its own corrosive kind of contribution.

But perhaps such an awareness of responsible participation begins in the dailiness of the workplace. For many of us, our jobs constitute the majority of our “participation” in society: how do those relationships work? How might they improve? Is your contribution at work respected? Are you respectful of and grateful for the interaction of others? Are you – or your staff – proud to represent your organization every day at work? Proud to engage the community in the name of your company?

Or, alternatively, do you and your coworkers simply assume that bosses are supposed to consider staff their lackeys (or their competition), or that certain positions are less honourable than others, and treat each other accordingly?

Leaders (and future leaders) out there, you may want to check in on that particular “measure of productivity”… We all want to belong to something good. It’s that simple. Whether our sense of belonging is to our work in the world, or to our family of faith or our extended family, if we feel we belong to something we’re proud of, it means we are happy in the social part we’re playing. And the more people who are happy playing a social part, the more alive and humane is the society they create together.

I want to contribute to the Good Society. But let’s start with a boss who won’t break agreements, and a group of long-time coworkers who are kind to the new hires.
Is that naïve? No. There are still buses worth boycotting, and love will still walk all the way home with politics.

MAKING MOVIES to GET LUCKY: Notes on 30 Years

GILEAD
for Mark Knopfler

You present me with a problem I never had before: I don't have the words. Is it because you don't speak for yourself, because your life and political opinions -- "ego" perhaps? -- are hidden from me? But I have to try.

The tenderness in your voice moves me doubly, because you telegraph no emotion. Your growl excites me beyond all proportion, because you headline no "passion."
Your music is poetry and gaelic romance such as I can hardly bear. And yet you unfurl it, fling it into the sky as anonymous - and as glorious - as aurora borealis.

I have seen the Northern Lights, myself ... in its sheath of crackling green; it took over the sky, took over the callow city ... like whiskey in a wineglass. Like a choir, stilling a tavern. Like a carpenter cleared a temple.

Such is your guitar in my heart. It pulses and glows throughout my exile's life, a gregorian prayer in a language I don't speak. Yet God responds. Your words bring me to history (sometimes my own), your music brings God to me.

Understand, this is no small thing. I am one called to God's work, I strive to be true to the task. I hunger for the words, I join the rock and roll chorus in the tent of revival, get drunk with prayers, obsess with the numberless names for the sacred. Still in the end ... I cannot preach like Peter, I'm not meant to preach like Paul.
Yet, as the old song says, there is a balm for my despair. My Gilead is your guitar.

Yours is not to pronounce the holy invocations, never has been. But all this time, instead, you've been the whisper in my ear, you play the holy response! You sing, from deep in the ground...like the hum of Home I once felt through my feet, landing across the globe on the quiet Irish earth. No words, just contact. No persuasion, only Reunion. You are that sound humming through me, through my body into my heart, the song of my solid ground.

Forgive me, companion of so many years. While I was lost you were right beside me, walking me home.

I learn from you the song of the world, the whole hungering, sorrowing, comforting, carousing world -- in you so big and ancient -- so cyclical and human. Be not afraid, says your guitar; this too has passed and will pass again. We too have cried, and shall cry again. Be not afraid, says your guitar: There is always a lullabye, such as this. There is always a love, such as mine.