Sharing a life

Although not stated in the UN Declaration, some people believe that we also have a right to work that is meaningful!

When I traveled to Haiti some years ago, I learned the Haitian Proverb: "We see from where we stand."

Today, I am going to offer you some of my thoughts, ideas, and beliefs on the topic of how our work, our labor, provides for us a share of life's glories.

My perspective is, obviously, my own, a woman's perspective on this topic - I can't pretend to be other than who I am & I don't want to!

You likely noticed that many of the readings and responses that are part of our service today were written by women. I chose them because they resonate with my experience and because they have something to say to us about work!

Denise Levertov's prayer for revolutionary love: "That our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work not be set in false conflict. That our love for each other give us love for each other's work. That our love for each other's work give us love for one another.

How many families are torn apart by arguments about love for family and absorption with work?

And Dorothy Day's observation that "No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do!"

In the reading from Isaiah it is clear that part of our task is to: "Loose the bonds of injustice, share our bread with the hungry."

The evangelist Matthew confounds us with the owner of the vineyard who is criticized because he chooses to be generous with the workers who only labored for an hour.

And I so love the words of Marge Piercy: "I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who stand in the line and haul in their places, move in a common rhythm… The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real."

Let me express my gratitude to Debbie, Gillian, Ferol and Carol, who agreed to join me up here and who read this morning. It can be lonely up here!

You undoubtedly noticed the colorful painting hanging in the sanctuary today. My friend and artist France White agreed to let me share it with you. Before I tell you about the art, I would like you to meet the artist:

France, will you please stand so that Neighborhood Church members and friends can see who you are.

France will join me at the door after the Service so you can meet and talk to her, too.

The painting I selected is titled: "Console My People With Justice" with its Black Eyed Susans' of Justice and its Red Poppies of Consolation. It is part of a series that France began some years ago while visiting the magnificent Cathedrals in Europe.

Prior to that journey, France painted a series of oils that resembled quilting panels. Reflecting on the stained glass windows crafted of metal and glass, France saw patterns that are reminiscent of the quilts that women have sewn to provide both warmth and beauty for themselves and their families.

As you can see, she painted this series on flexible canvas and "framed" the canvas with calico fabric.

In my opinion, France's painting - her work - adds to the beauty of our environment. More than that - it conveys a message that resonates with me, and I hope with you as well. Console My People with Justice - our work in the world.

Thank you, France, for being here, and for sharing your work, your art with us.

Our Opening Song, "Bread and Roses" comes to us from the 1912 mill workers strike in the city of my birth, Lawrence, Massachusetts.

On the Sunday before September 11, 2001, at Lee's invitation to share what I would build a church to commemorate, I indicated that I would build that church to commemorate the workers in that Bread & Roses Strike. Those workers, as the song reminds us, wanted more than bread - they wanted roses, too! They wanted to live, yes; but they wanted to live with dignity and, yes, some beauty! A sharing in life's glories!

You may recall that the Bread &Roses Strike involved 20,000 textile mill workers in a city of 90,000 people.

It included immigrants from at least 30 different nations who spoke 45 different languages. Some of those people - like Turks and Armenians, Lithuanian Christians and Jews - had been bitter enemies in the Old World. Now, they united to fight a common enemy - the poverty and indignities that came from working in the mills. They all marched on the same picket lines.

Those mill workers labored in conditions that would, unbeknown to them, likely have a negative effect on their lives and health.

One of my maternal aunts - Peggy O'Neill, was a burler in the Arlington Woolen Mills. As a burler she spent eight hours a day M-F, and four hours on Saturday, moving her hands over the woolen fabric as it rolled past her on huge rollers. The constant friction obliterated the fingerprints of burlers!

That would not seem to be a serious condition. However, during World War II, the FBI fingerprinted all the mill workers for "identification purposes" as part of "national security". People without prints were outside the "security" screen - without an official "identification"! One wonders if it is because so many of the mill workers - not the owners - were immigrants! But let me not digress…

In September I told you the more dramatic story of Camella Teoli, daughter of Italian immigrants. Camella was recruited by a mill agent who charged her father $4 to obtain papers from the old country to establish her age as 14, the minimum working age. Obviously, she was younger than that!

Two weeks after Camella started working in the Washington Mills; her hair got caught in a machine for twisting cotton, pulling her scalp off her head. Camella was hospitalized for seven months. The mill paid her doctors' bills but not her lost wages!

The situation of the mill workers might be compared to that of the workers at the PictSweet Mushroom farms in nearby Ventura. Grown in compost, needing no light because no photosynthesis takes place, mushrooms thrive in dark, damp, decidedly stinking, rooms. Imagine those working conditions for little pay and fewer benefits. Bread, maybe; but certainly no roses!

Hopefully you will want to hear the experience of the mushroom workers during our "Coffee, Controversy and Conversation" session between services to better understand their struggle to share in life's glories.

Hopefully, too, some of you will want to join members & friends of NC and other UUs when we caravan to Oxnard on Saturday, March 2nd to bring your contributions of food and other necessities to the workers. Many of the workers hours have been drastically cut in an attempt to break their efforts to obtain a union contract with PictSweet! These workers too want their share of life's glories. Bread & Roses - decent working conditions, better salaries, and affordable health care benefits.

Let's spend a minute with the words we connect with work - job, profession, ministry, opus, opera, toil, labor, service, servitude and many more. Some work, jobs or professions come with a title: Reverend, Doctor, President, Mayor, - a judge is Your Honor!

While it is often said that children are the most important people in our society because they are our future, their teachers have no such title unless they teach at the higher academic levels - then they are Professors!

A friend sent me an e-story. If you also received it, please bear with me. There is a point to this!

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Mexican.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs...I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat.

With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can
buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant.

You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
"And after that?" "Afterwards?

That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?"

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your grandchildren, catch a few fish, take a siesta, and spend your evenings having a few drinks, playing the guitar, singing a few songs and enjoying your life!
End of story! No explanation needed!

Several years ago, I traveled to the border of Mexico and the US to visit the Johnson &
Johnson factory in the maquiladora section of Tijuana. I was part of a group of representatives from religious communities of women whose corporate portfolios included stock in Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson corporate executives flew out from the East and met us at a hotel in San Diego. As guests of J&J, we boarded a luxury bus complete with attendants serving coffee and continental breakfast during the short trip to the factory.

The Johnson & Johnson plant in Tijuana manufactures dental wires that orthodontists use to make braces! I imagine that a fair number of you have either had braces or have paid for braces for your children. None of us on the tour could remember seeing any children with braces or even orthodontists in our travels in Mexico!

Part of the company pitch was to show us various overhead transparencies detailing the wages and benefits of their workers. It was fairly obvious that the women, who did most of the tedious, intricate work, for which they wore goggles with magnifying glasses, were far lower on the pay scale than the plant maintenance men.

The reason given was that the women, even though their work required greater precision and skill could not be paid higher wages than men - it would not be culturally acceptable - even though we had been told that most of the women were single heads of households!

When we spoke to the women workers while touring the plant, we asked them about the work they were doing. Some of them had no idea what the finished product even looked like. They had never seen anyone who wore braces! They could never imagine using the product of their labor!

Another aspect that interested me is that the women workers felt very small and insignificant because the pieces they made were so tiny. One of the female workers described her work as less than chiquito. She used the word: "chiquitito"!

On the other hand, I have also been privileged to see families in Tijuana who belong to the Esperanza housing cooperative proudly demonstrate the work of their hands as they build their own houses with interlocking cement blocks. With the participation of their neighbors and church folks like us from this side of the border, they are able to enjoy living in a simple, decent home that they have labored lovingly to create. Truly, for them, sharing in life's glories -

A couple of Sunday's ago, I shared a video with some of you about the Women Quilters from Tutwiler Mississippi who will be with us in a couple of weeks. I am sure you will want to see and purchase some of their beautiful handiwork!

The video contains a segment from the CBS Program "60 Minutes". It features some Catholic nuns who work in Tutwiler. One of them, our Sister, Dr. Anne Brooks, is the only doctor in Tutwiler. She practices in the only clinic in Tutwiler and the surrounding area that, according to the Tutwiler website, boasts of 1097 churches!

This region of MS, with its rich delta soil, employed thousands of African-Americans as cotton pickers in the days before modern farm equipment replaced them in the fields.

Now most of the African - American people in Tutwiler live in and with poverty, illiteracy, substandard housing, unpaved, muddy roads, and the diseases that accompany such conditions. These are the patients who seek treatment at the Tutwiler Clinic.

In the video clip, Dr Brooks is asked by the interviewer from CBS' 60 Minutes, what she "gets" out of working in Tutwiler.

Without hesitation, Anne says she gets: "More than one thousand percent job satisfaction!"

Wow! How many people in the world can say that? Dr Brooks certainly enjoys some of life's glories!

When I started to think about this topic, I reflected on some things that I have heard people say about their jobs.

A friend of mine, actually, one of my former students, is a 3rd grade teacher. Sheila told me that she absolutely loves what she does! Imagine if every child could have a teacher who could say that? Talk about a "sharing in life's glories'!

When my brother Vince died in August, one of the people who eulogized him was his colleague, friend, and tennis opponent, Dr. Vito Campesi, the Chief of Nephrology at USC-County Medical Center.

I quote: "For much of his career Vince was dedicated to studying the role of the sympathetic nervous system in the pathophysiology of hypertension.

He had a specific interest in the diagnosis and management of pheochromocytoma. Few doctors in the world have taken care of as many patients with this type of cancer - pheochromocytoma as Vincent did.

In his work Vince was intense and engaged but he always enjoyed what he was doing.

Recently he told me that his boss had increased his number of months of rotation on the ward. "It would have driven me nuts!" Vito said.

Instead, Vince was laughing and said, 'Vito, I am getting paid to make rounds with the residents a couple of hours a day, and I love it. For me this is not a punishment. For me it is enjoyment!'"

It was clear from this story that my brother found in his work "A sharing in life's glories!"

Paradoxically, someone that Vince brought home to live with our family in his early days at USC was a student from Iran who was working in Vince's research lab. Ali currently lives in Florida with his family. When he came for Vince's funeral, Ali told us that the only work he could get, even with his Ph.D. in mathematics, was teaching high school math - and he hates his job. Ugh!

It is hard to imagine what that must be like. During my last year of formal classroom teaching, while I knew I did not want to teach for the rest of my working life, I certainly did not hate it!

Following that year, I took a sabbatical and one of the things that I learned, while I was "jobless", was how much I had defined myself in terms of what I did. I was a teacher - plain and simple!

While on sabbatical, knowing I had no intention to return to classroom teaching, the only profession for which I was certified, I learned to become very creative when introduced to people. In almost all cases, the first question that people ask is: "What do you do?"

To sidestep that question, I became rather adept at talking about where I lived, where I came from, where I had traveled. It was then that I began to describe myself as bi-coastal - born on the East Coast and lived mostly on the West Coast - then I could talk about both Massachusetts and California!

How I wish I had known then what my friend Judy told me she used as a response to the same question - Her response was: "I am a human BEING - not a human DOING!"

I wasn't DOING much while on sabbatical. Oh, I took classes - but not for credit! I traveled all over Texas and into Mexico. I learned plenty about myself and the people I met, and saw more than my usual share of movies at $1.00 matinee prices!

During that time, I also learned how difficult it is to be unemployed - especially in a community and culture where each of us is expected to contribute to the common good because each of us shares equally in what is provided. And, in a culture, that has more than its share of workaholics!

What I do know is that my own job experiences have opened up worlds of opportunity for me, opportunities to visit other countries and learn about other people and cultures different from my own limited experience. Talk about a sharing in life's glories!

Prior to coming to NC, I spent 3 months in the tiny country of Lesotho teaching English to Basotho women whose goal is to continue their education beyond secondary school. It is the only way they can hope to earn a salary.

While living in a remote mountain village, with few creature comforts and no telephone, I was reminded of how hard some people need to work just to survive. Most of the food we ate was grown locally and cooked on a wood-burning stove! Believe me, it was simple and monotonous. The main dish at both dinner and supper was the same chicken, greens and papa - every day!

For fresh fruit and other commodities we traveled nearly an hour to a small village on the border of the Republic of South Africa!

It was no wonder that the cabbages were given the best seat on the "taxi" or bus! The experience also served to remind me how hard subsistence living is and what back-breaking work it is to pick peas. However, the warm, welcoming Basotho people, the rugged mountains, the clean, clear, cold air and the blanket of brilliant stars in the southern sky at night were, for me, then, a share in life's glories!

And now I am so lucky to have this fantastic job as Outreach Director at Neighborhood Church! What a gift to work with such a fantastic staff, with such committed people, to spend my time working with people who want to make the world a better place - and not just for themselves - to share life's glories with those whose share is not nearly large enough! I am having the time of my life! Talk about a huge share of life's glories!

Once again, even though our neighborhood is small, the world of Neighborhood Church is huge!

Part of the gift that Lee left us during his sabbatical was the gift of our guest preachers, and their various perspectives.

A few weeks ago, Reverend George Regas told the story of the composer Giacomo Puccini, who when he knew that he was terminally ill, decided to write the opera Turandot. When asked what would happen if he was not able to complete the work, Puccini replied that it would be finished by his students.

At the Premier, in La Scala Opera House, Puccini's student Arturo Toscanini directed the piece. When they reached the point in the music where Puccini ended his work and his life, Toscanini stopped the performance to announce:

"Thus far wrote the maestro, Puccini!" Then he took up the baton to direct the work that was completed by Puccini's students.

As George Regas said: Thus far, the work of the creator. The rest is up to us. It is ours to complete the work of love, of healing, of peace with justice."

A thought that I would like to leave with you today comes from a woman whose work in life was that of service to others.

This woman was one of the models that NC put forth in the advertisement for the position of Outreach Director - Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She writes:

"Love cannot remain by itself - it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. Whatever form we are, able or disabled, rich or poor, it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing; a lifelong sharing of love with others."

And I would like to add, that in addition to service, our action must also contribute to change - change of heart, change of attitudes, change of systems and structures - systems and structures that only serve the needs of some, to just systems and just structures that allow all of us to enjoy, for whatever work we do, a share in life's glories.

Asi sea! Blessed be! Amen! Thank you!