Friday, August 26, 2011

"Living Wage" (Labor Sunday)

"Living Wage, Waging Life"

"Our life is more than our work.
And our work is more than our job." (Charlie King)
We are gifted, before anything else about us.
We are called, beyond anything we can be paid.

Do pickers, sorters, salvagers, packers
find Jesus in peaches? Jesus gritty,
under our nails? Jesus sticky,
all over our hands? Jesus shouldering
in on relentless routines on the line?

Job on the line, work on the line,
life on the line? Aching Jesus
invading our biceps? Sinking into
the smalls of our backs? Groaning out
from the balls of our feet? Jesus embodied
in peaches? In very slimmest of pickings?

Two hours' work buys a dozen eggs,
four hours a kilo of beans, eight hours
a kilo of beef, 12 hours a box of 30 diapers.

Work-dirty, wash-worthy, hands that defile?
Jesus' whole days touching, being touched,
open markets glutting, flaunted mortality,
teeming germs, diseases of deathly duration,
lying there waiting for, wailing for, him --
Defile no longer a drawer in the desk!
Desperate hearts trump dirty hands,
Purity Codes.

Moses the Sheep-Worker, Organizer of
Brick-Workers, Mentor, Model to
Prophetic Herd-and-Vine-Workers;

Paul the Tent-Worker, Truth-Worker,
could not be paid to preach, or to lie?

Jesus the Wood-Worker, Organizer of
Farm-Workers, Fish-Workers, the
Occasional Tax-and-Sex-Worker --
Working Class roots seeping deep among
Biblical Peoples -- Cursing of First Couple,
outsourced from Garden to Labor, Field-Work,
Home-Work, immeasurably marking
All Human Being.

Jesus, Rest from all Labors: Sabbath-
Worker? Jubilee-Worker? Curse-Reverser?
Unions, Churches, "Brothers," "Sisters,"
few places, few peoples remaining arenas,
Citizen-Work, Disciple-Work, picnicking,
plate-passing, singing, hearing-and-doing,
imitating of images in whom we're made --
"Those who hear and don't act are like
those who glance in the mirror and walk away,
and two minutes later have no idea
who they are, what they look like."

Equal rights, complete justice for all, in all
stations of life . . . principles of conciliation and
arbitration in industrial dissensions . . .
protection of the worker from dangerous machinery,
occupational diseases, injuries and mortality . . .
abolition of child labor . . . such regulation of labor
for women as shall safeguard the physical and
moral health of the community . . .
suppression of the "sweating system" . . .
gradual, reasonable reduction of hours of
labor to lowest practical point, with work for all;
and degree of leisure for all which is the
condition of highest human life . . . release from
employment one day in seven . . . living wage in
every industry . . . highest wage that each
industry can afford, and most equitable
division of products of industry that can
ultimately be devised . . . recognition of
Golden Rule and mind of Christ as
supreme law of society and sure remedy for
all social life. (First "Social Creed,"
Methodist Episcopal Church, 1908)

A Starting Place waiting to happen . . . .

Divine Shifts:
Cosmos: Six days on, one day off.
Creation: Six years on, one off.
Communion: Seven times seven years on,
Whatever It Takes off --
Rest, Restoration, Resource Renewal.

Once we were slaves in Egypt,
would have gone nowhere, become no one,
without Help, Who heard us in misery,
organized us, Direct-Action Plagues against
Pharaoh-Work, helped us escape and endure,
brought into land of fruits and good things,
as strangers, sojourners, aliens, exiles!

Who are we not to stay touched by this past?
Subject to visits, Stranger-Angels at any time?

"The stranger who dwells among you
shall be to you as one born among you,
and you shall love her or him as yourself,
for you were strangers in the land . . ."

Jesus simply ignoring distinctions,
who's legal, who's not -- any such
thing as "illegal" human, anyway?

Anything human "alien" to Who Makes Us?
Each in an Image, Images joined, Solidarity!
Walesa, Chavez, Huerta, Debs,
Mendes, Randolph, Ruether, Jones
Perkins, Lewis, Highlander, Hill,
Revs. Williams & Wyatt, Altgeld, Alinsky
Catholic Worker, Almanac Singers --

BeLaborous Legacy Lying on Line?
8-hour day, 40-hour week, fairer
wages, safer workplaces, child protection,
unemployment insurance, consumer boycotts,
pickets, Social Security, right to organize, bargain --
Participatory Democracy,
Practical Citizenship.

By piece, by hour, by job, by career,
every work, worker preciously co-creative --
Do I know who made this product?
Do I know who provided this service?
Do I see them make it or know they are there?
Do I know conditions of their lives and works?
Do I know if they are acknowledged, included?
Compensated in any progressive proportion to CEO pay?
Do they have any say, what they do, how they do it?
Do they feel any pride of achievement, investment of care?

What do I know about seedtime and harvest?
Assemblage and packaging? Transporting and
marketing? Selling and cleaning up safely after?

What do I know of damages products, services
do Common Good -- especially of children?!

Do I stop to consider insidious advertising?
Artificial stimulation, desire severed from need?

One thing to love a person -- even a working one!
But love a workplace? Employer? Huge corporation?

Burning Man meets Burning Bush,
Love on Fire with Justice, encountered, engaged --
Work of Witness: See people's sufferings;
Work of Attentiveness: Hear people's cries;
Work of Compassion: Move to people;
Work of Solidarity: Stand with people;
Works of Salvation, of Liberation:
Show people new-to-them Land,
nonetheless-promised others?

Moses now twice-removed --
rescued at birth, sisterhood of subversivity;
raised in privileged but flickering passion;
banished for exercised option of murder;
traceably glimmering, trackably glowing;
stammering, staggering, from place in
safe country home; from married and staked,
family business, shepherding patience,
persistence, endurance, resilience;
Imaginized improvisations!
Internalized oppressions!

Howard Zinn coaxingly calling us to
"revolt of the palace guard;" minimized,
muddled, middle and management classes,
keeping on track, sometimes on time,
all systems, structures, everyday life --
total cross-section, in towers, on planes:
like Peter, at once, Rock, Stumbling Block;
preaching 3000 to baptism first day;
40 years of it, have I reached 3000 yet?
To Peter, Jesus impossibly unsufferable;
yet, Rank-and-File, Peter, get back in line!
"Follow the Leader," bodies live ammo,
real lives burning, over, and over, not out.

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