Ethical Math

I didn't make it to Boise this week. My boss wanted me to stay in town for this last week because she thought I might learn more through "trial by fire" instead of being mentored. I'd agree. Right now the local office runs a little differently than the one in Boise, so learning the ropes right here makes sense; however, I also have to be mindful of the ways that things are done elsewhere. I'm accountable to the local office and to the rest of the company.

At any moment we have to be adapted to the local yet be thinking of the global. For example, we're involved in our communities to help those in poverty work toward a better life. We run soup kitchens and pantries to feed the hungry. At the same time we have to remember the greater poverty elsewhere in the world and then see ourselves connected to their suffering. We can see ourselves in the center of nearly infinite circles stretching out on the horizon. We see the closer circles more clearly and can do a lot more.That doesn't diminish our responsibility for the circles farther out, though.

Our responsibilities are layered and pretty confusing. For every dollar or can of food I give to a local food bank, that's one less possible donation to feeding people elsewhere. We could get into an endless debate about where to start (should I give to those who might die today without food, or do I have a greater responsibility for those who I might help lift out of poverty and hunger?) because it ends up feeling like a giant math problem. People get boiled down to numbers and probabilities and percentages in order to maximize (what a nice economic word!) the good.

I can't solve this giant math problem. I can't perfectly balance all my duties between the local and regional and national and global (and universal). I can, however, try to keep them all in mind. Perfection is impossible, solving the world's problems alone is impossible. Being responsible and aware, though, are very, very possible.

Adventure in the capital!

Tomorrow I head off to start my new job with a journey to the state's capital. It'll be the first time I've been there for more than a few hours in a long, long time; the last time I stayed overnight was in junior high for an academic competition (Future Problem Solving, anyone?).

Sadly, the friend who lives there is actually here on the east side of the state with her family for the holidays, so I won't have anyone to show me the highlights of Boise. I'll pop into the cathedral, of course, for evening and morning prayer if I can, but most other places I'd rather have someone with me.

It's been a few months since my last driving adventure. Sure, the jaunt down to Twin Falls kinda counts, but it was only for the day. Not for the better part of a week.

I hope the weather stays nice.

I feel like an adult now. It's amazing.

To Escape or to Conquer

Since Kim asked, I'll post briefly on my new job. It's as an admissions consultant for a for-profit school out of Utah which recently opened a branch here. Full-time work that is more engaging than tackling problems at the service desk for a retailer, and I can actually start living a life since I can make plans more than a week in advance. Yay! Life is a little more exciting as of late, for sure. Also, other positive things are going on in live, but I'll save those for a later date.


Now, on to what I'd said I would do until Christmas:

The chapters assigned for the past few days in Father Benson's Benedictus Dominus have been dealing with the "Christians vs The World" problem.

Christians have been admonished to transcend the world, to escape it and its perceived evil. Or else we have been counseled to overcome it and replace it with the Kingdom of God as fierce warriors for God. This is a deeply political and religious problem in a pluralistic world. Are Christians to run away from the world so tainted by sin or are they to impose their worldview on others who don't share it? What about hiding our faith so as to not offend others? Or making the government into a charity to care about the poor and needy, whether or not others are so moved to help? Both conservatives and liberals are capable of escaping and conquering the world.

It's incredibly black-and-white, and thankfully both miss the point. To be a Christian isn't about rejecting or conquering the world, but instead giving up both of those ideas. I can't hide from the world because that would be giving up on it (and God doesn't give up, believe me), and I can't conquer it because there's no way I could run it right, as much as I might pretend otherwise.

So we can't reject the world, we can't conquer the world, and there's not much we can do, it seems. We can strive to love the world, even when we sigh as we read about the foolishness and cruelty of human beings to one another. We can't abandon them to their cruelty, just as God doesn't abandon us to our own cruelty and sinfulness. We can't impose our will on them, either, because we're not much better (if we even are better, which I doubt). But we can still love it and serve the people of the world.

The Guiding Light

Instead of giving yet another update on life (I start a new job at the end of this month! Hurrah!) or trying to find something on the internet to comment on (which so many other people do much better), I'll be using bits of Father Richard M. Benson's book Benedictus Dominus (in the public domain, link here) as the basis for some meditations for the lead up to Christmas.

Father Richard gives four different titles to Christ involving light for today's meditation. They are: The Lifegiving Light, the Forthshining of the Eternal, the Transforming Light, and the Abiding Light.

• The Lifegiving Light: Christ is the root from which we get all our spiritual nutrition; when contemplating God's love, we can't help but think of Christ's love for the world in his offering of himself. He is the Son and also our Sun. In this time of waiting for his coming again, Christ can feel incredibly distant. As Christians, we remember the time when the whole world was groaning, awaiting the arrival of its savior, and now we are waiting again. This time, however, we know what to look for. Christ is not the warrior-king who will conquer by force, but the priest-king who lifts earth up to heaven as a gift to God and who brings the love of God down to earth. Even across the distance of space, the sun still warms us, and even across the distance Christ still brings us to God and brings God to us.

• The Forthshining of the Eternal: In Christ we get glimpses of the divine eternity. When we talk about the End of Times, it's not about darkness and tribulations and all sorts of horrible things happening; it's about our humanity finally being taken up to God. Instead of living in fear, greed, anger, distrust, jealousy, and hatred, we will be living in God's love and peace. We catch glimpses of that here, but the Kingdom of God isn't quite fully here yet.
  

• The Transforming Light: Knowing that Christ nourishes us and also directs us onto a better future, we can't help but change. We can't be dead when we're alive in Christ! A relationship with God means I'm never done changing and growing. We all keep learning and failing and trying again throughout our lives, and Christ's presence continually changes us inside when we're open to God. Slowly, quietly, subtly, Christ is there in our prayers and work and slowly shapes us.
  

• The Aibiding Light: Christ will be here with us until the end. Unlike our sun which will die out in millions of years, Christ never will die out. More importantly, Jesus will never abandon us in our darkest nights and seasons of deep pain. We might not see him as brightly as we see the sun, but Christ hears us and loves us deeply, weeping over the pain of his beloved brothers and sisters. Christ also abides in the love of friends, the church, and partners; the transformation Jesus works in us is not just for our benefit alone but for the benefit of everyone around us. The Transforming Light shines out through us to be the Abiding Light for others.

May the light of Christ be with you in this season of Advent.


(Note: Richard Meux Benson was a priest in the Church of England during the late 1800's and founded a monastic order for men, the Society of St John the Evangelist, which continues to this day in the US. The SSJE can be found through the link to the right.)

The Open Ended Future

The scariest aspect of the future is its unpredictability.

I know that's what frightens me the most; there are more variables at play than I can account for, yet I must make a decision. I have to place a bet on one decision, one plan, and hope that the variables fall into place to make it more or less happen. I can't predict that my decision will result in what I want, but I can try to make it more likely. My decision could have unexpected or even undesired consequences, and I might end up discovering what I wanted wasn't really what I wanted. I might even realize that I want my life going a completely different direction after all.

The obsession with prophecies such as Nostradamus or the current concern over the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 speaks to our desire for certainty, even if it is morbid apocalyptic certainty. It's almost comforting to think that the universe will perish in fire and destruction (especially if something supernatural or divine is behind it all, something beyond scientific exploration) instead of the universe expiring as the last star dies in the sky to leave a cold, lifeless universe. The universe should at least have the sense to die in a rain of sparks and collapsing stars!

It's as if there's some cosmic clock, ticking down the final millenia/years/seconds left, then BOOM! end of creation. It creates a sense of urgency; what I do today has to make the best use of my limited time.

On the one hand, it could encourage us to use what little time we have well. Maybe a perspective that makes us realize how little time we have could get us as individuals and as a species to work together for peace and justice.

Or it could put undue pressure on the moment. If I don't make the best use of this moment, then I've wasted it. Life could be like a summer vacation packed with all sorts of "fantastic memories" of family vacations to exotic locales, a childhood filled with non-stop sports and activities, or a car trip spent switching the radio stations just in case that one song you really want to hear in that moment comes on one of the other stations.

Right now I'm re-evaluating my life plans. It needed to happen, and it's a good thing. It's exciting to see new possibilities that I hadn't thought of. In order to do it, though, I have to accept the fact that the future's open-ended. I can't live in the shadow of some cosmic clock waiting to destroy everything I've worked for, and I can't live in the fear that I'm making a huge mistake that will waste the little time I have.

The message in the book of Revelation is that at the end, all of creation is in God's hand. Human history is part of God's story, too. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to make the absolute best use of what little time we have (especially since it can't, because there are too many things going on for us to understand them all). God will exalt our good, will cleanse our sins, and all things will again be put right. While we have to make the best use of our talents and time now, we don't have to be perfect.

And the unpredictable future might still be scary, but it's also an adventure.

Human Priorities

How badly ordered are our priorities? We treat some things as life-and-death issues when they're merely silly things, and then we dismiss or ignore those problems that might actually mean life or death for someone else.

People get upset over a handful of cents. People call, furious that the franchise that operates within our store is doing a promotion that other stores aren't doing. People become angry that my hands are tied when they don't have a receipt.

Are shoes that important to someone that you would be furious you couldn't get multiple pairs at a lower price? If the price you claim the glass dish was is twenty cents less than what rang up, is it really worth fighting over?

But I guess that's our condition. Our priorities are always in the wrong order. We can easily get upset over what personally affects us. We can easily get upset over what we can see or feel.

But we can't get upset so easily when it doesn't personally affect us. The pain and suffering of LGBT people in parts of Africa is far, far removed from American life. The struggles of people wanting to be free are too far away for us to care; we got our independence, so why worry about yours? And what about the people throughout the world who are struggling to find meaning and purpose in their lives after seeing how empty the promises of the consumerist economy are?

And we are able to ignore intangible problems. If we can't see it or feel it, it's not much a problem, it seems. In America, everything is a commodity, and religion is now the same way. It has to be made acceptable, innocuous and non-threatening to the consumer. It's now only a "personal" matter, not of much interest to others except those who would sell us a new and improved spirituality. And health care- if I don't have to see the suffering of friends and neighbors struggling to take care of their bodies, then I don't have to worry about it.

I can't say I blame people much for this. As imaginative as we can be, our imagination can only stretch so far. We have to work hard at understanding what's happening beyond our own eyes and ears, and we have to work even harder to care in a way beyond muttering, "What a shame."

Praying for people far away and for the people we don't see or hear is crucial for bringing the problems of the world into our own. I may not be able to do much for them, but at least through prayer we unite ourselves to those we pray for.

But the mulitiple pairs of shoes? I don't think your life will improve that much if you get those fake fur boots with the high heels.

Employment!

Thanks be to God that I finally got a job. It's part time, it's retail, and it's enjoyable. Seriously! My co-workers are cool, my supervisors are nice, and (so far) customers have been generally positive.

It's hard, though, to rejoice when what you're doing is completely unrelated to what you studied. And, worse yet, we've been conditioned to see certain occupations as "beneath me". Yet all labor honestly done has inherent dignity.

I admit it- I go to fast food joints every once in a while even though I try to watch my diet. Do I enjoy it? Of course! I need someone there to cook my food, don't I? And I need people to clean up stores, to take my order at a restaurant, to cashier for me at all the different stores I visit.

All of those occupations are important to our society! As Douglas Adams pointed out in his satirical "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, the society that fired all their telephone sanitizers was quickly wiped out by a disease spread by dirty telephones. Not every job is glamorous, and not every job will impress someone on a first date.

What's important is not so much the status of a job but rather whether the laborer is fulfilled by his or her work. If they feel they've done a job well and go home satisfied (even if they're exhausted!), then it's good.

So thanks be to God for employment with a good company. Thanks for the hard work of so many people and for the fair compensation of labor. Let's continue to pray for the underemployed and the unemployed, and also for those whose work goes unnoticed.