Month: October 2009

Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor, was interviewed on NPR yesterday. Among other things, she promoted the value of education as a way toward a higher standard of material well being, pointing out that she was the first in her family to go to college. She was challenged by a caller who complained that the only thing her college degree produced was a heavy loan she could not repay because she couldn’t find a job. What good is a college education if it can’t produce a well paying job, or any job at all?

That’s a pretty good question, and I’ll add one more; Is that what a college education is supposed to do?

We talked about that during the years that I had weekly meetings with a few students at one of our local liberal arts colleges. My counsel was that they were there to learn to become educated persons and not to get a job ticket. Our conversations about what it might mean to learn to become an educated person turned on acquiring the basics for life-long learning and the ability to think critically on the grounds that a democratic society cannot long exist without a critical mass of educated citizens.

That smacks of bit of elitism, and my politically liberal students would bring that up as an objection. Well, it is elitist. These students were of the elite. They were very smart: the few out of many selected to go to a college not all that easy to get into. Their curriculum was very challenging. They were receiving an education that relatively few others would ever attain. It does no one a favor to pretend otherwise. The more important question had to do with what might that mean for their future role in society.

None of that would guarantee a job of any kind. If getting a job ticket was a goal it would have to come through some other kind of technical training either in graduate school or a local community college. Most went on to graduate school somewhere and I lost track of them. A few went to local community colleges to become chefs, mechanics, machinists and so on. More than a few spent the next year or two working for AmeriCorps. Now and then I run into some working locally as secretaries, waiters and retail clerks. In every case they are educated persons able to take up the role of informed citizen. Perhaps they will.

The big news in Washington today was the Boeing announcement that they would move the second 787 production line to South Carolina, a state well known for its high standards of political ethics and concern for labor. What is wonderful news for South Carolina is devastating news for Washington. Several thoughts come to mind.

One is that more than a few parochial opinionators in eastern Washington will smugly celebrate the comeuppance of those rich liberals on the other side of the mountains. I’m always a little surprised over their lack of awareness of how economically interconnected we all are.

Another is about corporate arrogance that operates with little or no sense of moral responsibility toward the communities in which they operate or the least concern for what their leaving will do to the social fabric of the place. Boeing, by the way, is not leaving – yet. Overpaid CEOs feel free to move corporate headquarters to locations close their homes or some other place that massages their egos. Corporate location managers feel free to move plants around based on deals for tax and labor cost breaks they know full well will never produce dividends for local jurisdictions, but they are such an easy sell to naïve local politicians. They remind me of the evil railroad and land barons in the old time westerns. You remember; the ones that were always grabbing the settlers’ land in underhanded ways.

Finally, and this may come to a surprise to some of my readers who know I tend to be pro-union; intransigent, pugilistic unions, such as the Machinists in Washington, would rather fight than get serious about negotiating. The climate for economic well being is poisoned whenever a union insists on presenting management as the bad guys while ignoring their own over the top demands.

OK, I think I’ve offended just about everyone. Now it’s time to sit back and see what fish the lure attracts.

Around here the tree outside my study window is called a magnolia. I doubt that any southerner would recognize it as such, but that’s beside the point. In the early spring it is covered with beautiful, large pink flowers that quickly come and go. By late spring it has leafed out with such enormous overlapping leaves that it forms an impenetrable canopy letting through mere dapples of sunlight and sheltering the birdhouse from wind and midday heat. I love having that tree outside my window. It frames the garden below, which, because of its shade, needs little watering and is always lushly green. All summer long the sparrows in the birdhouse produce nest after nest of little birdlettes. A lone resident squirrel patrols the perimeter with one eye watching for Riley the Westie and another for encroaching squirrels from foreign lands on the other side of the house. In autumn its leaves never turn color; they just slowly fall, one-by-one, until the whole is denuded. The last of them can sometimes hang on until December. Not so this year. The wind came up last night and roared through the day encouraged by heavy afternoon rains. By evening the tree was all but bare. I know it’s all part of the great ebb and flow of nature’s self renewing cycle. Spring will come again. But just the same it makes me a bit sad.

An acquaintance of mine has a habit of forwarding sentimental postings, often with a religious theme. She sent one a few days ago with a cute little set up leading to the punch line: “When we get Jesus back where he belongs, our country will come together.” Now how would you interpret that?

One thing is clear; the original writer believes that Jesus is not where he belongs, at least in our country. I wonder where he is, and if he was where he belonged, where would he be? Another thing is clear; it is our responsibility to get him back where he belongs, wherever that is. I wonder how we are supposed to exercise that responsibility?

I suspect that the original writer of that little ditty was headed in a direction I would prefer not to go. Of course I don’t really know that, it’s just a suspicion. So, giving him/her the benefit of the doubt, I’ll offer my own interpretation.

If the Christians in this country would act more like Christians by following in the way of Christ, this would indeed be a better country, albeit not altogether together.

It’s hard to think of this as progress, but it is:

I have mixed feelings about diocesan conventions. We just got home from one, and, on the whole, it was a wonderful weekend. By weekend I mean a convention that begins early on Friday afternoon, continues all day Saturday, has a gala banquet Saturday evening, and ends with yet another general session on Sunday morning followed by the Holy Eucharist and final adjournment about Noon or a bit later. Our custom is to alternate sites between the cathedral in Spokane and some other community in the diocese. This weekend we met in Lewiston, Idaho, and the parishes of the region did a terrific job of making arrangements and offering hospitality. I love the fellowship and worship, but I’m less enthusiastic about the formality of our processes. I very much enjoy reconnecting with clergy and lay leaders all across the diocese, renewing old friendships and making new ones. As a high index introvert, there are limits to how much mingling appeals to me. As much as possible I prefer quiet conversations in small groups, but I’ve learned the skills needed to survive in large venues. However, I wonder if a small, rural diocese such as ours needs all the formality of our processes that include chairs of dispatch and credentials making their frequent but generally unnecessary reports. I wonder if we need to set aside hours for proper Robert’s Rules organizing when we get it all done in forty-five minutes and then sit around for an hour or so wondering what to do until the next scheduled session. I suppose it would be different if we had thousands of delegates and many controversial issues to debate. We have neither. As it is, when one counts all the clergy, lay delegates, spouses, visitors and staff there might be two or three-hundred of us – maybe. As a practical matter, we could get all our business done in a single day with a lot of time left over. As a matter of fellowship and worship, we need more time to gather in community. Maybe we should give up on credentials and dispatch and spend more time in community. It’s a curious problem.

If it floats I like being on it. I don’t know why. I knew it the first time I paddled a cement-mixing tub on the creek where I grew up. Anything will do. I don’t care if it’s a rowboat or an ocean liner. I had a boat of some kind from the time I was in high school until my late 30s when I moved to the east coast and it was too expensive to own one. The best thing about NYC was an occasional ride on the Staten Island Ferry. Visiting Seattle or heading off to Vancouver, BC is most fulfilling when celebrated on a ferryboat. That may have something to do with why I enjoyed our recent cruise as much as I did. The sounds and movement of the ship rejoiced my whole being. Maybe it helps that I never served in the Navy. My dad did, and it took him close to fifty years to decide on a cruise. It helped that the liner was not a destroyer and the likelihood of being attacked was slight, but it brought back memories just the same. As it turned out, he and mom went on to other cruises and enjoyed every one of them. As for me, if we ever live close enough to the water again I’d like to have a little sailboat, maybe around 19ft., just to go out and mess around in the late afternoon on a summer day. In the meantime it’s ferryboats and cruise liners.