April Fools and Hope

Perhaps it is for our own good that we have developed April Fools’ Day in the midst of our Lenten Disciplines. It reminds us to not take ourselves all that seriously. Throughout the Middle Ages, today marked the day when the world was turned topsy-turvy. The laypeople became the priests and cardinals, and vise-versa. A day of levity that sometimes turned also to violence, alas. Perhaps it is not so unlike the throngs of people protesting at the G-20 summit in London. The news interviewed one individual saying he was having loads of fun holding his picket in the crowds, others who said they just didn’t trust the way the banks have been run and were peacefully marching and chanting slogans, and then turned to report the Royal Bank of Scotland window being broken. I don't condone violence. But I do think that humor can be a way at poking at our unjustices - especially when we are first aware of our own inner ironies.

How are your Lenten disciplines going? While they are serious work, remember not to take yourself too seriously. Just keep at it with a sense of humility and humor. After all, we are practicing our disciplines that the Divine might change us, not us the Divine.

On this day of levity, I also want to shed a bit of hope. I know that these economic times can be extremely tough, not only on the job market, but also psychologically as people wait to find out who will be the next to loose the job, and just because jobs are cut doesn’t mean the workload goes down.
One story of hope comes from a work place. A certain business is in the consulting field. One of the managers was telling me that he is putting in long hours, searching for projects to keep the staff going, so that the business can retain all the staff possible. I read this as management, in this case at least, understands having staff brings an ethical responsibility to the staff.
Another story also comes from a work environment. A colleague of mine works in a hospital as a chaplain. The hospital needed to cut $N from the budget. As the head chaplain, his responsibility was to call the meeting in which they would find out what to do. Either they all cut some hours, or one person was going to have to be let go. They prayed, and passed around a prayer bowl into which each person placed a small bit of paper marked “0” “1” or “2” depending upon the number of days they would be willing to cut from their own work week. “I didn’t tell the budgeting committee that we actually came up with 1.2, I figured we could use that .2 later if we needed to bargain,” my friend told me. By working together they had saved a person's job. “It turns out the entire hospital was working that way, too.” To me, this brings a sense of community that transcends the industrial complex many of our jobs have turned into. It is a reminder that our true security lies in our relationships with one another, rather than in an industrialized market economy.
I’ll close with a third bit of hope I see in the reading I’m doing, in the internet browsing and research I’m engaging in, and in discussions I have had with folks in the food industry (in particular). There is a grass roots movement that is changing the way we think, feel and especially act around our own personal economies. One of my friends in the food retail business was commenting about the move towards eating local food via purchasing local food at local grocery stores. This choice to buy-live-act/eat locally has impacted the food retail business in ways that have benefited the smaller stores. The nation wide corporations can’t adapt to the local market fast enough, nor do they have the local connections to make such a shift in rapid manner.

Where are you seeing hope?