The Working Catholic: Advent, Part Two, by Bill Droel: Who invented Christmas?

 

Our Blessed Lady is a fair answer. In about 3 B.C. she gave birth to Jesus, who became known as The Christ. St. Joseph, while not Jesus' natural father, is another good answer because he is the main character in St. Matthew's rendition of the Bethlehem story.St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) is another good answer because he is popularly credited with devising the Christmas Pageant.
             But who created Christmas as we know it with all the gifts and indoor tree and special food and charitable donations and a day off from work? Although it is impossible to claim that Christmas is historically new, it is only in the last 160 years or so, and particularly since World War II, that Christmas (other than during Covid-19) is turkey, candy, hams, greeting cards, shopping sprees, family reunions, office parties, seasonal songs and shows for children. For most of Christian history Easter was the big feast; Christmas not so much.

             By 1843 Charles Dickens (1812-1869) had written five well-received novels and then three duds. He was, at age 31, in debt with family obligations. Walking the streets of Manchester that fall he thought about Christmas and children. Returning to his London home he wrote A Christmas Carol in a fury. His publisher didn’t like it, so Dickens paid for the printing himself—adding to his debt. The story (followed by four more Christmas-themed novellas) took off and is now available in many editions and through many adaptations. For example, Acta (www.actapublications.com) sells a $14.95 edition tied in a red ribbon and with an introduction by theologian Jack Shea. My favorite adaptation is the 1992 Muppet Christmas Carol.

             It was Dickens who revived and updated a celebration connected to the nativity of Christ. He promoted forgotten customs and introduced some new ones that now define the holiday. In particular he lifted up practices consistent with Christ’s message: compassion, regard for family life, charity, humane working conditions and decency.

             Dickens was a contemporary of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Both explored the contradictions within industrial capitalism: How is it that prosperity results in widespread poverty? Marx and Dickens saw child labor, overcrowded housing, illness, unemployment and meanness in all the cities they visited. The remedy for Marx included violence, which he thought was inevitable. Dickens’ remedy is not as obvious as Marx’s. Dickens’ stories are about character. They are about the tension between on one hand bad people and corrupt and on the other hand people with good character and noble institutions. The stories hinge on the possibility of redemption.

           The complexity of the good guys is Dickens’ genius. They are usually not romanticized. Poverty itself does not make a person sympathetic or noble. A poor person can drink or carouse too much, can cheat at times and make bad decisions. But poverty is not a sin, as unfortunately it is considered, even today, by those today who distinguish between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor.

            Dickens likewise does not romanticize those who help the poor. Donating alms, used clothing and the like at this time of year is not a special favor. It is not, please be reminded, particularly meritorious. Charity is simply rendered because a recipient is entitled to proper assistance and the donor is quite capable of helping out.

           This holy season is designed to reinforce behavior that should occur all year long: People should look out for people; families should treasure one another; institutions that lose their purpose and degrade human dignity can be reformed; joy and celebration are essential to the human prospect every day of the year.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a free printed newsletter on faith and work.

The Feminine Christ

 

The idea is at the beginning of John’s Gospel.  John’s good news is that the Creator is in all that is created.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  This same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by it, and without it was made nothing that was made.  In it was life, and the life was the light of all.  And that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5)

The creator in all is the Light of the universe – the guide to justice and happiness. The Light is called Messiah or Christ the Savior. As an authentic and immediate representation of consciousness of Messiah or Christ the Savior, the feminine form is often instinctively used.  George Floyd called out ‘Mama’ as he was murdered.

In our pursuit of justice let our action be inspired by the following litany:

 

 Dorothy Day - Queen of Peace

  

Dolores Huerta - Our Lady of Guadalupe

 Rosa Parks - Mother of Sorrows

 Simone Wiel - Tower of David

 

Mildred Harnack - Mirror of Justice

 

Edith Stein - Seat of Wisdom   

 

Sojourner Truth - Comforter of the Afflicted

 Eleanor Roosevelt - Health of the Sick

 

Malala Yousafzai  - Cause of our Joy 

 Dorothy Stang - Morning Star.

As the psalm says, justice is God’s work. (Ps. 96:13)

The Working Catholic: Advent by Bill Droel

 

In coming days it is obligatory for all preachers to dust off their “Keep Christ in Christmas” sermon. The villain is commercialism. The remedy is to shop less, donate time or money to the less fortunate and to increase one’s prayer. I’m tired of this message. My concern, particularly during Advent, is my inadequate appreciation for Christ’s Incarnation and consequently my distraction from the true locus of Christ’s church.

In a recent column Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI paraphrases a social worker’s theology along these lines:

I am involved with the poor because I am a Christian. But I can work for years and never mention Christ’s name because I believe that God is mature enough that God doesn’t demand to be the center of our conscious attention all the time.

The social worker who does the job with competence and empathy has the privilege of encountering God Incarnate almost unaware, at least not until that social worker reflects on his or her workday.

Where is Jesus during Advent?

Through an uncommon and meaningful program, seminarians in the State of Washington get close to the real Jesus who is a baby in a trough, a common criminal on a cross, a fisherman, a neighbor, a teacher, a healing friend and a sometime agitator. These seminarians are required to spend some weeks laboring alongside migrant farm workers. By engaging in such work and through conversations with migrants, these young men get “good formation,” their bishop explains. They are made to think about an alternative to the attitude that the church is centered within the Chancery or the rectory.

However, the seminarians and their bishop and myself are still a crucial half step away from a better appreciation of the Incarnation and thus from the true locus of Christ’s church. A seminarian in the program says, the church “goes to meet [the people] where they are.” His bishop says, “We need the church to be close to those doing this labor.” No doubt these are positive statements. But the seminarian and the bishop could be missing the true meaning of Christmas if they presume that the church suddenly appears when a Church employee shows up on the scene. Although God exists apart from human experience, the Incarnation means that God is simultaneously also intimately in a machine shop, in a retail store, in an accounting room, on a hospital unit, in the jail, the court and the restaurant long before and after a visit from a Church employee. Christ and his church are in all workaday places whether people are continually conscious of Christ or not.

My Advent journey for 2021 is to get beyond a notion of church that uses phrases like “Bring Christ to the marketplace” or “Keep Christ in the world” or “Don’t lose Christ at the mall.” Christians certainly can gin up their virtues during Advent; more empathy and joy, for example. Advent especially calls out for an increase of the worldly virtues like social justice, solidarity and peace. But bringing Christ to the world is a tad arrogant.

Doesn’t it make for an intriguing Advent to realize that Christ is all along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile of Michigan Ave shopping? Isn’t it worth a pause these days to glimpse Christ in the neighborhood? To suspect that Jesus Incarnate lurks in the office, walks the legislative hall and inhabits the school? Do not these places, like all sacraments, both hide and reveal God? Isn’t Advent about looking at an animal trough in Bethlehem with eyes of faith and thereby seeing the Creator and Savior of the whole universe? The challenge is to encounter Christ who lives among us, not so much to bring God or the church anywhere.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a printed newsletter on faith and work.

FAITH IN NATURE – THE SOURCE OF ACTION FOR JUSTICE

 

Introduction:  “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”  (Jeremiah 31:33)

Christine Newman Ortiz is the executive Director and founder of Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant workers center. Voces is well known for its participation in the struggle for worker rights.  On May 1^st every year Voces organizes a march in which thousands participate.  Christine animates the action for justice as nature - the natural law dictates.  

She is the daughter of a Mayan mother and a father who was born in Germany and earned a PhD in science.  He taught at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. 

Christine’s Faith or Trust in nature is expressed in a poem she wrote after her father’s death.

Es un guerrero, mi corozon (My heart, a warrior)

For Opa

You won’t believe me.

Or maybe you will?  

The day after my father’s soul

Departed his body

While he slept in our home

He came back the next day.

In the form of a sparrow                                                                                                                                                                           

Hovering

On the other side of the window

On the second floor of our home

Like a hummingbird                                                             

Holding itself in flight.

Fixing his gaze solidly to mine

For five long deep breaths

It was as if I was seeing through a crack in the universe

something wondrous, vibrant mysterious.

My father, a proud Berliner,

A hard working responsible German immigrant

Who allowed himself moments of tenderness, expression, 

and sentimentality

Towards the end

Was reaching out 

Across a great chasm

In the form of his beloved sparrow, Pio-Pio

And his childhood nickname 

Clear as daylight

Loud as thunder

To say “Look I am still with you. Do not grieve. I am here.”

Epilogue: 

The two sources of Revelation are Nature and the Bible.                    

Thomas Aquinas

Heart and Fist’  Graphic

Diccionario del Corozon                                                                                                                                                                         

Grabados de Naul Ojeda

Taller Leñateros, San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico  2002                                                                                        

  

                                                                             

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                              

 

 

 

Resilience and Equity in a Time of Crises: Investing in Public Urban Greenspace Is Now More Essential Than Ever in the US and Beyond

 

ABSTRACT

ijerph-18-08420.pdf

The intersecting negative effects of structural racism, COVID-19, climate change, and chronic diseases disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities in the US and around the Urban populations of color are concentrated in historically redlined, segregated, disinvested, and marginalized neighborhoods with inadequate quality housing and limited access to resources, including quality greenspaces designed to support natural ecosystems and healthy outdoor activities while mitigating urban environmental challenges such as air pollution, heat island effects, combined sewer overflows and poor water Disinvested urban environments thus contribute to health inequity via physical and social environmental exposures, resulting in disparities across numerous health outcomes, including COVID-19 and chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases (CVD). In this paper, we build off an existing conceptual framework and propose another conceptual framework for the role of greenspace in contributing to resilience and health equity in the US and beyond. We argue that strategic investments in public greenspaces in urban neighborhoods impacted by long term economic disinvestment are critically needed to adapt and build resilience in communities of color, with urgency due to immediate health threats of climate change, COVID-19, and endemic disparities in chronic diseases. We suggest that equity-focused investments in public urban greenspaces are needed to reduce social inequalities, expand economic opportunities with diversity in workforce initiatives, build resilient urban ecosystems, and improve health equity. We recommend key strategies and considerations to guide this investment, drawing upon a robust compilation of scientific literature along with decades of community-based work, using strategic partnerships from multiple efforts in Milwaukee Wisconsin as examples of success.

WRITTEN by 

Jean C. Bikomeye

 (1)

Sima Namin (1)

 Chima Anyanwu (1)

 Caitlin S. Rublee (2)

 Jamie Ferschinger (3)

 Ken Leinbach (4)

 Patricia Lindquist (5)

 August Hoppe (6)

 Lawrence Hoffman (7)

 Justin Hegarty (8)

 Dwayne Sperber (9)

 Kirsten M. M. Beyer (1)* 

1

Institute for Health & Equity, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Rd., Milwaukee, WI 53226, USA

2

Department of Emergency Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Rd., Milwaukee, WI 53226, USA

3

Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers, Environmental Health & Community Wellness, 1337 S Cesar Chavez Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53204, USA

4

The Urban Ecology Center, 1500 E. Park Place, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA

5

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry, 101 S. Webster Street, P.O. Box 7921, Madison, WI 53707, USA

6

The Urban Wood Lab, Hoppe Tree Service, 1813 S. 73rd Street, West Allis, WI 53214, USA

7

Department of GIS, Groundwork Milwaukee, 227 West Pleasant Street, Milwaukee, WI 53212, USA

8

Reflo—Sustainable Water Solutions, 1100 S 5th Street, Milwaukee, WI 53204, USA

9

Wudeward Urban Forest Products, N11W31868 Phyllis Parkway, Delafield, WI 53018, USA

*

 

The Working Catholic: Labor Day Part II by Bill Droel

 

         Covid-19 brings us an opportunity to experiment with different work arrangements, including shorter hours. For example, the 100 employees at Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com), a popular crowd-funding platform, will work four days per week in 2022, a minimum of 32 hours. Their pay remains the same as when the company required 40 hours. Aziz Hasan, Kickstarter CEO, says this is not a gimmick. “It’s really about…a more potent impact… [And] it opens up so much more range for us personally.”

Autonomy (https://autonomy.work), a research firm in the United Kingdom, has completed its participation in a five-year study of over 2,500 employees in Iceland. Backed by unions and civic groups, the workweek was four days with 36-hours per worker. Productivity remained the same. Sick days decreased. Customers noted better quality of service. Now, 86% of Iceland employees are allowed a four-day week. Another Autonomy study is under way in Scotland. For more on this get Autonomy’s Overtime: Why We Need a Shorter Working Week by Kyle Lewis (Verso, 2021).

The motivation for a shorter workweek on the part of executives is the realization that attracting and retaining competent employees, particularly because of Covid-19, is an expensive challenge. Some companies adopted employment flexibility long before Covid-19. For example, since the 1990s, Metro Plastic Technologies (www.metroplastics.com) has used six-hour days with 30-hours per week at comparable pay as a recruitment tool. The company has few worker shortages, according to Wall St. Journal (7/31/21).

Here are some considerations about a shorter workweek.

There will be complaints from a supplier or customer or worker or investor. A manager has to stand secure, resisting a premature return to old ways.

Flex-time and shorter workweek experiments can fail when they are implemented top-down, neglecting a genuine buy-in from employees from the start. Experiments originating with employees likely turn out better.

Workaholics are a further challenge. Some employees think clocking 50+ hours per week is noble in itself. A workaholic culture has infected many firms.

Keep in mind that the purpose of a shorter workweek is betrayed if time off is spent on unnecessary consumption. Waiting for the Weekend by Witold Rybcznski (Penguin Press, 1991) is a fascinating examination of how people carry their working day mentality into their time off by, for example, working on their putting.

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) says this mentality exists because our culture is one of “total labor.” The true purpose of time off is to establish “the right and claims of leisure in the face of the claims of total labor,” he writes in Leisure: the Basis of Culture (Ignatius Press, 1952). The obstacle is an economy premised on total work. It needs “the illusion of a life fulfilled.” So instead of genuine time off, it puts forth false leisure with “cultural tricks and traps and jokes.”

True leisure, Pieper concludes, is festivity or celebration. It is the point at which “effortlessness, calm and relaxation” come together. And true leisure “ultimately derives its life from divine worship,” even though people may not be conscious of the association.
“Have leisure and know that I am God.” –Psalm 46:11

Droel is with National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

The Working Catholic: Labor Day Part I By Bill Droel

  

         International Workers Day (May Day), the counterpart to our September Labor Day, was inspired by an 1886 event here in Chicago. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor obtained a city permit for a May rally/demonstration in the Haymarket area (now a trendy restaurant spot).  Late in the evening someone at the rally threw dynamite. Police began to fire wildly into the dwindling crowd. Soon seven officers and four workers were dead.

Eight workers were quickly rounded up, including a lay minister, a printer and others. Seven were found guilty by August. Two got life sentences (one of whom was killed in jail); one was given 15 years. The remaining four were hanged in November.

A couple years after the Chicago event European countries designated May 1^st as Labor Day to honor the Haymarket Workers. For that reason, May 1^st became the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

And what was the issue that brought the workers to the Haymarket rally? Shorter work hours.

This was hardly the first effort in our country to reduce the working day. The 1830s saw an Eight-Hour Day Movement, details Mike Konczal in Freedom from the Market (The New Press, 2021). As part of that movement, Boston Trade Unions issued the “Ten-Hour Circular.” (Presumably they thought eight was unachievable.) This statement prompted six months of rotating strikes and protests across Boston. It was used in Philadelphia to start a general strike. There was a big parade after which the city passed a ten=hour workday law. In Baltimore the city mechanics, drawing on the same statement, won a ten-hour day. “Demands for time could unify workers facing different working circumstances,” writes Konczal.

By 1868 Pennsylvania had “set an eight-hour workday as the default” suggestion. When it came to enforcing this suggestion or any other work-related law was overcoming the prevailing attitude that contracts are “a foundational form of freedom and government should never interfere with markets,” says Konczal. The contract need not be a written document. The worker knew the score when she or he took the job. The freedom of contract assumption, then and now, is a fallacy because “government and courts intervened in important ways,” but not in the interest of workers. Laws and court decisions were intended “to boost the power of bosses and owners while limiting and stymieing the actions of workers.”

The notion of an eight-hour day gained traction during the Great Depression. In 1930 W. K. Kellogg (1860-1951) changed the work schedule at his cereal company. Production went to three shifts per day, six hours each. An employee normally clocked 30 hours per week. Wages were increased by 12.5%. “This will give work and paychecks to the heads of 300 more families in Battle Creek,” Kellogg said.

The union at Kellogg proudly issued progress reports, documenting improved efficiency, decreased unit cost and dramatic reduction in injuries. Other well-known companies (Remember Hudson Motor Car?) joined the experiment. However, after World War II workers and their unions wanted to participate in the consumer boom. They pushed for more hours in order to get more pay, including overtime. Kellogg gradually phased out the 30-hour week and completely eliminated it by 1985, writes Benjamin Hunnicutt in Kellogg’s Six Hour Day (Temple University Press, 1996).

Covid-19 presents an opportunity to experiment with remote work, flex time and other work arrangements. The topic of shorter hours is also in the mix because our Covid-19 economy has meant a shortage of competent workers in some key sectors. Thus, some business executives see reduced hours as a tool for recruitment and retention.

To be continued…

Droel is associated with National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).