Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Worker Justice, Sacred Work

Reverend Kurt Kuhwald
May 18, 2008
Palo Alto, CA

It is my hope to speak to you quite simply today. Simply and plainly … about work. And in doing so, I want to intertwine a simple weave by also sharing some of the joy I have as a Unitarian Universalist minister, a joy that I believe especially comes whenever we choose to stand together to seek fairness and justice with working people and with people who are living and working poor.

Being a Unitarian Universalist minister, because of the values this religious movement takes its life from, is surprisingly powerful. The power is surprising because … well, because liberal people usually don't equate ministry with power. “Ministry” and “power” don't usually show up in the same sentence. (This is another reason why we need to come to church on Sundays: It is the chiropractic function of sermons and Sunday services. We need to come in and get our theological/cosmological lexicon and grammar readjusted.)

When a Pakistani, when a Vietnamese, when a Northern Mexican truck driver in the Port of Oakland (all of whom worship “different gods,” practice different religions), when they are being subjected to “sweatshop” like conditions on the job; when the quest for profits of some of the most powerful corporate businesses in the world like Wal-Mart, Target and other Big Box corporations, over-ride the needs of working families; when the massive, state-wide, prestiguous institution of the University of California underpays and exploits its service workers who come from poor and working class families of many different cultures … it's right there, in those places, where diversity intersects with injustice, that a Unitarian Universalist minister and Unitarian Universalist values become a powerful force for good. And that gives me joy.

We UUs are at home in theological diversity. We are at home in diversity because Unitarian and Universalist values developed out of a long history of responding to the impulses of liberation in the human heart; the human need to discover our own unique and humanly organic path into full maturity.

We speak from a place of values that is fundamentally grounded in the very fact of our humanness. The issues we raise are those right at the heart of living human lives. Furthermore, we speak from a place where we understand that our humanness expresses the living depths of life itself. Our strongest values, rather than narrowing our vision through a set of doctrines, require that we cut free of doctrine and rest … rest, finally, in the simplicity of our natural goodness, a goodness that transcends all arguments of good and bad, right and wrong, a goodness that is actually not nameable, but that we know in our hearts and in our strongest moments of aliveness. It is a goodness that we can trust.

Armed with trust in my humanness and the good that undergirds it, as a UU minister, I am free to minister across theological, as well as class and ethnic lines. I am free to open my heart to the pain and to minister to those who labor in some of the most difficult and most disrespected jobs in the world, because I know we are not different. I know this, not just because I, too, have worked some of those jobs, I know this because the values I stand in will not tolerate separation and division between people, will not accept anything less than the recognition of every person's integrity and full worth. Those values, as best as we can articulate them, are expressions of our human heritage and our human-ness arising not from the authority of religious texts, but the authority of our own lives.

But I cannot, ministers cannot, move into the world of workplace and labor injustice alone. They need, I need — all of you. In fact, the world of workplace and labor injustice … is where we all need to be moving … consistently and boldly. That is where our values call us. That is why, last fall, I accepted an offer to join the Board of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice (ICWJ).

ICWJ is an affiliate of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), a statewide organization that aims to end low-wage poverty in California by empowering workers and engaging clergy and congregations in campaigns of solidarity. The ICWJ is a project of East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), a visionary non-profit that does policy, organizing, research and coalition building between faith communities, community groups, and labor unions in order to collectively confront the crises of working poverty.

As a Board member of ICWJ I speak first, of course, for my self, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. And to the degree that, through my work on the Board, I am able to embody UU values, I carry the Unitarian Universalist movement into the world. I can't do that fully and most powerfully unless you've got my back. Unless I know that I am supported in this work by you, unless I know that you, too, are willing to show up when working people, particularly those who are working poor, need support, then I am hanging out there, solitary and limited.

But you knew that. You knew that UU ministers were activists, activists for fairness, activists for justice, activists, of the kind of spiritual/ethical depth whose meditation mats are dirtied by feet that have walked long and diligently in the world. You knew that because that is one of the main sources of our joy. We were bred for discontent and change.

But there are values that grow thickly and richly out of working life that I need to raise here because we need them. That is one of the reasons that I joined ICWJ, the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, so that I could refresh my ties, reconnect my ties, with the values working life has to offer.

I am, of course, aware, as I offer you this list, that we never fulfill the best of any of our values; we frequently and daily fall short. We frequently get lost, give up, momentarily sell out or off our heritage in micro and not so micro ways. That we do. And, still, we continue to return … we continue to return to the work bench over and over … and over. That is what we do, because that is who we are, down where it matters. So lifting up values is important, not because we must anxiously strive to fullfill them completely, but because making them conscious reminds us of something deeper, still … and that is how breathtaking and amazing we human beings truly are.

One of the wonderful places that our genius shines through is when we are at work. Now you may think that I am playing loose and free with class definitions of work. But there is a way in which work is work, whether pushing papers or pushing dirt, hoisting babies, bricks or ideas. And yet, and yet, I do want to focus for this morning on that work that we commonly call “labor.” The work that puts demands on the body, that uses the body, that depends on the muscle and the genius of the body to accomplish the work; I want to do so because there are gifts there, and that is where the working poor live … deeply in the body.

I want to read a poem here, that may blur the lines yet again, but in its images, and in its celebration of the body at work, work itself is demonstrated. It is from this poem that I will generate a list of work attributes. The poem is by Marge Piercy and it is called “To Be of Use.”

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Jumping In. Jumping in without whining. Jumping in without demands … other than safety. One of the great attributes of the working life. There is something about a body that just wants to be engaged. There's something about aligning with the body's wants that is liberating. There is something about the quickness of a body to respond to work that, like lightning, reveals a big, big landscape of possibility and of immense dignity.

Moving in a common rhythm. The way a worksite becomes organized by the efficiency of the workers. The dance that goes on behind the counter as the baked goods are brought to life! The strange beauty of the billowed sheets brought down to snug on a hotel bed. Work is movement, and in the movement there is a deep rhythm, a rhythm that bears lives forward. Moving together, touching the intimacy of family and tribe. Moving together and knowing your own body extended through others, and theirs through you, to bring the food in and put the fire out.

Doing what has to be done, over and over again. Even when the body is tired, even when the strain on tendon and muscle and nerve is high … doing what has to be done, until it is done. There is something about that kind of commitment that grounds the soul and feeds a sense of at-home-ness in the world. We need to know that pitch into the gap where what needs doing needs us. We need to feel and see ourselves after the hard, demanding job is done; sense the deep gratitude and quiet pride. And then we need to do it again. It is food for us as surely as a ripe tomato, a succulent mellon, food for our hearts, our souls.

A deep sense of “Realness.” There is something about the body that speaks about realness like no other thing. Surely sore muscles give that message like nothing else can, but just engaging the body …. Engaging the body in work raises the sap of feeling, floods our awareness with the tangible, dialates our constricted veins to full throttle. We wake up. And what we wake up to is the raw and exquisite beauty of our lives and of life … and how realizing all of that awareness, coupled with our work, is a power both extraordinary and common.

All of these are such good things. All of this life, the working life, gives us so much of our humanity in real terms.

And all of this is called into question when work conditions are dangerous, demanding beyond healthy limits, inadequately tooled, unfairly compensated, socially disrespected. All of these potent gifts of work are undercut, betrayed, in fact, when society is fractured along work-class lines and economic policies serve some well and others poorly, base the well-being of some on the deprivation and degradation of others.

Going there, to the heart of that human disorder, addressing that inequity, with dilligence and compassion, is a joyful act because it brings us to the deepest intersections of life. To paraphrase the words of Protestant Theologian, Frederick Buechner, “The place where Life [with a capitol ‘L’] calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.”

That is what I am called to do in ICWJ, on the ports of Oakland, at the campuses of UC, along the sidewalks bordering the Woodfin Hotel, in front of the airport terminals of this great bay … I am called to my gladness.

And that gladness is especially deepened by the fact that the people I stand with and for, are people who deserve more, and whose dignity so outstrips the greed and rapaciousness of those who exploit them. People who make no special demands upon life, except to share in the basic bounty that is the birthright of us all. Something about standing … standing with. Something about that simple gesture … frees the spirit.

Work is at the core of being human: foraging for our families, whether in the supermarket or on the savannah; buiding structures of sanctitiy and protection, whether of thatch or of redwood plank or of prestressed concrete; transporting food to town, whether by donkey cart or by electric car; digging ditches in the earth, or through a mathematical equation; offering ones arms to an infant or to a dying parishoner — giving ourselves in and to work, for sustainance and for pride, for survival and for fulfillment … marks us as Homo Laborum, the working beings.

And because of that centrality, it is critical that in our communities of faith, in these Unitarian Universalist communities we claim as our own, in this Unitarian Univesalist church of Palo Alto, because of the centrality of work to our human identity, we can be clear and rest assured, for the place where our gladness meets the world's deep hunger is right at hand.

As a minister ordained by a Unitarian Universlist Congregation (Second Unitarian Universalist in Chicago), and sanctioned to practice ministry by the Ministerial Fellowship of the UU Association, I am called to leverage my “Reverend” status right there in the service of those whose work, and thereby whose dignity, has been sytematically denied. As a UU minister, if I am to take my call to stand on the side of UU values seriously, as if one of their active functions was to continually challenge me to refuse to treat any one as my inferior … not one — if I am to take my call to the life-giving, love affirming, equality encouraging values of such a faith path as an ethical/spiritual river that powerfully courses through my heart — if I truly listen to its song — listen, you can hear it in the words … dignity … integrity … solidarity — then I can take joy in real work.

So … I appreciate any and all support I get as a minister to do ministry … but deeper still is this message: All of us are called. In one way or another, to one work or another, every person here in this room has work that is essential and unique to you (even if you are “retired”) … because there is only one, precious you.

May we all use that preciousness to insure that everyone, with no exception, receives the care, the material support and the blessing of community fearless enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with those whose dignity is being denied and whose labor is being exploited.

 

All My Relations.
Ashé. Amen. Ameen. Shalom & Blessed Be.
Gracias y Namasté.