Work Breaks, the Law, and Sabbath Imperatives

It was Monday, and May-warm-lovely out, so it was a day for chores, both in the yard and in the house.

I don't mind them, to be honest, as they're just part of caring for one's little patch of land, but they do take energy.  I trimmed back bushes, cut back ivy, and cleared away the clippings.  I edged and mowed the front yard.  I emptied the kitchen compost bin into the compost pile, which I had turned with a pitchfork prior to burying that mess of semi-decomposed waste deep in the warm steaming pile.

It was the labor of an entire morning, and as I was my own boss, I took it at my own pace.

Being deep into the creaks and groans of middle age, that meant taking a pause every half hour or so.  I'd pop in the house for a sip of water, or to sit for a moment.  It'd be a minute or two or five, and then I'd bop back outside to get back into it.

That morning, I worked for about three hours.  I took at least three breaks of varying lengths.  When done, there were chores in the house...attacking the pile of dishes, vacuuming up the endless stream of hair that flows from our dog, walking said dog, feeding said dog, making dinner...and by the time the hour struck ten, I was ready to sleep.

Physical labor requires physical rest.  It's a basic reality.

Which is why I find myself fuddled by the latest kerfuffle coming from the big dangling nether states.  Texas and Florida legislatures have both recently made it illegal for counties to require water and rest breaks for farm workers.

Here, I confess to being of two minds.  Most of the souls whose hands and backs bring us our food are Latino, and many work here without the protections of citizenship.  There's a strong profit motivation for unscrupulous growers to take advantage of that status, knowing that people who fear summary arrest, detention, and deportation are far more likely to endure abusive work conditions.  Protecting those human beings would be best and first accomplished by providing a clear, sane, and open path to citizenship.  

As a still yet more important matter, ensuring humane working conditions seems necessary if you're not, well, evil.  If you can't run a business without inflicting harm on your workers, then that business is an abomination in the sight of the Lord.  Biblically speaking, I'm on solid ground here.

But...then there are the regulations being proposed.  'Cause the county regulations in question seem insufficient.  In Florida, they mandate one ten minute water and shade break every two hours.

This is...peculiar.  I mean, isn't it?  Am I wrong here?  I work outside in the summer on the regular, and that's just not quite enough, bro.  The hotter it gets, the more true that becomes.

Field work is physically intensive, and when temperatures rise into the 90s and 100s  (that's in the thirties, for the rest of the world), you've got to have water available all the time.  You've got to take shade breaks whenever you're feeling pressed.  When it's humid out, that gets even harder.

An employer who didn't provide access to water and shade as needed in the conditions that will increasingly become the norm in the American South wouldn't be doing their workers any favors.  With temperatures rising due to climate change (words redacted for Florida readers), any farmer or rancher who worked to the rule would find their workers struggling.  

Sure, the argument that county-by-county regulations are too scattershot might have validity.  But is it a real argument? Are the folks making that argument arguing for clearer federal and state level regulations, or suggesting that business should be utterly free?  Are they arguing that the biblical injunction to give adequate sabbath to laborers and to never ever oppress or profit maximize doesn't apply, because Reasons?

Then something rather different is at play.  

A Spoonful of Singing

It was a bright spring morning, still a little crisp, but with the promise of warmth.  As the morning light spilled into my little neighborhood, I heard the sound of singing.  

It wasn't, truth be told, the most tuneful noise.  It rode in with the arrival of a garbage truck, and the vocalist wasn't particularly concerned with either tonal or lyrical accuracy.  His voice, a baritono alto, was belting out bits and bobs of some popular Latino music, and what it lacked in precision and consistency it made up for in exuberance.  

As the truck rumbled down the hill towards our house, the singer came into view.

They weren't stopping at every house, as this was evidently a garden waste pickup, and so the truck was booking along at a healthy pace.  He was young and eager and wearing headphones, hanging as far off the back of the truck as he could, one arm extended out to catch the breeze.  It slowed as it approached the house of a neighbor who'd set out the correct materials.

As they approached the bins, he leapt off, still singing along to whatever he was listening to.  Grabbing a can, he dumped it rhythmically into the maw of the crusher, clearly timing his motions with the music.

He returned the bin to the curb with a playful flick, then ran to his place on the truck.  He leapt up to grab the rear bar with all the pleasure of a child jumping aboard a merry-go-round, and as the truck pulled away, he leaned again into the wind.  He extended his arm and open hand to play through the rush of air as he disappeared down the street, still serenading the morning like a trash truck Julie Andrews.

It's amazing how an attitude can change the flavor of our day.

Our Home in Old Age

There comes a time when we cannot work.  

Not just "don't want to."  Not "quiet quitting," or whatever the term is now for hardly working rather than working hard.

But actually not being able to perform the tasks that any job requires.  When our bodies no longer allow us to stand and move around, and our minds struggle to hold on to short-term memories, there's just no way for us to participate in the rush and bustle of the daily grind.  The arrival of that season varies from person to person, but it comes for all of us.

When it happens, there are implications.  How do we put a roof over our balding and/or silvery heads?

For the wealthy and the propertied, there are buffers and protections.  I've seen this in my own family, and in my circle of family friends.  One good friend from the church where I grew up has moved in with her children, and to facilitate this built a comfortable, accessible addition to their home.  Another did the same thing to the home she and her husband lived in during their adult years, creating a "wing" to their house with wide doors, open and accessible bathrooms, and an elevator.  These were wise uses of the resources of worldly wealth, but most Americans don't have that option.

For those who do not have retirement savings?  Paying for our living space grows harder and harder as we lose the ability to care for ourselves.  The long-term care that is necessary to keep us in our homes as we age isn't covered by Medicare, and private long-term care insurance is both expensive and challenging to negotiate.  

Things can get really difficult, really quickly.   

During the many years I delivered for Meals on Wheels, I over and over again encountered elderly folk who were struggling to make a go of it in their homes by themselves.  Some were managing, mostly with the support of neighbors, younger friends, and nearby family.  Others were clearly past the point where they could handle life by themselves, so physically and mentally compromised that being in their home was a burden.  Those were the homes filled with piles of unopened mail and neglected possessions, the occupant either confined to a chair or obviously non compos mentis.  They were relying on home aide support that was insufficient, or had no real help at all.

Most of us prefer to stay in our homes as we age, because it's a reassuringly familiar space.  But those same homes can become a shadow place, a place filled only with the echoes of our former life.

And the 20% of elderly Americans who don't own their own homes?

Sudden surges in home prices drive up rents, and then, well, then what do you do?  "Camping" really isn't the most pleasant of options when you're young, but when can't really even walk on your own?  It's even less so. 

Medicaid does provide for nursing care for those who have exhausted their resources, but access to those nursing homes homes was never easy, and has gotten harder post-pandemic.  With a significant shortage of rooms, particularly in rural areas, those who find themselves physically unable to care for themselves can be stuck in hospitals.

It's a challenge more and more will face, as our population becomes grayer.

Why We Still Work

In the face of our unpreparedness for retirement, many of us simply don't.

Sometimes, we continue to work because we love our work.  We continue to be able to contribute even though our bodies may ache and complain, and our minds have trouble remembering exactly why we came downstairs.  What were we getting again?    

We love the mental stimulation of labor, and we know our field, and we still have something to contribute.  There's pleasure in a job well done, and we want to enjoy that pleasure as long as we can.

But mostly, lately, Americans continue to work because we have to work.  The option of stopping our season of labor and taking sabbath at the end of a life's work simply doesn't exist, because if we took it, we would starve.  Increasingly, we're forced to continue heaving that rock up the hill, whether we take joy in it or not.

Research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the number of seniors remaining in the workforce will increase by nearly 100% in the next decade, as we both age and find ourselves continuing to need a regular source of income.  Though many folks retired early during the pandemic, more and more retirees are coming out of retirement, continuing to work well into old age, like Harrison Ford coming back one last time for Indiana Jones and the Greeter of Walmart.

We've got debt for medical expenses, debt for our homes, debt for our cars, debt for our children's education, and sometimes lingering debt from our own education.  St. Peter may be calling, but we can't go, 'cause we owe our souls to the company store.

Given the wild fluctuations in our "free market" economy, there's also impetus to keep our toe in the water and some skin in the game.  Retire at the wrong time, and you can find the assets that you'd assumed would be sufficient suddenly...aren't.   As we're living longer, and retiring at sixty five or sixty seven means twenty more years of life, we're likely to see some economic catastrophe or another at least once during those two decades.

I mean, seriously, we're relying on Wall Street to provide a stable, consistent, unpanicky income for our dotage?  Wall Street?  How often over our lifetimes has there been an economic crisis?  Pretty much every decade, some industry or another overheats and collapses, and all of the financial gurus go into a tizzy.  Housing loans.  Student loans.  Dot coms.  Asian Tiger markets.  Algorithm-driven selloffs.  Pandemics.  You name it, the Invisible Hand of the market is great at dropping the ball, like the world's least competent Pee Wee League wide receiver.  It's an ephemeral edifice fabricated from groupthink, avarice, and wet tissue paper, and it comes apart at the slightest whiff of crisis.

In America, it's always the wrong time to retire.  Always.

We know this because we can see it, and so we don't retire.

Labor and Vocation

It's Labor Day, and on this Labor Day, I'm looking at a new job.  Starting the first Sunday in October, I'll be making that ride out to Poolesville on a far more frequent basis, as I take the position of Supply Pastor at Poolesville Presbyterian Church.  

By some of the more commonly used metrics of employment, some folks might look at the transition I'm making with befuddlement.

The salary is...like my current small church...indexed to the minimum acceptable to Presbytery.  As this is a half-time position and my current position is three-quarter-time, well, you do the math.   It's less money.  The commute goes from twenty minutes without traffic to one hour and ten without traffic.  Each way.   

Less pay?  Longer commute?   And yet, I'm totally psyched.

Being the mutant that I am, salary levels just don't matter to me.  Well, that's not entirely true.  What matters to me is twofold.  First, that salary be sufficient to allow me to shoulder a fair share of the costs of maintaining a household.  As the husband of a working woman, I'm not the sole income provider, eh?  This salary will be sufficient for that.  Second, that salary should be fair relative to what you're doing.  I love pastoring, and marvel that it is even possible to preach and teach the Gospel and talk about the meaning and purpose of our existence...and receive compensation.  This does tend to put me at a bit of a negotiating disadvantage.  Pesky thing about vocation, I guess.  It's so much more than just a "job."

The commute matters.  Too many Americans have come to assume that those two hours a day they spend in traffic are fine and normal.   If I had to make this commute every day, it might get old fast.  But...I'm not.  Nor does the church expect me to.  It's twice a week.  Any other work, like emailing, texting, prepping sermons and talking on the phone and doing reports and creating web-content, that can be done remotely.  And at twice a week, the gorgeous country roads that lead to Poolesville feel like a retreat in and of themselves, particularly in the saddle of a motorcycle.  I'd ride that ride for the good of my soul.

Then there are the benefits, and by benefits, I don't mean pension and major medical.  I mean those other intangibles that make your work feel less like work.  Like, say, a community that laughs easily, and that radiates interpersonal warmth.  Or a place that recognizes the need for human beings to be flexible with one another, and values a life lived in balance.  When I say I need time to care for kids, and to work on doctoral studies, and to write...it's good to see nods around the table. 

Work does not exist for the sake of work, after all.  

Workin' Hard, Or Hardly Workin'

Today, I spent most of my day not working. The majority of the hours I put in had nothing to do with work at all. Yeah, it started recognizably enough. I wrote up the weekly email newsletter for the church, edited it, and sent it out to our little circulation list. I then edited the circulation list. Then, I pulled together our bulletin. And updated the church sign. And did some prep work for VBS. And ordered some emergency lights that a recent visit from the fire marshal made necessary. I met with our building manager and my clerk of session. That was all very workey. But it only carried me through noon.

At noon, I got on my motorcycle and rode north. It was hot, but so long as I was moving, things were fine. Pleasant, even. At 1:45 pm, I arrived at the state psychiatric hospital where the young man who was arrested outside our church two weeks ago is being treated. He was pleased to see me, which one can't always say about folks who you've gotten arrested and detained in an institution. But then, he gets few visitors, so I did break the monotony. I spent the next hour with him, listening as he described his...um...esoteric worldview. He's a bright guy, and our conversation veered wildly from some fairly mundane stuff to long talks that reflected his fractured mental state.

At 2:45 pm, I begged his leave, got back on my bike, and motored homeward through the afternoon haze. The Beltway, she was not kind to me this evening.

Pretty much all of my afternoon was spent doing something that, from an organizational standpoint, was no more constructive than playing Bloons. Go, Dart Monkey, Go!

I wasn't attending to membership, or to the needs of the facility. I wasn't doing development...sorry...stewardship work. I wasn't developing a prospective new member. I wasn't getting new pledge units...sorry...members. By the baseline standards of measuring the organizational health of a church as a human institution, what I was doing served no conceivable purpose.

And yet it was what needed to be done, in an Imitatio Christi, dubyadubyajaydee sorta way. From conversations I've had about it with members and leaders of the church, it was what everyone eagerly wanted me to do. Even though it served no organizational purpose, it was the thing the pastor of my church...meaning me... needed to be doing. Which is how it should be. How it must be, for church to be church and not just another institution.

It reminded me again of how when I sometimes say to my kids "I'm going to work," that isn't really what I'm doing at all.

Pour Yourself a Cup of Ambition, Ladies

After many years at her current place of employ, my wife left her job this last week. Unlike so many others in this rather difficult employment market, she's moving on to another job. It's a good move. Her departure was amicable, and her new position is a significant and positive step up in her field. Work, for Rache, has always been an important thing. She's a smart, capable, and intensely committed staff person. That means that after two decades in the same field, she's on a path that will lead her deep into primary breadwinner territory. While we could live simply on what I earn as a pastor, her work now provides a significant majority of our household income.

Interestingly, the issue of women in the workplace has surfaced in the Virginia governors race. Bob McDonnell, the Republican candidate, is catching all sorts of flak for his Master's thesis. He got his graduate degree in public policy from Regent University, which used to be called CBN University. Oh yes it is. It's Pat Robertson's grad school. In that thesis, McDonnell runs through a series of familiar conservative themes. In particular, he argues that having women in the workforce is bad for families.

This has not played particularly well.

McDonnell has been doing a great deal of backpedaling and counterspinning over the last few days. He's pointed out that he wrote the thesis two decades ago...although he was hardly a kid at the time. When you're 34, you're a grownup. Is he saying that his graduate study didn't matter? I'll admit that any masters thesis that includes condemnations of homosexuals and fornicators probably isn't going to make it's way into the Journal of Public Policy and Management. But it still formed him.

He's also pointed to his legislative record, which is a mix of practical politics and conservative social engineering. He's not quite the fascist that the Huffington Post would have us believe, but then again, he's not anywhere near the political center...even in the conservative state of Virginia. He knows this. His campaign theme for populous and moderate Northern Virginia appears to be: "Hey Guys! I also grew up in Northern Virginia! How 'bout them Skins! How 'bout them Redskinettes? Aren't they hot? Man, don't you wish you could marry one too?"

As the political backpedaling goes on, I find myself wondering if perhaps we should look more closely at the statement that got him in the most trouble. It's not politically expedient, but perhaps we should critically consider McDonnell's most challenging assertion.

Are women in the workplace bad for the American family?

If you look at the historical statistics for working women in the United States against the statistics for divorce, they sure do seem to be trending the same way. Both are an arc, and both arcs point strongly upward. Of course, this is just a correlation, and correlation is not causation. They may not teach that at Regent's Public Policy program, but it's a reliable axiom for anyone else who studies statistics. But for the sake of argument, let's say that here is something to that correlation. Let's cede McDonnell his point. Women working has a major and negative impact on the stability of the traditional family unit. But why? I see two major reasons.

First, when women are able to work and support themselves, the dynamic of the household becomes radically different. Women who work cease to be economically dependent on the largesse of a man. Wealth is just a societal instrument of power, and where individuals become culturally detached from the ability to sustain themselves, that power imbalance can become a means of coercion. If you don't stay married, you starve, so you better stay married, little missy. That dynamic of oppression is not necessarily the case, of course. Couples where one partner works and the other cares for offspring work just fine...so long as each partner views the others interests as equivalent to their own. Marriages that hew to the Christian ideal of mutual care can manage that dynamic just fine. But I think ultimately "traditional" relationships that weren't founded on mutual respect just can't survive the transition of women into the workforce.

Second, I think the dynamics of the American workplace make two-income families a desperately challenging proposition. The demand for endlessly rising productivity and the expectation that we'll all be full-time employees who are constantly on call place an often unmanageable amount of stress on the family unit. The combined net income for the household may allow for big houses and big cars and a gutbusting cornucopia of consumer products. But that stuff don't count for nothin' if you're stressed and screaming at each other about who's going to take the kids to soccer this Wednesday, because I've got a deadline, dammit. As women have entered the workforce, those old expectations about work have remained. Where couples could be working less than two full-time jobs and maintaining balance in their lives, we are instead driven into much harsher emotional terrain, and it's doing damage.

So McDonnell's thesis is, on the one hand, correct. The dynamics of a marriage in which the wife is subordinate to and economically dependent on her husband cannot stand in the face of women in the workforce. He is also correct in that our expectations of work have not changed to permit for healthy two-worker families.

On the other hand, and here I come at it with my pastor hat on, McDonnell's thesis is ironically unscriptural. While many conservatives seek out texts here and there to argue for the divinely ordained subordination of women, they're not really paying attention. Where scripture speaks to the issue in the most sustained way, it says something very different. The most pertinent passage is in Proverbs, which makes a profound and sustained case for married women as an active and honored part of the working world, and declares that their work is a sign of a healthy and blessed family. If anything, a Bible-based approach to public policy should be making sure our workplace dynamics make room for both women, men and healthy families.

Guess they must not have bothered much with the Bible in that master's program of his. Oh well.