Labor Omnia Vincit

HAPPY LABOR DAY. Or, is it Merry Labor Day? Labor Day is a mystery, but I’m glad we have it.

For you in other lands who read About Pops, Labor Day was, best I can tell, a holiday set aside to celebrate the American worker. In Oklahoma, where I live, by creed we honor that sentiment perpetually. Our state’s motto is Labor Omnia Vincit. 

“It is a Latin phrase meaning "Work conquers all". The phrase is adapted from Virgil's Georgics, Book I, line 145-6: ...Labor omnia vicit / improbus ("Steady work overcame all things"). The poem was written in support of Augustus Caesar's "Back to the land" policy, aimed at encouraging more Romans to become farmers. Currently the state motto of the State of Oklahoma and incorporated into its state seal in 1907, the motto originally appeared on the territorial seal of Oklahoma Territory.” —Wikipedia.

My bro-in-law Art, travels extensively and unearths some of the coolest treasures. He could have his own TV show. Recently, he ran across a safety kit from Conoco Oil. Inside the kit was a safety manual. It was issued September 1, 1964. On Labor Day. Intentionally?

The manual is full of excellent safety guidance, like this: 

“Do not use compressed air to clean clothes. Never discharge compressed air onto other employees because serious injuries have resulted from such “horseplay” antics.”

Some of the guidance seems to be outdated, but it was probably the best available in 1964. Here, for example is the entire procedure to treat “Heart Stoppage”:

“Give closed heart massage (only if heart is stopped) and mouth to mouth respiration [sic].”

The thing I found most interesting about the Conoco safety manual was the Workman’s Creed printed on the back cover. I share it here, on this Labor Day, September 1, 2014, 50 years after its publication.

And the end is that the workman shall live to enjoy the fruits of his labor; that his mother shall have the comforts of his arm in her age; that his wife shall not be untimely a widow; that his children shall have a father; and that cripples and helpless wrecks who were once strong men shall not longer be a by-product of industry.” —P.B. Juhnke.

Not exactly the words I would have chosen, but what a beautiful, re-humanizing sentiment.

Labor Omnia Vincit

Which Way Does Your Gate Swing?

Does the name Judith Sheindlin ring a bell? She's from Brooklyn, New York (if that helps).

A line you hear often is "Life's not fair." What an unsatisfying answer!

• Your kid doesn't get to start at quarterback, so: "Life's not fair."
• The jerk in the next cubicle got a raise, you didn't, so: "Life's not fair."

The antithesis of that seems to be: "I'm so blessed."

• Your daughter makes the elementary school cheer squad, so: "I'm so blessed."
• You son makes the Honor Roll, so: "I'm so blessed."
• You live in a "gated community"...

WAIT, that one depends on which way the gate swings. Our youngest son works for the Oklahoma County Sheriff. For the folks he's around, the gate swings the wrong way, because they're all innocent and "Life's not fair."

You know in some cases, maybe they're right. I heard a statistic the other day that purported that for kids who have parents who are incarcerated, more than 70% of them will at some time be in jail themselves.

Monet's Garden Gate

One of my favorite people to hear speak is Michael Sandel. He's a professor at Harvard. He teaches a class called, "Justice: What's the Right Thing To Do." You can watch it on YouTube or you can read the book by the same name. I highly recommend both. Here's one of my favorite quotes:

“The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be” 
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

It seems to me that sometimes we can have several "I'm so blessed" and "Life's not fair" moments all in the same day. In other words, both of these states are temporary, and depend on the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Here's a statement I believe is more true and accurate than either of those two: Life's complicated.

Back to Sandel's quote: If we're not careful we'll come to believe that the way things are DOES determine how they ought to be, and how they in fact ARE. Is it crazy to say that the way things are, is not necessarily the way things really ARE? In other words, do we sometimes make the wrong assumptions about reality?

I promise you--if you watch too much Fox News, or if you watch too much MSNBC, you will soon have a distorted reality of the way things are. I know this is coming across as opinionated preaching, but what I'm really doing here is putting in words and ink a new lesson I'm learning.

For me this lesson is this: if I constantly look at life as though I'm looking through a microscope, telescope, or a tunnel, I have no choice but to view and judge every event as a moment of: Life's not fair, or I'm so blessed.

Oh, and you do know Judith Sheindlin. You know her as Judge Judy. Turns out that she is the highest paid judge in the land. A justice of the U.S. Supreme Court makes just over $200,000 a year. Judge Judy makes nearly $50,000,000. Yes, that's 50 MILLION a year! Is life fair, or is Judge Judy just really, really blessed. And if she is, what has she done to merit such blessfullness? Or is it even based on merit?

Here's what I do know, by experience, for myself: If I look broadly at life, taking as big a picture as I can, I see that we are all blessed way beyond what we deserve, that there is more beauty than I can behold in a lifetime, and that when you try to see life as it was Designed and Created, it is in fact, fair.

"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." --C. S. Lewis

See what I mean?

The Magic Of A Perfect Pair

Sometimes "writer's block" is real; and it sounds like this (cue video):

Sometimes, I have several ideas for a post and can't decide which one to develop. So, I try to weave the ideas together into one theme. This is an example. (If it seems like I'm straining to make the connection, you wouldn't be wrong.)

FIRTH: My favorite drumsticks are made by the Vic Firth Company. Vic's sticks have a great feel and are "tuned together". They market the sticks as "the perfect pair".

Over the weekend we saw Woody Allen's new film "Magic In The Moonlight" starring: Emma Stone and Colin Firth. They were a perfect pair in this film. If you like Woody's films, you should see this one.

THECOND: Speaking of drumsticks, drummers use one of two grips: traditional or matched. If you care about the details of these two, which I realize is highly unlikely, Wikipedia has great explanations.

I began playing drums in the 60s. I use a traditional grip. My two sons started playing many years later and both use matched grip. I might assume that as their father, I have not had as much influence on them as the rock drummers they watched play with matched grip. Then I could tremble, wondering what else they picked up from the "world" over the influence of the more traditional Significant Others.

Without a doubt, our cultures and the traditions of our tribes, run deep. And, as it goes with advancing years, I tend to think the old ways of doing and viewing things are the best. Whether it's how to hold your drumsticks, or how whether you prefer drumsticks over breasts (speaking of poultry of course), we tend to stand by our preferences.

THIRD: Colin Firth's character in Magic In The Moonlight is stubbornly set in his ways. Emma Stone's character works a bit of magic though, and his walls come tumbling down. Funny how that works. Perfect pairs morph through being tuned together--listening, paying attention, learning.

Emma Stone & Colin Firth

Recently I was at a meeting and a guy was doing a talk on "crucial communication". He gave an example of the importance of communication by reading an advertisement from CraigsList. It went something like this:

Motorcycle for sale. Like new. Only 500 miles. It is a great bike and I hate to have to sell it, but apparently I misunderstood when my wife said, "Do whatever the hell you want."

May I Be Serious

A RELATION OF MINE TOOK THIS PHOTO OF GRAIN ELEVATORS IN WESTERN OKLAHOMA. As soon as I saw it, I thought, "if that were my photo, I would use at as the background for a poem or quote: something from a guy like Wendell Berry. Then this one came to mind from his book called: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays.

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.
― Wendell Berry

Photo by Corey Lee Fuller. Used without his permission.

This quote came to mind for me again this morning as we had communion at church. Of course, Wendell Berry is speaking in an agricultural sense, but his use of the metaphor is clear.

But I began to ponder this idea of breaking of body and shedding of blood in the context of humanity as a collective "body". No doubt there have been times when we as the human race have justified breaking the bodies and shedding the blood of our own kind. And some of it may have been necessary; maybe.

I also know however, that our human story, which we call history, is full of unjustifiable, senseless breaking and shedding. But dang it... It is everywhere these days: from Ukraine, to Afghanistan to Ferguson, Missouri, to our hometowns where drug-addled "baby daddies" are beating their own infants to death.

In the sermon this morning following communion the speaker suggested that when Jesus lead his disciples through that first, Last Supper, and said, "Do this; and when you do, remember me," He was giving us a center point, a true north, a way to find our way.

We need that, right? Maybe it just old-age coming on me, but we seemed to have lost our way. To borrow a line from the old catcher of the New York Yankees: 

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. -- Yogi Berra