Hernandez

The story of Aaron Hernandez is a modern-day tragedy, complete with three acts. I have not followed this story with any focus and admit to headline scanning for most of my information. That does nothing to influence my observation that there are only victims in this story. Plenty of them.

Stuff is messed up in our country. 

Politics and Organized Labor

Erik Loomis has an excellent essay in Boston Review on the barely tenable relationship between labor and the Democratict party. Loomis points to labor's failure to organize outside of the northeast and industrial mid-west as leading contributors to loss of political support from democrats. I see the positive link here and also recognize how daunting that task really was.

At no point in labor's storied history have workers been truly successful without supportive government policy. These supportive policies often came at great sacrifice to working families - tens of thousands of whom beaten or killed. US policy has shifted with labor's ability to shift public opinion - mostly through the public relations damage done by wealthy industrialists in their attempts to thwart organizing efforts through every means possible.

Once the wealthy elite realized they could not win with only clubs and guns, the strategy shifted. Mostly gone was the violence (but not completely) replaced by a sophisticated PR plan of their own. The Natioanal Manufacturers Association rolled out the Mohawk Valley Formula in 1938, and industry never looked back. Ten years later, by following this script and using people like Vance Muse and his Christian Americans Association, anti-union forces passed Taft-Hartley. This was the beginning of the end for organized labor and has more to do with the unorganized south than any other factor.

Surely there were lost opportunities in the south for labor pre-Taft-Hartley, but these were fleeting moments. By restricting the rights of organized labor, the US Congress gave employers all the tools they needed to slow, stop and then reverse the growth of labor unions in our country.

The trend is clear and the inevitable seems at least probable. Although being a realist means acknowledging that the probable does not always happen.

Ripples

I attended the ROC NH leadership graduation last night. ROC stands for Resident-Owned Community and it is a program of the NH Community Loan Fund. The purpose of the leadership program is to help people who live in manufactured housing cooperatives develop the skills needed to lead a multi-million dollar corporation.

While the demographics of the residents of cooperatives can be diverse, the threads woven through the communities tend to be older, less formally educated and mostly blue-collar families. These are not pejorative terms - simply my personal observations after 5 years of attending these and other Loan Fund events. Also adding that the residents and graduates I've met during the events are nothing short of strong, smart, caring and hard-working.

That's what makes this program so important. Residents with little or no prior experience in running a business are suddenly thrust into the management of a multi-million dollar co-op. Without adequate education and guidance there is no way the residents can be successful. Heck, even with the best of training it's a formidable task.

The program participants learn about running meetings and creative problem solving. They learn how to depend on each other and to build trust when perhaps none exists. By the time they graduate from the six-month long program, they have a solid foundation for conflict resolution, public speaking and creating and reading financial statements. And remember, some of these people have never balanced a checkbook. It's amazing.

Last night I sat with one of the graduates during the program. He shared with me that finding his voice was the single-best result of the experience for him. He said he always felt like he had something to say and never knew how to contribute - the training and experience of the leadership program gave him a confidence to participate that now shows up in every part of his life. He has received a promotion at work and his wife (who was there) was raving about how their communication has improved. Ripples.

There are more than 7,000 families who benefit from ROCs in NH. Each year, ROC NH puts 20 of our neighbors and fellow citizens through an educational program (worth 4 college credits!) that teaches these life-affirming and productive skills. They transform lives and send ripples throughout our state. These graduates become leaders within their communities and help self-govern the co-op, non-profit corporations that provide safe and affordable housing to their neighbors and friends.

I am in a happy state of awe at what the NH Community Loan Fund is able to accomplish through their ROC NH program.

The Competition

My most difficult challenges are when I find myself stretching one value to meet another. There are always gaps and compromises between personal values - this isn't a judgement, just an objective snapshot of value reality. There are few Budhas and Jesus's walking among us today.

Generally speaking, there is little at risk during most competing value struggles. For example, I want to lose weight but don't exercise in order to create more time to spend with family. It's a minor value struggle that pits the value of a healthy life style against the value of family.

Sometimes the struggle can become deeply personal and occasionally the stakes are much higher. An example of this is sacrificing family time to devote enough time to a demanding job. We have the value of family competing with a work ethic value. This is a major struggle that impacts many people often to the point where we are not honoring either value very well. We sacrifice family time and employment effort - neither gets the attention it deserves. When my children were young, these choices were the worst.

These are constant struggles. Good people trying to 'right thing' themselves from one part of the day to the next. There are no clear paths through all this, just an inner sense of what you think is right and which value means more to you. You tend to do the thing you believe to be more important.

It's really not so much of a balance as it is a teeter-totter. One minute you up, the next your down. And man, look out if someone jumps off their end while you're up.

Bias

One day, a ferocious lion woke up angry. He was bitter, resentful and needed to prove himself to others. As he stalked through the forest, he spied a fox. Roaring up to the fox, the lion asked through gnarled teeth, "Fox, who is the strongest and most feared animal in the forest?"  Shaking in fear, the fox managed to answer, "Why, why, yoooouuu are, Mr. Lion. Surely you are."  With a glare that could peel bark off a tree, and feeling a bit more confident, the lion slowly walked away.

A little deeper in the forest, the lion crossed paths with a rhino.  Once again roaring ferociously, the lion cornered the frightened rhino. "Rhino,", the lion demanded, "who is the strongest and most feared animal in the forest?" The rhino, struggling to get the words out through chattering teeth, whispered, "Why you are Mr. lion. You are."  The lion glared contemptuously at the rhino, and without lifting his gaze, stalked slowly away.

Feeling even better about himself, the lion soon stumbled upon an elephant sunbathing itself in a small clearing. Intending to strike deep fear into the elephant, the lion summoned his most fearsome roar and pounced forward. "Elephant," the lion roared, "who is the strongest and most feared animal in the forest?" In one swift move, the elephant curled the lion in its trunk and slammed him to the ground, from one side to the other. After a few minutes of this, the elephant threw the lion up against a tree. As the lion lay stunned, not understanding what was happening, the elephant raised up its leg, stomped on the lion and walked away most disinterestedly.

The lion, dazed and confused by this sudden turn of events finally figured it out and called after the elephant,"You didn't have to get so mad just because you didn't know the answer!"

Why I'm A UU

I wrote this in 2011, but it remains true. I'm no longer a member at the Nottingham church but have felt right at home at the Concord UU church.

I'm a UU because I like being offended. I enjoy the learning experience that comes from sermons that strike nerves with me, fellow members who have very different answers and questions than I do, and folks who know little about UU who think they have it all figured out.

I get a kick out of holding the complex and somewhat contradictory concept of being intolerant of intolerance. You know you're a UU at heart when you understand that. And I love being able to be myself here...and to be accepted and loved for that.

I'd like to tell you that I had a long and arduous road to get to our church. I'd like to say that the UU church came to me after a spiritual awakening. I'd like to say that I'm a religious refugee struggling for answers. But I can't say any of those things. Although I was born to an Irish/Italian Catholic family, we were not very pious and only occasionally attended Mass. My wife and I had a civil marriage, and although we later had our vows blessed in the Catholic Church, we were intermittent worshipers. By the way, an intermittent worshiper is not much different from an intermittent wiper, where you can never get the intermittance to align just right with the need.

Looking back, it seems likely that we never felt like we belonged to the various churches that we attended. Nothing really fit. The truth is that we weren't looking for answers because we didn't know what the questions were. I heard many wonderful messages during the years from many excellent priests and pastors. But they were all too certain for what I've always felt was an uncertain world.

This reminds me of something Somerset Maugham once wrote:

"Sometimes, people hit upon a place to which they mysteriously feel that they belong. Here is the home they sought, and they will settle amid scenes that they have never seen before, among people they have never known, as though they were familiar to them from their birth. Here, at last, do they find rest."

And then I stumbled into a UU church. And you really do have to stumble into one because there's almost no such thing as an evangelical UU. And I knew that I had "hit upon a place to which" I "mysteriously felt that I belonged." And it felt right. Everyone struggling to find answers and questions were welcomed. There is no dogma, but faith overflows. A church where you'll find no Saints and plenty of humans.

The Nottingham UU church was also a serendipitous finding. Kelli and I had belonged to the Concord UU church, but, you know, for pragmatic UU members, driving 45 minutes during snow storms to attend church was not reasonable. Heck, driving 45 minutes in nice weather to attend church was not reasonable.

Then we saw a flyer for an event at the Nottingham church. We came to the event and then to a service. Again, I felt like I belonged and welcomed. And what a wonderful group of people to belong with. And this is very powerful, because religion is far too big a job for any one person. It takes a team and we use that teamwork to amplify our voices in song and in our efforts to make our community a more just place for all people. The great systems thinker, Peter Senge once wrote of this experience:

"When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It become quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit."

That's what keeps me coming back. This sense of being connected and generative and weaving a common fabric of life. I hope to never let this collective spirit escape me so that I don't have to search for it again.

What's For Dinner?

After watching the news, a grandson turned to his grandfather and asked why there was so much hate and trouble in the world. The grandfather thought for a moment and then began to share a story of two wolves.

"These two wolves," the grandfather explained, "hated each other. They were always fighting, clawing and attacking each other. They could never get along."

"Why?" The grandson asked. "Why didn't they stay away from each other?"

The grandfather went on, "Well, they couldn't. One of the wolves represented evil. He was bitter, angry and full of hatred. The other wolf represented all that is good in the world. He was full of love and compassion. He defended himself when attacked but never sought to hurt the first wolf."

The grandson was troubled. "Which wolf wins such a battle?"

The grandfather paused only a moment and replied, "The one you feed - the one you feed."