faithasawayoflife

faith, work, and the idolatry of efficiency?

i've been meaning to blog about our recent meeting on faith and work in springdale, arkansas, and will begin to do so over the next weeks. the trip, part of the center's faith as a way of life project, took a group of pastors, theologians, and lay leaders to visit one of the largest producers of protein products in the world: tyson foods.

many of us visited the plant on randall road in springdale where cornish game hens are processed. they come in off a truck from the farm on one end of the factory and emerge on the other in a shrink-wrapped bag and ready for the -40 degree storage freezer. this plant produces 90% of the cornish game hens for the u.s. market and to give you some sense of the numbers, this means 135 birds a minute and upwards of 1,200,000 birds per week. this is one thing to say in a blog post, but another thing altogether to see it happening before your eyes.

we all had many experiences and reactions to the visit, and to the plant visit in particular. the reaction i what to highlight here is the feeling among some of the participants that the mechanization, the 'efficiency' of the production itself, is wrong.

at the time, i thought to myself, 'on what theological basis?' of course, a hundred years ago, and even when i was a kid in montana, we killed our own chickens or our neighbor did. i remember watching them jumping around headless in the yard. so surely the issue can't be simply that we've consolidated the killing from hundreds of homes and local communities to one facility. of course one can object to killing animals at all, but that is clearly a contested issue and not one held by a majority of christians. i haven't read deeply enough to say i won't be convinced on this point, and i do eat low on the food chain more for environmental reasons than concern about the immorality of killing animals. after all, i was in 4-H, raising my own sheep, cows, etc. that we then gave thanks for and share around our table.

but what about the impulse for efficiency itself? is there a value there that is in fundamental conflict with christian values? this depends, i suppose. is efficiency simply a means to profit and done in a way that disregards people? if so, it may conflict. but efficiency can also be a way to both make dangerous jobs less so, and to eliminate waste of all sorts from the production process. if so, then it may fit with christian values of stewardship. efficiency is a slippery value that can be pushed for good or ill. an example. in the factory, they've worked out a plan of shifting roles on the assembly line every 30 minutes so that people don't get so numb from doing the same thing over and over. the change required additional training and substantial getting used to, but has reduced turnover at the plant by 50%. furthermore, the introduction of specialized machines has mechanized some of the most dangerous parts of the process.

these are complex issues and deserve complex thinking. i welcome that, but fear too often we short change complex reflection for pat answers and critiques. our visit to tyson began to push us further into this sort of complex theological reflection, but in order to do it, we have to check our preconceived assumptions (what we know) at the door and enter with the intention of learning (what we don't know).

anon, and +peace

miroslav on faith and work

i said a few weeks ago that I would post about the framework of miroslav's comments at the coalition for ministry in daily life meeting that took place here at yale a few weeks ago.

here is the gist of it, and some commentary. miroslav framed his remarks under the title 'god at work' and included on the podium a strip of the yellow 'god at work' tape we have in our offices (like what is used at a construction site, and in fact it came from david's chapliancy work at ground zero during the months after 9/11.

miroslav's talk had as it's frame the trinitarian shape of god's presence in our work. there were four parts:

In our success, we meet the God who blesses.
In our failure, we meet the God who delivers.
In our quandaries, we meet the God who guides.
And through it all, we are meet God who gives meaning even to the most mundane of days.

while this might seem trite to see in our success the god who blesses, i think miroslav is rare in avoiding both the danger of not talking about excellence and success in order to seem egalitarian and the danger of too simply saying god will bless us with success as the prosperity gospel does. he both talked about the danger of sloth, and about the fact that seen properly our success is never ours anyway.

this last point leads to what i find most compelling and most potentially controversial, both in this talk and in the larger book on god who gives and forgives that he is writing currently. that is his clear embrace of an anthropology that is deeply christian and exactly because deeply anti-american in this sense: there is really no independent self that can take credit for the success. it is not me but christ who lives in me, writes paul. that is where miroslav is going, refracted through martin luther. can you stand it? if we are truly christian about success, in our success, we meet the god who blesses because exactly our energy and skill that contribute to the success is god's gift. so rather than feel puffed up, we exhale with gratitude for the grace bestowed.

anon, and +peace

practicing praying the hours (barely)

it stuns me how hard it is to keep up a pattern of daily fixed hour prayer. i've been really busy and i've nearly completely fallen off my pattern of prayer when i arrive at work, at lunch, and in late afternoon before i leave. there have been too many days when the most i accomplished in terms of intentional prayer time is when i've hit the pillow late in the evening, uttering under my breath " the lord almighty grant us a quiet night and peace at the last. amen."

just now i prayed the midday office before i go to lunch. i stopped, closed my office door, sat in my 'guest chair' and opened my copy of the divine hours: prayers for springtime (ed. phyllis tickle). it is that time of year when i try to regain practices of body and soul that help focus my life on essentials. biking to work is one, and prayer is another. they go together, body and soul, and biking and prayer help me hold them together.

when i opened up to the midday office, i was delighted to find the call to prayer was one of my favorite, taken from psalm 103:1 "bless the lord, o my soul, and all that is within me, bless god's holy name." i love that and know a sung version of it that is fun to sing in a repetitive harmony with a group. the mundane daily activities of work--dealing with office paperwork, emails, planning, etc.--all somehow seem to gain a clarity of focus through the break to pray. what is it, then, that is important about what i'm doing? what is it, therefore, that matters from what i'm doing? that those gifts and opportunities that god has given me be turned towards god's purposes so that in my living, my working, i bless the lord.

so this is why i think fixed hour prayer is so important to living faith as a way of life. such pauses, it turns out, transfigure the day. they transfigure the work. they transfigure the people with whom i interact. i don't use the word transform, but rather transfigure, for this reason: to transform is to change something or someone completely, and for that reason i think the word is overused. really, we rarely transform something. my daily prayer certainly doesn't change my day completely. rather, to transfigure something is to see it in a different, holy light. to see the 'soul' present within the materiality of the day, the work, the person. it is a vision that makes of someone or something a more glorious and lovely and true thing.

doing it everywhere

tonight was the kick off of a conference we're cosponsoring on ministry in daily life, a term i've always disliked but a concept that seems simply essential. what sort of religion would believe that god loves the world and god's dear child became human in order to save many in order to send them to tell the world of god's love, and then think such a religion was only for: a) your soul, b) yourself, or c) your church. too often today spirituality is talked about as if it is an additive to life, or as my colleague miroslav volf puts it, a performance enhancing drug. the refreshing thing about this group is that they all take it as a matter of course that faith is a way of life, a center orienting everything. that kind of religion, and the god whose claim on us is that big, draws me to worship.

more later on the conference, and on miroslav's provocative keynote tonight on god at work .

anon, and +peace