Unapologetically ...

Unapologetically long. Unapologetically American.

DOWHATYOULOVELOVEWHATYOUDO

That’s uncial early New Testament style ALLCAPSNOSPACES

Friday morning I worked in the front yard pulling up dead plants instead of easily cutting them, because Linda got ugly about my brand new heavy-duty string trimmer that does a great job but weighs 25 pounds and I nearly collapsed into the ER the first time I used it. Problem was not the marvelous machine, it was that I used it a couple hours instead of fifteen minutes at a time. Anyone who loves machinery as I do knows that when you have a wonderful new machine you run it until you drop, and that’s what happened. So now I’m forbidden ever to use it again at all. I’m waiting for Linda to go to BlueLake or to Tallahassee to babysit for a week. The best trimmer on Lowe’s shelves, it’s so heavy that even the yard crew told Linda, “No, ma’m, we had one of those and it was too heavy for us, we got rid of it.” Sissies. I can do it.

This gets worse. After an hour of pulling up dead plants, roots and all, at noon I came inside exhausted, filled a mug with ice, covered the ice with madeira instead of water, and enjoyed sipping it onto an empty stomach until it was gone. A good Portuguese madeira is as delicious as the best Spanish sherry. 

However, I didn’t realize how potent the wine was, and won’t ever do that again because it knocked me on my whatever it is you get knocked on. Socks off or something.

While sipping madeira I sat at the kitchen table and read an essay a friend sent http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/do_what_you_love_love_what_you_do_an_omnipresent_mantra_that_s_bad_for_work.1.html which not only made me contemplate my DWYLLWYD of being a semi-retired Episcopal priest in old age, but reminded me of a man who was ordained deacon and priest the same time as I over thirty years ago, and also opened a long-expired can of cheap sardines. So to speak.

Upon ordination the bishop sent him to an inner-city parish in Harrisburg as priest in charge. He loved it, absolutely loved it. In fact, the first time the bishop went calling to visit and see how he was doing, he told the bishop, “I love this work so much that I can’t justify being paid to do it.” Counter to what my friend expected, the bishop responded somewhat less than pleased with his statement and “certainly hoped” he would not share such sentiment with the congregation that was paying him. As the bishop said, “If you’ll give them a free minister, they’ll take one and many of them think they’re entitled to that and that you should work for free anyway.” Parish ministry is work that doesn’t always include a lot of gratitude, especially in the long run, such that you have to find satisfaction and joy in it for itself alone. Any minister who has been cut to the quick later by the same parishioners he/she helped so lovingly through a terrible crisis years earlier knows that gratitude has wings.

This which I’m writing because it’s my blog and I’ll write whatever I DWP, is somewhat because Miya Tokumitsu’s piece stirred my resentment, mainly at her, or maybe at the truth of it, or perhaps most pointedly because her constant use of the word workers and then the alarm word proletariat rings very sour in an American ear. At least the ear of an American who lived through the USSR years.

Starting with seminary, for the first time since my Navy destroyer days, I was doing what I loved and loving what I was doing. But after ordination I experienced the truth of what the bishop had told my friend. Notwithstanding a tumultuous welcome, before long I perceived just beneath the surface an underlayment of subtle resentment about my salary, and tension about it every year at stewardship and budget time. This does not enhance a sense of what Miya calls DWIL and LWID. And even with my joy in parish ministry and the people and the place, the monthly tension about whether there was enough money in the bank to pay me often brought me close to throwing in the towel. It wasn't the money, it was a strange subtle tension and attitude of resistance almost unto resentment that the minister had to be paid.

Probably I need to work more through what Miya says. 

A minister is like anybody else: has to be paid or else must find something else to do. Even if ministry is enormous fun, as mine was and my Harrisburg priest friend’s was, and tremendously satisfying work, plus no alphabet admiral looking over my shoulder and the bishop far away in the day before internet and cellphones, parish ministry is consumingly intense work, with largely no “time off” and living with the ever present half-joking mentality of “he only works on Sunday morning.” Cuts into LWYD of which Miya is so scornful.   

In my mind, the best minister, better said the most enjoyable ministering, is one who has done other things in life and then relaxed enthusiastically into seminary and ministry as a second or third vocation. Beyond that second or third, I’ve enjoyed ministry more in semi-retirement than three decades ago when I started doing it for half a living and supplementing my Navy pension.

Miya's essay do what you love love what you do rang less than true for my life, because she tied it to the wealthy who can afford to do what you love while those who must do the dirty work suffer. Of course the dirty work must be done and those who are doing it are likely suffering and not DWYL and LWYD. But this is America where one can force choices in life and life is based on vision and sticktuitivity. Miya’s thesis is that “the Do What You Love mantra is for the Elite and devalues work and hurts workers” but her slip shows when she uses the word “proletariat” and the alarm clock goes off and I wake up in 1917. Or 1952. 

Still wandering, it doesn’t bother me that there is repetition above, and furthermore I’m not done here. What a great happiness of DWYL and LWYD the second half of my life was and still is. And not only the ministry part, but DWYL years of enjoying my youngest child still at home, then my grandchildren; and years of working everyday to turn my beloved Cove School from a shambles into Holy Nativity Episcopal School while working alongside the most brilliant man I’ve ever known and still to this day sneaking off quietly to his grave before shaking my fist at the sky and driving away with tear-filled eyes in a teeth-clinched rage at our God of Theodicy; and the years as chaplain and religion & ethics teacher with the kids at HNES as the greatest time of life far more fun than any parish ministry. DWYLLWYD. And now helping out at the parish that my parents helped found sixty years ago. It’s still such fun that I may try to do it another couple of years even to eighty. DWYLLWYD. I’m still living through it without the self-conscious guilt or shame that Miya Tokumitsu lays down in the essay. If she means for me to feel guilty about doing what I love when so many are doing and living in misery, sorry. If I have to feel guilty about my DWYL, that guilt is no heavier than loving life being an American when most people throughout the world are other. For some reason, reading Miya makes me want to run outside and make sure that jet flying over my house doesn’t have a red star on the tail. DWYL.

Of DWYL, standing at attention for the Star Spangled Banner is at the top of my list, and the president has said that I don't have to put my hand over my heart, I can salute as any military man. "O say can you see." And I don’t want somebody singing it. I want to hear the Bay High Million Dollar Band playing it, with brass and woodwinds and drums rolling and cymbals crashing. As Orin Whitley waves his baton. And the flag goes up. And football players in red and white uniforms run out onto Tommy Oliver Stadium. DWYLLWYD. 

TW+