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“Making Sense of Labor Day”
August 31, 2008

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“A Laboring God”
Excerpts…by Rev. Dr. Larry Greenfield 

My guess is that a lot of folks think that God did a lot of laboring on the first six days — whatever length one surmises those days were — of creation, rested on the seventh, and then, for all practical purposes, retired.

Retired, that is, for good.

It doesn't occur to us that … on the eighth day God, like the human beings God created, went back to work….

Larry’s text goes on that the Ten Commandments call us to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy, but that the over arching message of Scriptures, is that God calls on us to be in his words,

“co-laborers with God — in the divine cause.”

He writes,

“So we who are created in God's image and likeness honor God not just when we rest with God on the Sabbath, but as well when we labor with God for the kind of world God intended…”

* * * * *

Labor Day surely has its strictly civic meanings that any [one] can and should honor and appreciate. Because democracy at its core depends on the work of "we the people" in every sphere of our common life, we should pay our respects to all who labor…

But Labor Day ought to have additional — really, a more fundamental — meaning…

It should be a religious holiday as well as a civic one — a holy day to honor a laboring God, and a holy day to rededicate ourselves to laboring …on behalf of the community of justice and love that God is still at work creating.

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Sermon; “Making Sense of Labor Day”

As many of you know, most of my immediate family live in Norwalk and Westport; indeed my mom, my step dad, my sister, and my nieces are all members of the church. We are fortunate that we generally spend at least part of every holiday weekend together. We have a running joke at our annual Memorial Day barbeque. Some time during the evening, one of us looks at my mom, Harriet, and says, “Okay, say it.” And she does, every year: “Before we even know it, it will be Labor Day.”

And so it is. I know a lot of people are out of town this weekend or have busy plans, so I want to thank you for coming to spend part of your Labor Day weekend with us at church. 

Labor Day is now more likely to celebrated as the official end of summer then its original roots.  According to the preacher’s new best friend, Wikipedia, Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894, to celebrate “the strength of the trade and labor organizations” with street parades, demonstrations and picnics. In 1909, the American Federation of Labor declared the Sunday preceding Labor Day as Labor Sunday, “dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the Labor Movement.”

The songs that we are singing today are either union songs or songs from the early Labor movement. The Labor Movement today is dedicated to safe working conditions, pay equity, the living wage campaign, health insurance, affordable housing, and other rights for workers.

But, let’s be honest… most of us will not spend tomorrow celebrating America’s workers, but instead celebrating or mourning the end of summer…….The French, who by in large all take August as vacation, call this weekend, “Re-entre”…Re-entry. As we said in the Responsive Reading, we need to mark holidays in our lives. We mark Labor Day as a weekend of transition, the turning of summer to fall, for many of us, more than January lst, the start of a new year.  For those of us with school age children, Labor Day weekend is filled with clothes and school supply shopping. For some of us, it’s preparing or recovering from sending our children off to their first days of elementary or high school…or taking them to college for the first time. It’s a chance to rest, relax, and be with friends and family, and this morning, I invite you to mark it as a time to reflect.

Last week, as I was coming into church from the parking lot, one of you asked me, “How was your summer?” And I answered honestly, “up and down.” And she said to me with a sense of relief, “Thank you so much for saying that. Other people keep saying ‘great” when I ask them.  But my summer was up and down too.” Maybe yours was as well.

As it was in the world. Our hearts were devastated when a mad man walked into one of our UU churches in Knoxville, killed two people, and wounded seven others, in front of the children’s performance of Annie. We were fearful as we watched Russian tanks roll into Georgia. We hold our breaths now as we pray that somehow hurricane Gustav will avoid the gulf coast. We cheered the stunning opening of the Olympics, the momentary sense that the world could be as one, and then the remarkable achievements of Michael Phelps, the women's gymnasts and the men’s basketball team, and as little known countries took medals in important events. We beamed as we watched same sex couples in California marry in record numbers…and regardless of your political party or who you will vote for in November, our hearts were filled with hope as we watched first the first serious woman candidate for the Presidency own the platform on Tuesday and then release her delegates on Wednesday, and then Barack Obama accept the nomination of his party on Thursday night. What a moment for America that was.

And perhaps it was a summer of both celebrations and challenges for you as well. How many of you celebrated a wedding or birthday or anniversary of a friend or family member? How many of you lost someone dear to you? How many of you traveled to someplace beautiful or re-invigorating? How many of you faced an illness or an accident of yourself or a family member? 

In June, at our closing service, I read a responsive reading that asked you to take time for yourselves this summer. That third weekend in June, I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do for the summer. I was thrilled that I had been asked to lead three workshops at our General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale, and that the Metro District was sponsoring a book signing for me. I had planned a week to kayak and hike in Acadia National Park with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Rev. Kathryn Booth. Ralph and I were to go sailing in the islands off of Seattle with another dear friend and her partner. I was going to finish the proposal for what I hope will be my most important book. Ralph and I were going to celebrate for the first time in 23 years nine weeks of an empty nest, as Alyssa moved into a new apartment in New York and Greg worked at a sleep away camp as a CIT.

Those were my summer plans. You’ve heard the Hebrew saying, “God laughs when man plans.” You may remember that John Lennon once sang, “life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” 

The last weekend in June, a few days before I was to leave for GA, a physical therapist performed a procedure on my back that sent me into back spasms that left me in, even including my two childbirths, the worst pain in my life. I was simply unable to move and spent four days flat on my back and have had few pain free days since. I have new empathy and understanding for people with back pain. I called Linda Wednesday night at GA and told her I couldn’t be on a plane the next day, but would change my reservations for Friday. By Friday am, I still couldn’t walk. GA was not to be. Neither, under strict orders from my doctor, was kayaking or hiking in Maine. She said, “don’t even think about picking up a paddle.” Instead, she told me that I could sit by the lake and read and maybe go for 10 minute walks, 20 if I could do that without pain. Ralph’s mom died on July 11^th, perhaps not unexpectedly, but sooner than we had anticipated. My sailing friend and I had a major disagreement and she cancelled our trip together. Don’t even ask me about the book proposal.

But, there were also some glorious moments in my summer. In mid August, Ralph and I traveled to the Canadian Rockies – to Banff, Lake Louise, and Jasper, and experienced some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. We spent two nights in a Canadian national park, and woke up one morning to the sounds of an elk family walking behind our cottage. I spent three wonderful evenings in a cottage alone in Maine, reading, writing in my journal, drinking in solitude. I spent a day in contemplative prayer at a new retreat center. We had several lovely long evenings with friends eating lobsters and drinking wine, as we looked over various bodies of water here, in Maine, and in Canada. I made two new friends this summer. Greg came back to us, healthy, happy and tall, and Alyssa celebrated her first year in the work world with a move to a new apartment in New York City.

I learned a new spiritual practice from my friend Kathryn while I was in Maine. Let’s call it the practice of “fascinating.” Kathryn is starting a contemplative retreat center in Acadia with her partner, but in order to have health insurance and some guarantee of a weekly income, she works as the office manager of a hospice. At a staff meeting one day, one of her co-workers exploded in anger at another and left the room. The woman she had directed her anger at then said calmly and quietly, “fascinating.”  “Fascinating?!” asked Kathryn, “What do you mean?”  And the woman explained to her that whenever she encounters someone’s anger or contempt or anxiety, especially when it seems to be directed at her, she steps back and thinks, “Fascinating. I wonder what’s going on for her or him to be acting that way.” 

Think about it…this is one step beyond the Buddhist’ principle of detachment. It asks us to step back and actually feel compassion for the other person, to as Frank reminds us, to remember that we rarely know what is going on where the spirit meets the bone. Try it, the next time someone is impatient with you in line at the store or at work or rude or your get an email that was better left unsent or your co-worker or partner is angry or upset with you. Don’t engage your ego; it may not be about you. Think “fascinating” and wonder what might be going on for them —and then decide how to react, if at all.

I’ve also discovered that “fascinating” can be an internal spiritual practice as well. Next time you find yourself anxious or depressed or inexplicably angry, step back from yourself for a moment and observe. “Fascinating. I wonder what this is about.” Show the same compassion for yourself that you hope to show for others. “Hmm…fascinating.” A therapist many years ago wisely taught me, “You have feelings. You are not your feelings.” If perhaps we can think to ourselves, “fascinating”, we can more easily move to the next moment. 

While recovering from my back this summer, I had a lot of time to think…about the fragility of our bodies and the gift of good health and strength, but also about accepting what it means to me to be entering my mid fifties and what it means to live with pain. I plan to preach about pain later this year. As much as I want to believe that I have decades of productive work and time and physical adventures ahead of me, that may turn out not to be true. As I read Forrest Church’s wonderful and moving new book, “Love and Death: My Journey through the Shadow of Death”, I mourned for all the years that he does not have left and felt my own vulnerability, all of our vulnerabilities. I have thought a lot post-Knoxville about what it might mean to die for our shared beliefs and what as chair of the Safe Congregations committee I can do to help keep our beloved community safer.

I realized this summer, once again, that I simply must do better about taking regular time off.  During the past year, I have gotten into the habit of sometimes working 2 or 3 weeks in a row without a day off. I run an organization during the week, and as a minister and a writer, I often also work weekends. When I am not here on a Sunday morning, I am often preaching and teaching at a congregation in another state. From February through the beginning of April, I was away on business some part of 11 weeks in a row.

Kath reminded me this summer that observing the Sabbath was not a suggestion, it was a commandment. As an ad several years ago said and Larry’s reading reminds us, even God took one day off. I have decided that I do not need to have a back emergency in order to spend days at rest. While I was in Maine, I wrote myself a postcard and mailed to my office. It reads, “One day a week. One Weekend a month. Two weeks twice a year. Starting Now.” 

Hold me to it.

Summer 2008 was not the summer I expected, but maybe it was the summer I needed. Garrison Keiller wrote, “Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known."

So, how will you mark this Labor Day weekend? First, I hope you will take some time to be conscious and grateful for all those laborers who make your life possible – think for example, when we go out to coffee hour, how many people were involved with us having food to share – the farmers who grew the ingredients, the factory workers who prepared or packaged it, the truck driver who drove it, the person who unpacked the truck at the grocery story, the person who put it on the shelf, the store clerk who sold it…Every part of our daily life is filled with invisible people who work, often at very low wages, who make it possible. Think as you drive home about the people who created your car and the roads and the traffic signals…and be grateful. 

And take a moment to thank those who worked in the past, who continue to work, for safe working conditions, adequate pay, fair labor practices…and be grateful. And be grateful for those teachers and mentors and supervisors and co-workers who helped you develop the skills to do your own work. Let us be thankful to all those who labor.

I hope you will, as the responsive reading said, Mark the Time. Take the time to reflect on your summer and what you have learned. Share it with each other. Be grateful for the summer you have had, even if it was not the summer you had wanted or planned. Be fascinated it turned out this way.

In Rev. Forrest Church’s words, "Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are.”

And so may it be. 

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