|
What if we decentralized our corporations
Not because of government mandates, But because we want less headaches. And what if each factory worker went home And operated a cottage industry That cooperated with a central idea - a central brand. What if we shared the brand. I did that once. I cooperated with a friend. I manufactured certain products. He manufactured others. And we shared the same brand. In the end, we both made more money And had less headaches.
0 Comments
What if the higher-ups
Gave the enterprise away to the lower-downs? And what if the lower downs Decided, out of gratitude, How much to pay the higher-ups? Not a rule. Not a law. But a personal policy On the part of those who have To be the servants of all And a personal policy On the part of the have-nots To not forget to feed the ones who gave their all. What if we found a way
To do business with Actual others. What if we could walk away from papers?
What if we could say no to the hoops They dangle before us enticingly? What if we could do without money,
At least for the most part? What if we could trade? What if I never touched the things that flow through me?
What if they skipped me altogether And landed in the laps Of those I love? It’s not quite what you think.
For that reason, we must listen closely To the still small voice. And trust That, sooner or later, it will all come together. Black curtains separate me from the driver’s seat.
Drive on, drive on, I say from the back of the limousine. And my chauffeur decides the places I will be. I trust the driver enough to draw the curtains tight. Drive on, drive on, I say, Into the black of unknown nights. Drive on, old friend, you know me better than myself. And in the meantime, I will rest the rest of a forfeit life And rejoice in the places, faces, and someones that we meet As we stop, stop, stop, and step out into the sunshine Of unknown but perfectly orchestrated tomorrows And todays. And the stretch limousine Goes on and on into the setting sun Of God’s perfect plan for me. Another long one today. If you'd rather listen, here is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/77A9P7m7Y2M
I wrote this while working as a transport driver for a funeral home. We were located in a county with a large population of indigent and transient people. My job was to go out into the desert and bring back those who had died in their cars or vans or camper trailers. Most would say it was gruesome work, and it was, but I loved it. It felt more like a calling than a job. And that was a common sentiment in the industry. I remember going into the chapel side of the funeral home when nobody was there. I would sit in the silence and soak in the sacredness of it. It was the same feeling I felt when I was taking care of someone who had died. I loved that part of it. But there were things I didn't like, like the politics and the increasingly corporate nature of the business. The owner was the son of a funeral director. But he was more entrepreneur than undertaker. And he treated it like a business. Several years earlier, he had bought his father out and proceeded to "expand the business". He bought funeral home after funeral home. He centralized. He consolidated. He turned it all into a finely tuned machine, well, kind of. Sometimes it seemed that he was buying mortuaries faster than he could run them. But he didn't seem to care. His eyes were on some distant goal that kept moving further and further away as he approached it. And mortuaries were not all he owned. He bought sandwich shops and strip malls. He expanded, expanded, expanded. And as he did, he streamlined everything toward the goal of profitability. Luckily for me, my little branch was not profitable, or if so, the margins were slim. And on top of that, we were ninety miles from the home office and our county had strange laws and rules that made it so that we had to do things differently than the rest of his mortuaries. This meant that I was left alone for the most part, which suited me perfectly. I did all the transports. I pushed paper around in the office. And now and then, I even met with families, a duty which was usually reserved for the funeral director who worked forty minutes away. And since I was on my own, I didn't really notice the corporatization of our industry as much as those who were closer to the home office. Traditionally, undertaking was a family business. But things were changing. Several years before, the other funeral home in our small town had been purchased by a large corporation that was quickly gobbling up the independents. The last I knew, there were over 2800 mortuaries in the network. And to spite our owner's ambitious inclinations, we were very small apples in comparison. But things were about to change. There were rumblings among the employees. And upper management was acting funny. They stopped having me come into the office, and they started letting things go. The sign blew down and they didn't fix it. Somebody vandalized the front of the funeral home and they did nothing. And they transferred the woman who had babied my little branch along to a different department and put me under a transport supervisor ninety miles away. Almost overnight, my little branch stopped feeling like a funeral home and started feeling like a place to process dead bodies - ship them in, ship them out, and do so with as little cost to the company as possible. It was disturbing. But still, I felt called to stay. Until a few months later. I came to work one day to discover that we had been acquired by a larger corporation. Instead of ten, we were now two hundred funeral homes strong. And then it all made sense. I was actually relieved since the previous owner had obviously checked out early. And my hopes rose upon the winds of change. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that the new owners were just a larger version of the old regime. Like the corporation that owned the other mortuary in town, they were gobbling up new assets as fast as they could with little regard for the individual problems of the entities they acquired. Everything was streamlined for profitability and the sacredness that had pervaded the profession was sanitized by policy and blind protocol. The old sentiment of "from our family to yours" was gone. And it was sad to watch it disappear and be replaced with cold unfeeling numbers. At least the old owner had been raised in the business. He and his father had once been undertakers, trusted servants of a community that they served. And a portion of that remained even as he shifted his focus to other things. But now it was gone. The difference was so stark that many employees moved on leaving those who stayed with double the workload as the new management scrambled to find new people. One woman who left, a funeral director of twenty years, said that she was checking out of the business and out of the rat race altogether. It had all become too corporate. She was going to get a little camper, park it in a friend's yard, and take a part-time job so she could do the things she loved the most, paddle board on the lake, and spend time with her daughter. I wrote this poem as I thought of her and others like her. By this time, I had also given notice. I finally felt as if I had been released from the calling. And I wondered what the company would do. It's not easy to find people willing to get up at all hours of the night to take care of dead people. But the scarcity of help seemed to be ubiquitous. Everywhere I looked, companies were short-handed. People were working less, checking out, moving on, going home, and giving up on the rat race. And something felt strangely right about it. "It will leave chaos in its wake," I thought. "And perhaps that's exactly what we need." One day very near the end, I came to work to discover that our landlord had walled up the entry to the chapel from the office side of the funeral home. It was an accident, a miscommunication from one of the lawyers of the old owner. But I wasn't surprised. So many important details were falling through the cracks. And as I stood there looking at the wall that blocked the entrance to the chapel, it seemed ironically fitting. The sacred thing had been severed. And I knew that it was only time before it all began to come apart at the seams, not just the funeral industry, but every enterprise that had forsaken the sacred thing in favor of nameless goals that served the bottom line. They are moving out, one by one, From the system that promised so much And now cannot deliver the pleasure that it promised. And as they do, they leave chaos in their wake, Precious chaos, like the heat that beats down Upon a smoldering mass of leaves. I always loved the Fall, so silent, so pure. So reminiscent of a thing I couldn't place Except in the memory of other cool and dying days, And in the precious recollection Of childhood feasts of love, Of family, and of all that exists when work is put away And we remember what we were working for. And perhaps that's what they are doing, Going home to the reason, Forsaking the scream of getting more And choosing family over the press and pressure. If so, then I look forward to the dark and fertile soil With which God will plant his garden In the Spring that follows His Long Winter. Don’t fret the things you’ve lost
In obedience to the unheard voice. They will come back to you. In fact, they are already yours And you can find them through love And imagination. It’s time for a new story.
And the story of the hour is an exodus story. It is a story of coming out of what we know And into all that was before we fell. And there is a Moses in this story, And unseen Holy Moses And he’s coming in the cloud. We can create a world that is different than The World.
Or in other words, we can think and behave In a way that is different and distinct From the prevailing culture. And thus, When the world is going down We may choose to go up and up and up, Our minds, our eyes, our bodies fixed upon the heavens. If an angel had spare time on his earthly errand,
I doubt he’d take a second job To feather his nest. But I wouldn’t put it past him to come begging. For we need to feed such beggars. The sun is not yet over the mountain,
And I have already entered into His World. And because of that, I can face the day. We can believe that everything has gone to hell.
Or we can believe that it is unfolding according to God’s perfect plan. It is our choice. The first belief will cause us to shrink. The last belief will water the seed of gratitude. I have a home that you can’t see,
And I go there often in my mind. But don’t be deceived, Though I find it through imagination, It is more real than anything you’ll find in this world. It’s foundations reach deep into the bedrock of my soul And touch the beginning, the first intent, the source of all creation. It is my eternal home. It is where I choose to live my life. And there, I house my family, my blood, my kin, And every lost and broken soul I find along the road. And in that place, we are not separated by the deceit of what appears. We are one in the knowledge of our best intent. We are united in the sacrifice we chose When we came to this life knowing That we would fall from love And be treacherous to each other To spite our best intents to do otherwise. And there, His grace binds us up in what we were And what we truly are and will be when lesser homes have disappeared. The body is the means through which God imparts His perfect love,
For it is the body that suffers. And it is through suffering well That Godlike love develops. Without the body, We could not learn to love those Who hate us, who hurt us, who despitefully use us, and persecute us. None of these painful things can happen to us While we are with Him in spirit, Only in the body. So cherish the body. It is the gift through which God desires to impart his perfect love. Another story about a poem. Here's the YouTube video if you want to listen: https://youtu.be/Zy4C_kL6SRw At the time that I wrote Rush Rush, I was packaging apples, peaches, tomatoes and greens. I worked for a fruit farmer who dabbled in vegetables. Long days, and little pay, but I enjoyed it. It was a family farm. Good people, honest work. And they let me park my little travel trailer next to the house that they maintained for the migrant workers that they imported from Central America. The migrant workers came to the United States on a special short-term Visa. And when the farmer was done with them, they would be shipped back to Central America. They had it worse, I thought, being so far from home. But then I laughed as I looked around myself. I was not so different from them. I too was away from home. Though I lived an hour away, I could not afford the commute, and so I had brought my little travel trailer. And I lay there alone in the dark, because the lights didn’t work, and listened to the music and the chatter that drifted over the rock wall from the house. At least I could I could go home on the weekends, I thought. Yes, we were the same, the migrant workers and I, each of us working hard for our little paycheck, and sending it home to the ones we loved, and each of us endlessly chasing the dream of a little security that never came. The likelihood was that in a year from now, we’d be doing the same thing or something similar, and two years from now, and ten, until we couldn’t do it anymore. And I wondered how many of the masses of men had lived their lives that way. And as I contemplated these things, I was struck by the futility of it all. And I wrote this poem. And as I wrote it, an image came to mind of a sea captain bellowing at a bunch of peasants as they dragged a boat along a water way by ropes. Later, when I was looking for an image to attach to the poem, I found a painting by Ilya Repin called Barge Haulers on the Volga. It turns out that that was actually a thing. Russian peasants were hired to pull boats upstream on the Volga River. Who would have known?!  Barge Haulers on the Repin by Ilya Repin (1873)
Rush Rush Said the Captain, The Son of a Captain, Whose Father was Captain before We drive for the Nethermost edge of the world Where we'll meet The great captains of yore. We are told That they wait us Where ne'r a hiatus Is known on that distant black shore. But the devil will greet us And slyly entreat us With the lie Just a little bit more. Today's offering is a bit longer than usual. It is the story of how I wrote Walk Away Boy. I wrote the story in preparation for a book that I will be publishing soon called The Rise of Silence. The story takes about 5-7 mintues to read, and I believe it is well worth the time invested. But if you're pressed for time, you can listen instead on YouTube. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/mRLiYjiUxMU
I ran a little junk booth for a while. I went around and asked the yard sales to give me what they didn’t sell, and some did. And then I sold it at the swap meet. And I made a few dollars. Next to my junk booth was another junk booth. And the man who ran the booth was named Rod. Now and then, Rod would come and buy some of my junk to add to his junk. He was my biggest customer. And I was surprised that he bought my junk since he had so much junk of his own, about a fifth of an acre’s worth, strewn out on plywood sheets atop little metal sawhorses, and more stuff underneath, and laid out on tarps. It was quite a collection. People came and wandered up and down the isles of junk. Now and then, they’d want something. When we offered them a price, more often than not, they’d try to get it for less. After all, we were dealing in junk, people’s left over excesses. And the expectation was that we would let it go for nearly nothing. And in this we rarely disappointed our clientele. One day, Rod asked me to help him move some things. “I’ll pay you twenty dollars,” he said. And I couldn’t pass that up. So we went to a long quonset hut that was full of junk. I was amazed! “The lady that owns this place says I have to get out,” he said. The building was full of the types of things that Rod sold at the swap meet. And interspersed were little piles of rotting food, old papers, nudie magazines. The next stop was a motorhome, packed full of junk, and then a large storage unit packed from side to side and high up to the ceiling, and then an out building in someone’s yard. “Do you pay rent on all of these?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “That’s why I’m so broke.” “How many do you have?” I asked. “Ten or twelve,” he said. Wow! I didn’t say it outloud. But wow! As we were lifting a weight set into my van, Rod complained. “This is hard work,” he said. “I’m getting too old for this.” “Have you thought of doing something else?” I asked. “Yeah. But I don’t know what else I’d do.” he said. As we went from place to place, I wondered what the value of his stash might be. I started adding it up in my mind - just the few things that passed through my hands. And I quickly realized that even at garage sale prices, Rod might be a millionaire. But the flow was all damned up. Too much in, and not enough out. And he seemed to lack the ability to put any real value on things. “It’s all junk,” he said. And it seemed like that was how he felt about himself. His face was dirty, his hair unwashed, his fingernails long. And he wore the same clothes every day. But there was no time to take care of what he had. All the same, he was a busy man, stashing, hoarding, and moving it around from place to place. He sold an item here and there. And nearly every day, he bought more stuff. People stopped by his booth before going to the dump. They knew that Rod could not resist. He’d buy another pickupload full of junk with his last few dollars and go to bed worried about how he’d make ends meet. And I had that strange but familiar feeling that I had been sent exactly to that place to witness Rod. “Why am I hear, God?” I kept asking. After a week or so, I retired from helping Rod. I couldn’t take it anymore. I made my way to our desert camp and sat behind the steering wheel of the van thinking about Rod and about people and things. I wondered what it would take for him to turn the tide of his affairs. I realized that even if he stopped buying junk and devoted the rest of his life to the dispensing of his surplus property, he would probably die before he finished. And the canker of the dark and rotting places might just kill him in the process. The only solution I could see was to walk away from it all. And then I thought about myself. “What am I still holding on to?” I wondered. And I wrote this poem in the spirit of that question and desire. Walk away boy, Walk away. You'll never have enough And you'll never find the thing That you were missing. Walk away. You know that she's a fake And that she lures you With a dream. Walk away. And let them come And carry it all Into the hollow Of their empty eyes, Where the darkness Needn't bind you any longer. Fly away. Fly away, boy, Into the brightness Of the morning sunshine. And let the coolness of it's rivers Wash away the mystery Of all you hoped to find there. It is easier than you think. And it is a breath away. It is a moment. It is now. A week or two after writing this poem, a friend helped me close my junk booth. We loaded it all up in the van and in his truck and dropped it off at the homeless relief center. After they served the evening meal, they let the homeless take what they wanted. The volunteer said that most of it was gone within 15 minutes. One lady took the lion’s share, he said. But he shook his head and chuckled. “I don’t know what she will do with all that crap.” he said. “She lives in a tent!” I live most of my life in a chair.
I eat there. I work there. But I don’t sleep there. The chair, it suits me, Except when I want some exercise Or to take a drive, or a dip in the lagoon With friends and loved ones near. Some dig ditches or some hang from poles in the air, But not for me. For me, you see, My life is best spent In a chair. |
Archives
September 2024
|
RSS Feed
