You will forgive me if at least on a few occasions in the next fortnight or so I reflect on the momentous achievement of having been ordained a priest for 25 years. There are many reflexions I could offer (and will). One thing is certain, things have changed in that time.
Although, I would suggest, there was already a significant lowering of the status of the clergy by the time I was ordained in the early 80s, there is no doubt that clergy no longer enjoy a social status simply by virtue of wearing a collar back to front.
This has both positive and negative connotations. I used to detest riding the bus or train and being collared (forgive the pun) by some maniac who felt they had the right to badger me simply because I was there. Conversely it was curious and at times saddening or annoying to be avoided by others for the same reason.
In the way of perversity there have been times when both of these things have exactly the opposite effect cited above. But in 2005 I seldomly wear a clerical collar and I live in a community where I am known as a priest and I do not particularly have to parade it.
There has been a lot of failure. So many people disappointed in me, often with totally bizarre expectations of what a priest might do towards solving problems they couldn't or wouldn't address for themselves. But often because I have failed, missed opportunities, been unprepared, careless or thoughtless. Mainly, I would suggest, because ever-increasing exhaustion just shrinks the possible. I, like everyone else in work these days, is asked to make more and more bricks with less and less straw.
One of my mentors used to say that priests need to challenge this hurtling business and that we should be brave enough to be seen flying kites with kids. I have tried to do that. I think that's important, but most people don't get it.
Alvin Toffler in the groundbreaking book Future Shock noted that we were going through one of those paradigm shifts from "industrial" to "super industrial" society. The problem he suggested would be not what work should we do, but how do we deploy our increased leisure time. We think that is laughable now. The burden of increased leisure has actually been shifted to one sector of the community, the unemployed & the world poor, whilst those of us who have maintained a place in the work force seem ot have taken on an increased burden of work. Toffler's zero sum is probably correct, but the spread of the variables is not......enough for today
3 comments:
Toffler's expectation of "increased leisure time" now seems to be a major misprediction. The "live to work" paradigm of the Baby Boomers and GenX is quite the opposite of Toffler's expectation. Where did that viewpoint about work come from? Is it an extension of the Protestant work ethic? Perhaps some pseudo-religious expectation that a God which the Baby Boomers do not formally recognise may forgive them if them show that they have worked hard all their lives?
That's why Gen Y with their "work to live" attitude give me some hope. Gen Y have seen what happened to their Baby Boomer parents and their Gen X elder siblings when the latters devotion to career and "the corporation" has often been rewarded with premature retirement or unapologetic retrenchment during another corporate "restructuring" or "downsizing".
I think one of the problems with Toffler's analysis of work is that he doesn't essentially factor in human greed!!
The baby Boomers set out to change the world - such high ideals! As a side issue, it's a sobering thought that the CEOs, CFOs and Directors getting those unprecedented (and unjustifiable, no matter how clever the spin)multi-million dollar annual salaries and bonuses are almost all Baby Boomers. One commentator thinks that the Baby Boomers will be reviled when their history comes to be written in about 100 years' time.
From another list this morning:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1696509,00.html
http://www.churchnewspaper.com/news.php?read=on&number_key=5804&title=Clergy%20wives%20suffering%20overload
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