A Cathartic Labor Day

I walked a mile with pleasure;

She chatted all the way;

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she;

But, oh, the things I learned from her 

When Sorrow walked with me!

-Robert Browning

A Catholic friend said to this writer recently, "I am a recovering Catholic, I have gotten over Catholicism." We live in a time where many people have gotten over work. I have many cathartic memories on this Labor Day. Memories of hard-working parents often working by lantern light. Young people are clueless about real work. In a day of cell phones, jet planes, miracle drugs, they have no idea what life was like when I was a child. There was less illness because all toxins escaped the body through sweat.

The greatest picture in the bible is a depiction which Jesus gave us of taking a yoke upon us. The yoke is a wooden crosspiece fastened over the shoulders of two oxen attached to the load they were to pull. "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest upon your soul." - Matthew 11:29. I still remember the yokes attached to the oxen as they pulled large logs from the swamps. We live in a time where everyone wants to work as little as possible. Most conversations around workers involves the day off, vacations, retirement. People at three martini luncheons, lunches which cost more than what I spend on groceries for six months, conversation at the country club, golf course all involved recreation, entertainment, not real accomplishment.

I hired a sixth grade teacher to do some typing for me on the weekends when she was not in school. I said to her, "Does it bother today's public school teachers that there is such a low opinion about education? So many parents placing their children in private and charter schools, or simply keeping their children at home for homeschooling?" She said, "Most teachers I know are completely 'indifferent' about the education of children. It has become a matter of entertaining them and our survival." On one of my trips to South America, a teacher told me that the third time she was hit by a student, she decided it was time for her to quit teaching. BUT, before I go any further, I want to impress upon my readers the glaring fact that I have decided, and think about this, from the pulpit, from the political podium, even from the secular teleprompter, it is so easy to criticize the sins and failures of people. When will we get concerned WHY these sins and failures? When will we learn that Satan is on the job 24 hours of every day, that he has us in his clutches? That we cannot fight a war for righteousness from air-conditioned, politically correct fox holes.

There are only two places that we can get deliverance from the attitudes which beset us... the eternal word of God, and prayer. There are two things which the Atheist will never be able to explain, in spite of their "wisdom", their desire to rationalize-compromise everything. Firstly, the unbeliever-Atheist can never explain the knowledge of good and evil written in the heart of every person whether a believer in God or not. The most evil person knows when he is doing evil. The second thing, they can never explain the cosmos, that god is caretaker of the planets, that everything moves even the tides of the oceans according to a set design. I know, as well as I know anything, that the employees which have worked for me over the years, knew they were wrong when they stole from me. In one of my businesses, someone cut two paintings, canvases, from their frames. Don't you know that they knew they were doing wrong, robbing an old, blind war veteran? Those of us who did not win life's lottery, not born to ancestry with great DNA, not born to wealth, not born real smart, not born real good-looking, have had to work every step of the way, we knew the value of a dollar. How to take care of our clothing, our vehicles. Every article of clothing I wear comes from a secondhand store. I thought about this recently when I learned that one movie star, John Davidson, always wears a new pair of socks. He wears a pair of socks once and then throws them away. It is the same with people who throw food away. I never throw food away because I have seen too many hungry people around the world. It is refreshing to know (for a tightwad like me) that after our Blessed Lord blessed a small boys lunch, that his mother had been careful to prepare, and fed thousands, that the leftovers were saved.

"God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform" (William Kepler). He did not choose to lavish wealth on everyone, if God could have wanted, he could have moved the three million Jewish slaves from Egypt with fiery chariots instead of marching them through the Red Sea, 40 years of humiliation in the wilderness before allowing them to go into the land of milk and honey. Perhaps the unequal playing field was my most troubling barrier as a young person, my hard working, god fearing, tax paying father would take us into town AND, I believe, would intentionally drive by the fabulous homes, golf courses where the wealthy-successful lived and played. I do believe he wanted us to realize that we could live better if we worked, prayed, sacrificed. Many of us were determined not to live our lives on a dirt road without electric and phone lines, homes without indoor plumbing. We learned to live by faith and faith is a verb, action based on belief, sustained by confidence. We had the confidence that we could do better, that when chosen by God, you can do anything. Often, God chooses a cross for you to bear... disability, even blindness. But the world is full of people, pace setters like those described in Hebrews 11 as well as "... those of whom the Earth was not worthy" who have achieved often starting at minimum wage, or working in the hot sun, or working in impossible situations such as sweat shops. This is the challenge of Labor Day.

I remember, as if yesterday, the day my anatomy professor told me how one can commit a perfect murder. You use an old fashioned hat pin. Run the hat pin through the pupil of the eye, the retina and its supporting bone structure is easy to penetrate and you immediately cause a stroke in the brain. The hat pin can be withdrawn and most medical observers would never notice or suspect. Political piranhas, modernistic pastors, indifferent-sloven parents, often take the easy way out... not fully convinced of anything. Is it less than murder to concentrate on the outside instead of perfecting the inside?