Surviving the Workday

In the weird sort of way that life imitates film, it looks as though May Day is much like A Day Without A Mexican.

To read about and watch Ricardo Arjona’s video Mojado, a timely take on undocumented immigration, check out Jim Geezil’s Encores and Artists blog.

Workplaces Ready for Day Without Immigrant Staff

I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health.
There is no way to escape having ill health.

I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love,
Are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape,
Being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape,
The consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.

By relying on the compassion of Buddha,
The wisdom of the Dharma,
And the fellowship of Sangha.
May I realize my true nature
And liberate other beings from suffering.

Excerpted from Daily Buddhist Practice from the Buddhist Faith Fellowship of Connecticut

Pressure to meet unrealistic business objectives seems to be the primary cause of unethical business pressures.

The American Management Association (AMA) and Human Resource Institute (HRI)surveyed 1,121 human resource managers about the causes of unethical business practices:

Pressure from management or the Board to meet unrealistic business objectives and deadlines is the leading factor most likely to cause unethical corporate behavior, according to a new survey on business ethics. The desire to further one’s career and to protect one’s livelihood are ranked second and third, respectively, as leading factors.

I’m sure this makes sense to any of us who have worked in corporate (or non-corporate jobs). And what can we do as business owners to encourage ethical behavior:

What can companies do to combat unethical behavior? According to the AMA/HRI survey results, organizations can establish policies and processes for ensuring an ethical culture. These include leadership support and modeling of ethical behavior, consistent communications from all leaders, integrating ethics into goals, processes and strategies, and making ethics a part of performance management systems and a part of the recruitment and employee selection process.

Apparently I missed the award ceremonies, but was alerted by Ann’s blog. Here are the ten worst corporations of last year. God bless ‘em. It’s hard to be so bad.

From The Ten Worst Corporations of 2005 a small taste of the badness of dear, dear British Petroleum (BP):

BP

In November 2005, BP said that it expects to spend as much as $8 billion in alternative-energy projects, including solar, wind, hydrogen, and carbon-abatement technology, over 10 years.

It is running two-page ads in major U.S. newspapers touting itself as a leader in alternative energy.

This is part of a high-energy campaign to cover up BP’s dirty tricks that flow from its oil business.

To do so, it has to cover up its shoddy operations on the North Slope of Alaska, where it is seeking to bust open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, and its reckless operations at its refineries around the globe.

In March, 15 workers were incinerated, and more than 170 injured, following an explosion at BP’s sprawling refinery in Texas City, Texas.

It was the third fatal accident at the Texas City BP facility in the last four years.

In September 2004, two workers were burned to death and another was seriously injured.

In 2001, a maintenance worker at the facility died after falling into a tank that had been shut down. Nationwide, BP’s facilities have had more than 3,565 accidents since 1990, ranking first in the nation, according to a 2004 report by the Texas Public Interest Research Group (TexPIRG).

BP has admitted it was at fault in the Texas City explosion. “We regret that our mistakes have caused so much suffering,” said Ross Pillari, president of BP Products North America, after the company had completed an interim investigation in May.

“We apologize to those who were harmed and to the Texas City community,” said Pillari. “ We cannot change the past or repair all the damage this incident has done. We can assure that those who were injured and the families of those who died receive financial support and compensation. Our goal is to provide fair compensation without the need for lawsuits or lengthy court proceedings.”

There is a case to be made that BP engaged in criminal reckless homicide, or involuntary manslaughter. To prove this, the District Attorney in Galveston County, where the deaths occurred, would have to find that BP and its executives consciously disregarded “a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a death will occur.”

We believe that the families of the dead deserve a full-blown reckless homicide investigation by the District Attorney in Galveston County.

When asked about this, Mohamed Ibrahim, the first assistant district attorney in Galveston County, told us that his office had opened no such criminal investigation into the BP matter. “We have no reason to believe at this point that it was anything but an unfortunate industrial accident,” Ibrahim said.

“If OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] came to us and said it was a result of criminal recklessness, we would look at an investigation,” he added.

In September, OSHA fined the company $21 million for violating federal OSHA law. There was no criminal referral. Lesser workplace crimes this year have resulted in criminal convictions against smaller companies. BP gets off because it is a large multinational?

On the North Slope of Alaska, BP continues to muscle the political machinery to get its way.

Its reckless operations there — including unreported oil spills — will someday end up in an environmental disaster, long predicted by oil industry critic Charles Hamel.

BP is eager to portray itself as the good guy oil company, but it is not eager to answer tough questions.

In October, U.S. News and World Report held a press conference to announce “America’s Best Leaders 2005.”

The press event was paid for by BP.

BP’s guy at the door wouldn’t let us in.

No questions about corporate crime allowed.

The Cornerstone of Peace

Almighty God, the Great Thumb
we cannot evade to tie any knot:
The Roaring Thunder that splits mighty trees;
the all-seeing Lord up on high who sees
even the footprints of an antelope on a rock mass here on earth.
You are the one who does not hesitate to respond to our call.
You are the cornerstone of peace.

from Beliefnet

It may be that I’ve had very little sleep (true), but it seems to me that we can’t honestly be surprised when someone plagiarizes.

We live in a culture of unoriginality. Everything is copied from something else. A book does well, and there’s a dozen just like it on a table at the book store (Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl gets boy back. Sigh). I’m thinking of chick lit, but this trend certainly isn’t limited to fiction. Take low-carb dieting? How many books are there on that? Oh, I see. Only 499 in print.

What was the first reality TV show? Real World. It did all right, but it wasn’t until an impending writers strike that TV executives jumped on the Reality Show Bandwagon. Hey, TV Shows without writers! Let’s all do it! Save on salaries! Get rid of those writers! Never mind that they are all copies of one another. Change the setting, change the characters, except really nothing changes. Let’s summarize the plot of all reality-TV: people are unkind to one another in all sorts of ways.

But is there a difference between plagiarism and copying an idea? Absolutely. Do people do both? Absolutely.

But when our culture only values books that seem similar to others, TV shows that are replicas of one another, and movies where we just swap the movie stars in roles of seduction, espionage, and money laundering again and again, how can we really be surprised?

We don’t value originality in life. We don’t value creativity in art. We don’t value risk-taking unless it’s filmed on TV.

That results in mass-consumed virtually identical crap. And sometimes “virtually identical” is actually identical.

Prayer for Morning

I raise my hands in honor of the Lord of the morning,
who rises in glory in the east of the world.
Piercer of darkness, illumine my path as I go through my day.
Way-shower, illumine my path as I go through my life.

- Ceisiwr Serith

Pagan

From the Virtual Talmud’s Six Reason to Remember the Holocaust:

1: One person can make a difference.

2: Not doing anything is an act of complicity

3: Believe what you read in the news from reliable sources.

4: Believe the threats of tyrants.

5: The fate of all Jews is intertwined.

6: The human spirit can triumph over evil.

Grant Us True Peace
O God! O our Master! You are eternal life and everlasting peace by Your essence and attributes. The everlasting peace is from You and it returns to You. O our Sustainer! Grant us the life of true peace and usher us into the abode of peace. O Glorious and Bounteous One! You are blessed and sublime.

A Muslim Prayer

Sherry Connolly is the founder of The Centre for Spirituality at Work. In a marketing manager encourages spirituality at work, Sherry Connolly’s thoughts on spirituality at work are explored.

“Are you a receptionist, or are you a welcomer?” Connolly asks. “Are you a financial advisor, or are you helping people toward financial self-sufficiency? Are you laying bricks, or are you helping create a home? To bring spirituality to the workplace is to reflect on what we’re being called to give.”

This article realy seems to elucidate the importance of figuring out how to align our work with a higher calling. Is work about the details? Or is there a larger purpose to our work?

People who are satisfied and happy with their work lives can make a connection between the daily details (the emails, the phone calls, the letter writing) and the larger purpose (helping kids, building a house, making people financially self-sufficient).

Are you making a larger connection between the details in your work life and your purpose in life?

So much of how we treat the natural world in the West has dictated by an understanding of our relationship with God and nature in Genesis.

Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Genesis 1:29
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

Clearly in this translation (King James) and in much of the current religious understanding of these verses, there is an anthropocentricism and an emphasis on our human powers to dominate the other elements in nature.

Without engaging in a lengthy exegesis (found here), I’ll summarize that most liberal theologians agree that these verses have been twisted from their original meaning, which was to encourage caretaking and guardianship of all living things.

Sad what misunderstandings can do.

A bibliography of ecological ethics.

On a lighter note, you can take an Earth Day Quiz here. Apparently I’m not so savvy only 6 of 11 correct.

And here are 11 tips for Earth Day.

And some resources for communities of faith.

Salutation to the Dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth;
The glory of action;
The splendor of achievement;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

- Attributed to Kalidasa
A Hindu Prayer

We went to Ashes and Snow, a mobile photography exhibit at the Santa Monica pier.

Each photograph portrayed a mammal-mammal connection. Sometimes the mammals were humans, sometimes elephants, sometimes leopards. It was extraordinary.

Whether it was a man swimming underneath a whale or a cheetah planting a kiss on the lips of a little boy, each photograph made us pause and wonder:

Could this be real?

Do animals really act that way?

Later, we learned that the photographs are all real, not digitally altered, and not scripted or set up. These are all moments that happened.

The exhibit made me think about how we yearn for connection, not just with humans, or other animals, but with anything that is alive.

Education in ethics is difficult for me to conceive of. Whose ethics? And how do you teach them?

Very often ethicists and educators return to the Golden Rule, supposedly a cross-cultural ethical scheme. But IB World points out that The Golden Rule is not really the same in all cultures. We want it to be, but it’s just not.

In a fascinating article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Gordon Marino posits his view that it is not education and knowledge that is is needed, but abiding by what we already know:

Ethics missionaries are driven by the assumption that improving our moral lives is a matter of developing our conceptual understanding and analytical acumen. The fantasy seems to be that if up-and-coming accountants just knew a little more about ethics, then they would know better than to falsify their reports so as to drive up the value of company stock. But sheer ignorance is seldom the moral problem. More knowledge is not what is needed. Take it from Kierkegaard: The moral challenge is simply to abide by the knowledge that we already have.

Ah, yes, I see that dear Kierkegaard has been mentioned not once but twice in a week here on my blog. Bless him.

The Josephson Institute is a well-known organization in Southern California that teaches ethics. The City of Santa Clarita must have bought their course because we have Character Counts Week and lest I forget, a Personal Kindness and Character Nomination form.

But the primary question is this: Does ethics education help people behave better?

Put Courage Into My Heart

Lord, put courage into my heart, and take away all that may hinder me serving you.
Free my tongue to proclaim your goodness, that all may understand me.
Give me friends to advise and help me, that by working together our efforts may bear abundant fruit.
And, above all, let me constantly remember that all my actions are in vain unless they are guided by your hand.

Appropriate for many faiths
source: The Royal Military College of Canada

George Barna, founder of the Barna Group, has found that many Americans are uninterested in church.

Well, to be more specific, he found that roughly half the adults in the U.S. attend church on a weekly basis, but only 1 in 5 perceive churchgoing as critical to their spiritual growth.

I wonder about this question a lot: How important is community in spiritual growth?

Part of my hesitancy to embrace a community of faith is that there are relatively few for religious liberals to choose from around here. Another part of my hesitancy is the tendency for scary things to happen in communities of faith: exclusivism, racism, bigotry, you name it.

I would posit that Barna’s research may not just suggest that people are less interested in churches, but that people are finding their communities in places other than traditional churches, and possibly in units as small as families.

How important is a collective faith experience to you?

Read more about Americans and their Commitment Issues.

If you haven’t done this meditation recently, you probably miss it and don’t even know it.

You meditate using a mantra for yourself, another person (try a coworker), and the world at large.

May all beings everywhere live in safety, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.

People in helping professions often have trouble being properly paid. And by properly, I mean paid a wage that is commensurate to their talents, skills, experience, and education. Either their employer doesn’t compensate rightly or their clients don’t want to pay.

Dan Wakefield explores this issue in his article, Do Good, Be Poor:

In a society that equates earning power with prestige, where money is regarded not only as the goal but the grail, it seems ironic–as well as unfair–that men and women who are engaged in work that nurtures the body, mind, and spirit are often looked upon with disdain if they profit from their efforts.

This is the end of our Stations of the Cross Blogging with Via Crucis. What an incredible journey (albeit metaphorical in our own Unitarian Universalist way).

Today is Easter Sunday, a celebration of life and rebirth. As Frederica Mathewes-Green writes Easter Changes Everything. With Easter, without resurrection and rebirth, there is no Christianity.

In the western world, rebirth has been celebrated in other forms before Christianity. Wiccans celebrate Imbolc on January 31st, halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. And Passover is an ultimate rebirth from slavery through exodus into freedom.

I’m talking about eggs. Easter Eggs.

To celebrate the inclusiveness of the American family, a bunch of organizations have joined together to get tickets for the White House Easter Egg roll on Monday.

Station 13: His body is taken down from the cross.

Station 14: His body is laid in the tomb.

From a metaphorical perspective, this time during Holy Week, Holy Saturday, is the time of mourning and transformation, of mystery and secrets. This is the time when Jesus is truly dead and we grieve. Yet, some suspect that change is in store and that he may rise again.

I’ve tried to focus this week on how we all make a journey through life, complete with falls and touched by moments of comfort. For many of us, that journey takes place in work because that is simply where we are for a large part of the day.

During this journey, most of us experience something devastating at work: being fired or laid off. And this is the time, our own metaphorical Holy Saturday, when we have to cocoon and find a way to be reborn, in another job, in another workplace, or in a different profession. This is the period of growth and rebirth. This is our time of mourning and of transformation.