lenten journal: be kind

Somewhere towards the end of her sermon this morning, Ginger quoted Philo of Alexandria (not to be confused with Philo of Pawtucket):

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

The words have hung with me all day. When I sat down to write tonight, they took me back to a conversation I had with Chef on Friday, as we were getting ready for a monster weekend and already feeling the pressure. At this point, it looked as through I was going to be responsible for preparing a meal for 260 people on Saturday with only one of the dishwashers to help me. I was frustrated, not at Chef, but at the Owner, who appears to see labor costs as The Thing You Cut First and Often.

“You’re right,” Chef said, “and I can see things from his si—“

I interrupted him and went on with my lament. He tried again.

“I understand. All I’m saying is I can see where he’s coming from.”

With indignation I said, “I have no need to defend him. I’ll get the job done regardless of his abuse. I’m just tired of it.”

In the eighteen months I have worked at the Inn, the Owner has been around maybe four of them. He has homes in two other countries and spends much of his time traveling. He calls in daily to say what he has to say. I’ve never had an extended conversation with him and the brief talks we’ve had have all related to my job. I know a few of the details of his life, but I don’t know him at all, nor him me. I see how he treats his employees and how he relates to people depending on how he views their stations in life, but I have never heard him explain why he makes the relational choices he makes. I have an image of him, but I don’t know what his questions are, what his struggles are, what battles he is fighting. Every time he makes what I consider to be a bonehead move, or an insensitive one, I allow myself to feel justified in writing him off. I don’t want to feel like he matters, or that he has a perspective with even the least bit of credibility. And then Ginger had to go and say:

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

Everyone. That means the Owner, too. That means what I perceive as his deliberate insensitivity has roots in a past I know nothing of, the way my determination to make something or somewhere feel like home grows out of my rootlessness, or my passion to do a great job comes, at least partly, from my own crippling yet dogged sense that love is earned and I have to keep proving myself. That means I have to make room in my image of him for moments when he might wish he were not the way he is, or that he might want the same kind of acceptance and approval I’m looking for.

Damn.

Ginger often says of me that I’m pretty longsuffering, but if I think something’s not fair I dig in hard. I don’t want to hear any explanations. I don’t care what the explanations are. There is right and fair and just and there is – well, there is no other option. When I allow myself to be the Aproned Crusader at work, I see the Owner’s actions as unjust and unfair and I can quickly allow myself to not give him any identity other than the one who is responsible for it all. I don’t want to give him a chance to be human in my eyes. If I allow myself to see him as a person, then I’m forced to come to terms with the way in which my attitude towards him is incompatible with the faith and ethic I profess. Hey, wait a minute – how did this become about me?

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

The first therapist I ever saw said, “Remember in any situation there are only two things you can control: what you do and what you say. You can’t change anything else.” I can’t make the Owner treat people differently. I can’t control whom he fires or lays off or pretty much anything else he says or does. I can decide whether or not I spend time at work talking about him. I can control where I draw the line as to how I respond to what I see as injustice. I can choose to be kind to him, to work to humanize him in my eyes so I think of him as more than a caricature. I can decide to stay true to the person I want to be regardless of what he does.

I can be kind.

I don’t foster any rosy fantasy that if I can just befriend him and he realizes I really want to get to know him that he will become a different person. I don’t even think Philo thought that about whoever was driving him nuts when he said those words centuries ago. Changing him is not even the point. It is about me: what I do, what I say, what I feel, how I live.

Ginger also quoted Teresa of Avila this morning:

Christ has no body on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.

I find it easy to be the hands that carry the soup for dinner at church, or the feet that move to help Pedro. But to be the eyes that see the Owner with compassion or allow him to be humanized in my sight is hard, hard work.

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

Peace,
Milton