Day 471 - The Chief Cause of Blindness

I hold very few things with certitude. There is one. It is a fundamental fact of my existence in this world that I do know because it is my nature.

I know that every day I will face the dawn and meet my dear friends. I will say, “You can trust me.” I know with certitude that no matter how hard I try to defend the truthfulness of that claim, I am lying.

I will violate that trust in some way.

This failure sits at the heart of the necessity for forgiveness. Yet such breaking of trust is not a justification for not trusting but for seeking forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a release, or justification of untrustworthiness to repeat the same failures time on end ignoring the obligation to seek to improve. The obligation to improve requires that I have my eyes open and recognize my failures.

I will say, I am painfully aware of this failure. In respect for it, I hope to try my best to “stay out of the fields of circumstance” that leads away from the narrow gate and towards failure.

With this prolog, I want to tell you more news of our friends and cohorts of the Gulf PDA effort to aid the recovery from Katrina.

I thought about Black Thursday back in June, of the miserable affair involving Louisville and Gulf managers who participated in the firing of Leslie Fedo. I thought, perhaps I was too hard on these people, perhaps my expectations of behavior is too severe. After all, they are human and prone to the same errors I make. And then, something happened to make me realize they are still wandering in the same field of circumstance wherein they found themselves in June. Are they blind or just enjoying the walk?

Kevin Henry is a good friend and a long-time, loyal PDA staff person in Houma. Many of you know him and have enjoyed his delicious cooking, have helped him with, or watched him repair things at Houma or Fish Camp or Orange Grove. Some of you also know the great burden of chronic illnesses in his family that he carries quietly, and of his remarkable humility. If you have traveled and worked at the PDA camp at Houma, Kevin is one of the persons who connect you to the Blue Bayou.

Our manager in the Gulf fired Kevin last week. As I understand it, the manager is in the same field of circumstance that he walked into previously with his eyes open.

It seems Kevin contracted a severe case of poison ivy at work while cutting the grass at Houma and had to stay out a couple or three days. He continued to submit his per diem. The per diem, paid out of PDA funds is about $40/day. I am told by my friends there that this was used as the pretense to fire him.

Oh, they also were not happy that he was driving his truck home. It seems our banker-manager in Louisville has decided the tax implication is too messy to deal with, volunteer staff need to move, buy their own car, ride a bike or walk to work, I guess. So let’s toss that on the pile of rationalizations as well. I know that the manager who fired Kevin used a PDA trailer to move from Orange Grove to New Orleans, I guess that personal use of a vehicle was ok. Or, maybe he didn’t see the parallel.

This Gulf manager who is responsible for this termination is paid maybe $60,000 or more from our PDA funds. I have no idea of the salary of the banker/manager in Louisville who is accountable for the HR issues, but I’m willing to surmise she lives comfortably, or to many of us, luxuriously in a large five figure, maybe more, atmosphere.

Isn’t it ironic that the people who are paid the least usually have the greater positive impact on operations and those paid so well have the more negative impact?

Of course Kevin could have sought worker’s compensation, I imagine. In other PDA cases of on-the-job injury that I know, the work site manager at Pearlington for example, PDA covered all the medical bills rather than file worker’s compensation claims. So much for the good man, Kevin – or corporate memory.

But getting back to Black Thursday, after all, I do know these staffers who are involved in this matter; and have met or worked with them. I find it as hard to think they, or I, have questionable motivation or sincerity.

I do know that they have only been to the Gulf a few times, or have recently come to work there in the last year after all the experienced people had left. I also know from observation that they have little appreciation and knowledge of how the mission actually works on the ground, or even what the reality of need is there. After almost four years of work, there is almost no written process documentation to use to set up new villages or to know what negative things happened to avoid them in the future.

We could do a constructive self-comparison by using UMCOR as a metric to see how we stack up but would we want to know the answer?

The longer I think about the predicament of these managers the more I come to the realization that while mismanagement is an immediate problem; an underlying problem is at work. It lies at the heart of what the church is about. It is the problem of not effecting service by personal example. In one context it is called servant leadership. (This also is the heart of good management, by the way for those with a secular view.)

There is an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Let’s replace that unpleasant word “corrupts” and use “blinds” to be more civil. In my intensive Hebrew class we often times take a respite for a few minutes and talk about matters of faith and belief. We opined briefly about the moral spectrum of David (the king) one day. (I guess by happenstance my comment also applies to the governor of South Carolina who called on the life of David as a justification for his behavior.)

David was anointed to a great task and responsibility. It was a task of service to the Nation of Israel, actually to God. As with all good things, he started with great promise and heroic deeds but soon the power of his office overcame his vision of service and the office of privilege became his perspective on the world as it sank shamefully into murder, adultery and excess.

Perhaps that story remains as a sentinel for us. For what other purpose has a leader but to serve faithfully those who he (or she) leads? When service, not privilege, is foremost in one’s mind, so is probably humility, compassion, peace and justice.

One could argue it isn’t power but is greed, or vanity, but the argument begs the question. All three lead down to a very hard field. Once one steps over the line into this field and begins to think of leadership in the church as a job of privilege, all good is lost. One becomes no better than a hireling, or at worst, than a despot. (As some of my minister-friends know, a hireling has a free pass, no responsibility for the ends suffered by the sheep placed in his or her charge.)

I’m sure none of these PDA managers believe they are doing things wrong, are hirelings, or are doing a disservice to other people who are in service with them. In fact, I imagine they think they really haven’t done anything particularly wrong at all in these matters. After all, these people that have been dismissed are simply employees - they don’t even have the status or tenure of “real” employees.

I am sure that in some other place these people of management may have done good, but now they have obviously wandered into a “field of circumstance,” where exit, if an exit exists at all, can only be painful.

I was reminded that the chief cause of blindness is what we have already seen (or done). It is a painful thing to realize how privilege inures one to compassion, peace and just action. Compassion, Peace and Justice, does that sound familiar?

So, my good friends at PDA, my readers, and me, when Compassion, Peace and Justice come to mind, please think about the difference between privilege and service; and act accordingly. We aren’t a corporation. We are, ab initio, a church sitting on a hill.

Peace and Grace,