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Work as a Calling
Forty Years of Public Service
by Rev. Preston Mears
June 4, 2006

Last week I received a form, an SF 50  for you federal government types, informing me that I had qualified for a step increase to the 7 level based on my years in grade and having performed at a satisfactory level or better.   That is a good thing to get as it is a kind of approval and it does mean a “step-up” in salary.  It will help us pay our pledge, a good thing.  There were two things that struck me about the form:  First:  Wow, I have been working in the public service arena for 40 years.  

Forty years, it is pause for thought especially when the arithmetic gets challenging!   I was ordained deacon in June of 1966 having just graduated from seminary.  I started as a Curate in an Episcopal Church, did that for 4 years, and then was Rector of a New Hampshire Church for four years, then took my ministry directly into the social/welfare arena and worked for 10 years as a New Hampshire welfare supervisor, and then went to the Food and Nutrition Service in the Northeast Region for ten years and then, in 1994 moved here and have been working in the Agency Headquarters in the Benefit Redemption Division of the Food Stamp Program these 12 years.  

So, I kept looking at the form and double checking the numbers in my head, “Yes, it really has been  forty years.”  I could kind of get nostalgic about it all, it has been quite a trip.  And then the second thing that struck me about the form:  I noticed the signature block of the SF 50’s:  “Director, Human Capital Services.”   And then I was angry.   I have not been, am not , and will not be an “asset.”   I am not a liquid asset to be invested here and disposed there, I am not equipment, I am not a building nor a vehicle or a major computer.   Last I knew, I am a human being with values and commitments that transcend any conclusions to be found at the bottom of a spread sheet.  I have my commitments, values, dearly earned skills and knowledge, my “KSA’s--Knowledge, Skills and Abilities.  However, I am not an object to be placed on an auction block and bid upon or contracted in or out. 

The language we use is important and the metaphors that are chosen speak volumes.  However the symbolic and metaphoric nature of human language is such that a great deal of its content operates at sub-conscious levels  We don’t go around typically and ask ourselves, “What are the epistimoligical roots of this statement.”  Once and a while we stop and think about our words as when we have worked on our out  reach publicity or the “Many Hearts” campaign.  And it right that we do.  Our ADORE dialogue leader, Paula Jones Cole frequently states, “Language matters.”

I believe the traditional term for what is, at least in USDA, “Human Capital Management,” has been “Personnel” which began to be replaced with “Human Resources.”   I thought “Personnel” was fine since the “Personnel Department” dealt with people.   “Human Resources” isn’t so bad since “Resources” used in a metaphoric way conjures a wide range of realities:  environmental, organic, intellectual as well as economic and physical.   “Human Capital” is taking the word capital and the word functions as a symbolic expression that conjures up what?   I suppose if you’re an architect your mind’s eye would see the capstone piece on top of a column. 

For most of us, the image is primarily money. which is nothing more or less than terms for the exchange of goods and services.   Three hundred years ago, at last week’s congregational meeting, we would have voted on how many pounds of tobacco, the Rev. John Crestwell needed for his compensation!   How much is needed for food and shelter and support of the church?  (We call it a budget).  How much can be set aside towards more land?  (We call that “capital planning”)  What about providing a cushion against hard times or retirement?  (We call that “long term capital planning).    It is important that we do these things.  And, John, you can see that planning is important and you don’t want to smoke up all of you compensation at once.

So, if capital is terms of exchange for goods and services, why is that so bad as a metaphor for “Public Service?”   Capital is simply a means to an end and human beings are not a simply a “means” to an end.  We are an “end” in and of ourselves.   We humans are  ends in and of ourselves.   It is the under-girding, fundamental truth I learned from my family and the little Episcopal Church I was raised in.   It is a truth that more than anything else moved me  to go into ministry and to be able to articulate and proclaim.  It may well be the Unitarian principle more than any other one that has drawn many of you to this church--something about, “…the inherent dignity and worth of every human being.”   I believe our Dr. Chris Bell has spoken about the importance of this principle not too long ago from this pulpit. 

It is not coincidental that the use of a limiting metaphor, “Human Capital,” comes at a time when “public service” is put up on the auction block so that the spread sheets bottom line becomes the all defining delimiter--its called “outsourcing” and “contracting out.”   What can be a good strategies in some situations, these have been piously and sanctimoniously invoked across the Board and presumed to fix everything.    And when things don’t work as they should, the blame is shuffled off onto, “The Bureaucracy”--that which is faceless, nameless, and can be lumped with those nameless things in our childhood brain that “…go bump in the night.” 

I am in public service and I have a name and I have a face.   Last month, because of the Food Stamp Program work that I do, I participated in a National Meeting of State and Federal and some private industry people involved with the program.  We reviewed our Food Stamp Program response in the aftermath of the last year’s hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.  I can put names and faces to over a hundred people who made things work.   I am here to tell you that those people went the distance and beyond.   They are of great value because they are all human beings, an “end” in and of themselves, just as are you and I, our children and our grand children.

For the record, by the way, I want to challenge the research oriented among us to find me a single, credible post contracting out study identifying the cost efficiency and effectiveness of contracting out.  And when you can’t, stop and think about it and don’t be surprised when you don’t find it.  Public service folk are human beings; contract folk our human beings.   For good or for ill, there is the human factor.  Also, the bottom line, dollar value is relevant to be sure (we sure struggle with our budget!), but it is prone to distortion in the context of short term outlooks unbalanced by the lack of larger values and the emphasis on instant gratification in our culture.  The recent conviction of the Enron executives and the multi million fines against Fannie Mae for accounting fraud illustrate the potential distortion from focusing on dollars alone.    Values and the symbols and metaphors that express those values are important, and “public service” is a value I celebrate and hold up before you today.

I am not the only public servant here, Laurie is a school teacher, there are others here who are teachers and have or are working in education.  Les Greenberg, a printer by trade, has plied his trade as a public servant.   He retired and now plies his trade as a contracted instructor and is better compensated.  There is some irony in that the current administration is attempting to save money by encouraging early retirement in order to cut back on staffing costs but is then having to contract those same people because the skills and knowledge are badly needed.  By the way, Les, the person in my Agency who took one of your courses, said you were a most excellent instructor.  Les, also like me, you are married to an educator!   Bless you both for your public service!

Public service in all of its forms and expressions and contexts is a great calling.  Over the years, I have gotten to be able to develop and hone a combination of people and organizational skills and put them to work to in  the social/welfare arena so that needful people in our society are treated as human beings with “…inherent worth and dignity.”  Laurie has developed and honed her skills and understandings of young children and put them to work to nurture and help children to know and appreciate their “inherent worth and dignity.”   We are most fortunate to have worked, and for that matter, continue to do work we value and look forward to each day.  We are most fortunate.   

The passage from the New Testament (Mathew 20:  1 - 16), one that I find helpful, is actually a very Jewish, Rabinnical teaching story.  As you remember the Master hires laborers for the day for the going daily living wage of the day.   The Master goes out at mid-day and hires some more laborers, apparently having more work to do than was being completed by the first group of laborers.  All well and fine.  Then in the late afternoon he goes out again, sees some laborers standing around and asks them what’s happening and they tell the Master that there is no one to give them work.  So the Master then hires them.   At the end, and this stirs up some controversy, the Master pays them all the same living wage.   The Master shuts the controversy off with a “I am the Master” kind of line that really turns off Unitarians, and then the cryptic line, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”

A capitalist would have to say, “That is no way to run a business.”  I must concede, though, that a thoughtful, insightful capitalist might think in terms of building up a motivated work force for the long haul.   A socialist would say that the story proves that every one needs to be provided a daily, living stipend.  A unionist, and I sign on here, would say, every one should have work and be paid a living wage.   There is a certain freedom of spirit and dignity that comes with being able to provide for our own basic survival.   At the end of the week, generally on a Friday night, Laurie and I do our main weekly shopping.  It never fails to feel very gratifying, a fulfilled kind feeling, at the end of our work week, to put away our groceries and have in place the food we shall eat the following week.  Is there anyone here for whom that isn’t true?   To me the freedom, the right to have the opportunity and ability to provide for basic needs “affirms our inherent worth and dignity.”  It is an understanding that needs to be remembered in the controversy and debate regarding immigrants.  Look around among ourselves.  Who is first and who is last in this place here at Davies Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church?  Not Preston, not John, but maybe Zephyr, maybe Lily and Asher, our youngest ones and maybe our oldest and most frail.  Who would we have be first?  Perhaps all of us?

A thought for those of you who have had your curiosity tweaked by the DaVinci code regarding early church history:  This first and last passages is one of those anti-authoritarian passages that calls into question the authority of the powers to be whether due to position in the church, economic privilege or established Jewish lineage.   The uncomfortableness of the text in context adds to its authenticity. 

For me, front and center, is the fundamental affirmation and importance of our being able to work and be self sustaining.  But what it does not have, and what I have trouble finding in very many places, is the affirmation that we all have gifts that we should be able to develop and put to work.  There are times and ways in which we need to do what we need to do in order to “make a living.”  That won’t always and everywhere be what or as we want it.  But, over the long haul, let it be that we choose to do what is important from among our gifts to do!   There will be changes to be sure.  I turn 66 this month and in a few years, I will need to make some changes to the work I do.  Perhaps someday, I will have learned enough for my job to be a wise old man in our scheme of things.  In our class this last winter on Lessons on Life and Loss, one attendee spoke of the loss of relevance that came with wage.  It was poignant to hear.  A reality for the rest of us in the class was that what this person shared out a life of experience was totally relevant, helpful and meaningful.  

Laurie tells me that for young children, their play is their work.  That is how they grow and learn—and that is their job.  And maybe there is an attitude in that we shouldn’t give up.   Developing and plying our skills should be a thing of joy.  We need to find them in ourselves, we need to apply them in ever evolving ways as time and circumstance allow or give opportunity.  We need to support and encourage them in each other, we need to model the value of the inherent worth and dignity of people to our children and nurture and encourage their development. 

In point of fact, we are doing just that.  We have artists, we have workers and professionals of all sorts in our midst, we have public servants.  I hold you all up.  One of the things we are also doing, is putting a lot of ourselves, including capital, but more importantly, our time and energy into our religious education—building up in our children and youth the experience and knowledge of their own and each other’s worth and dignity.   Part of my work these days is to encourage young co-workers to stay the course, that public service is a noble calling and don’t be defined by the current crop of political ideologues and cynics.

In the responsive readings, there is phrase, a concept that is meaningful to me.  It is the idea that our work is our worship.  Worship is ascribing worth to that which we worship.  To worship, to be a creature that worships the creator, is to value our gifts and to employ them in our life’s work.  That is our true worship.  Sunday morning is the window dressing.

So what is your work?  My brother is an engineer and teacher, my sister is an artist and an arts education activist.  Me, I am the middle child whose verve is to bring together the knowledge and creative energies of others to accomplish important goals.  Sometimes that can involve a little coaching and coaxing, call it preaching.  I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to exercise my gifts among you and to indulge in some self-recognition, “Wow, 40 years of public service.”  Thank you, thank you, thank you.   And, oh yea,  “Human Capital Managers” got it wrong and they can’t take it away from us.

AMEN

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