Day Twenty-five

I hate my job! Never in my forty-one years of employment have I worked in such a demeaning, condescending, discriminatory and unjust environment. I am at the mercy of ignorant buffoons that elevate their own self-importance by lording it over the rank and file with impunity. Yesterday I had to promise the assistant director and unit manager that I will unquestioningly do what my supervisor tells me to do when she tells me to do it. This was to avoid “progressive disciplinary action” against me. Those who haven’t been around me the last six years have no idea just what a bad boy I’ve become!

But wait! Am I not sinning here? To the degree that my hate is taking my eye off the theological ball, so to speak, I am. This notion of sin as a breech in a dynamic relationship as opposed to committing specific static acts is going to take some getting used to. I’m pretty good about not violating, say, the Ten Commandments on a daily basis (and I only have to worry about the Sabbath thing once a week) but I’m not very good at not allowing things to distract me from my ongoing relationship with the Other. This may be part of the problem: that I continue to think of God as other. As I begin to understand myself to be a part of the whole, then it becomes possible to comprehend that a great many of my thoughts and actions are in ignorance of the relationship.

So how do I stay in a “good” relationship with God when I find myself in an environment that I despise? Do I need to accept that God is doing this to me as a form of punishment? And if God really loves me, why is “He” permitting all this to happen to me? Didn’t Jesus’ death upon the cross take care of all this? I’m baptized. I was a faithful church-goer until recently. What gives? What has to give is my erroneous understanding of the nature of God and my relationship to this “Other” that is the fundamental basis of “me”. God is not out there somewhere, but God is the living force within me that is experiencing all the hatred, all the vengeance, all the sin that occurs when that relationship is ignored or broken. God have mercy on me, a sinner!

Author's note: my work environment has improved considerably over the past year, as, hopefully, has my attitude toward work. This does not discount the administration's absurd attempt to discipline me last fall because I wasn't "nice" to a security guard who overstepped his authority. The same idiots are still occupying my sixth floor and our nation's White House.