Time
In Time
This Time
“And to man He said, “Because you listened to your wife, and you ate from the tree from which I commanded you saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed be the ground for your sake; with toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life.” (Genesis 3:17)
Time waits for no one. If you are in a hurry, just skip to the last paragraph, if not, please continue to the next line ( if you want to) :
“Laborare est orare” (to work is to pray) is the theme of several papal encyclicals praising “the dignity of labour” – to the extent that if not for the spiritual & sociological dimension of those encyclicals, you’d think that it was all mere sweet-coated pep talk & encouragement from the Central Committee of some Communist Party, to the down-trodden workers, and not really from the Vatican to the followers of Christ, on earth. I suppose that the Communists still think all that spirituality “the opium of the people” is a lot of poppycock talk about Elysian fields and the sugar-candy mountain waiting in paradise/ heaven for those who have really toiled down here on earth before being laid to rest in earth’s bosom, forever.
It’s not the intention of the Church to kick-start a revolution of the sort generated in this text as delivered by old Major’s Dream
But the Catholic Church has from time to time produced preachers of the social gospel and in South America in particular, Liberation theology has been preached by people like Bishop Dom Camara ( “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.”)
The kind of work that he carried out could be emulated by other members of the Catholic priesthood in e.g. African countries still struggling to establish basic human values applicable to all citizens. I read the aforementioned encyclicals and came in touch with the ideas of Bishop Camara, in the early eighties of the last century when I worked in Eastern Nigeria – which has a very strong Catholic presence – and one of these days we should not be surprised to see a Nigerian Pope announced. How that would impact on on-going Muslim-Christian relations in that country is anybody’s guess – it could make them more desperate, but on the other hand I don’t think that Boko Haram would like to mess with Nigerian Christians when a Nigerian is chief of staff in the Vatican.
Back to our Sweden : At this time, after all the hearty congratulations, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year wishes to Jonas Sjöstedt the new commander-in-chief of the Left Party, I’m wondering whether he is about to breathe new life into the party by kick-starting some new proposals for a shorter working day – so that working man into whose nostrils the Almighty breathed and man became “a living soul” could be given time to further develop both body and soul. A shorter working day would be popular for all classes of Swedish society, even the employers of factory workers – the workers would work better and enjoy more of “ mens sana in corpore sano “ (a sound mind in a healthy body)
A healthy Jewish socialist economist who specialises in cost-effective strategies for work places told me that perhaps that’s probably why Moses instituted the Sabbath as a day of complete rest from all toil , so as to give the limbs of his ex- Hebrew slaves some time to recuperate from the six days of endless stress when they were worked vigorously in Egypt – “and in that way – a day of complete rest every week, in the long run, you get more work out of your workers.”
With the non-stop everyday work week, the worker is more likely to arrive at an early grave, long before his time of four score years and ten.
It was in 1990 and we were standing at the Sabbatsbergs Sjukhus bus station in Stockholm, when he told me all this. Standing by Sabbatsbergs Sjukhus bus station must have probably pricked his conscience and got him thinking wistfully about the blessed Sabbath.
I wonder if anybody can tell us why the hospital is called Sabbatsberg?
Same question about the tube station called Abrahamberg (Abraham’s mountain). I don’t see any mountain…..
This principle of saving lives by working fewer hours could be applied to the present situation in Swedish Work places. A shorter work day could only help save workers from an earlier death.
Over the years we’ve heard Swedish politicians toss the idea up in the air and awaken hope for the coming age of leisure when even the lumpen proletariat can begin to sing the song of the Lotus Eaters “why Should life all labour be?” – as he begins to enjoy the four or five or three, two, one hour working day with full pay, and even earlier retirement. This too would create vacancies that would give youngsters the possibility of gaining employment and the kind of work experience that employers usually require. For years, a friend with a doctorate in engineering couldn’t get a job. The missing ingredient was that he had next to no work experience.
This one may sound like a camp-fire gospel revival song but the message is the same :right now as it was then, it’s about the Needed Time
Here’s another one, slightly different beat from not so long ago, from the last century, and until now, even for a man on his deathbed, what’s needed and prayed for is More Time
“Today’s development of humanity brings us to a very interesting conclusion: If previously we dedicated at least ten hours a day to work, today our attitude towards that must change at its very root. We shouldn’t look for work. Each person has to work only to the extent required to secure a normal and dignified quality of life.” ( Michael Laitman)
Sounds reasonable doesn’t it ?
In Sweden, over the years the discussion has been going back and forth about reducing to a seven hour, six hour, five, four hour workday and even before the age of leisure here are some new, exciting, reasonable contemporary ideas about value – quality of life and working time.:A New Paradigm Of The Universe by Michael Laitman