Best of Times or Worst of Times

“Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.” – Art Buchwald

Calgary’s unemployment rate reached 7.9% in February, the highest it has been in 20 years. For many workers in Calgary, these are the worst of times. Many have moved to other cities where the unemployment rate is lower and many are still looking for that elusive job in Calgary. How does one stay healthy when they are not working, but working hard at finding that next job? Some friends and I put our heads together and came up with this list. Although there is some overlap, they are categorized into two groups: practical supports and spiritual supports.

Practical supports:

·      Evaluate and eliminate excessive debt – it may be time to downsize your home or get rid of that collector car

·      Track your finances – determine where your money goes

·      Don’t be afraid to find professional counseling – a counselor will have good advice on how to stay emotionally healthy

·      Stay connected through networking – friendships, former colleagues, the guy at that coffee-shop close to your former job

·      Have some fun – find a way to continue to pursue your hobbies

·      Keep a daily routine – get up at the same time every day, eat three meals a day

·      Create a job search plan – then work that plan

·      Volunteer:  help others while helping yourself

·      Exercise – for fun or for competition, stay fit.

Spiritual supports:

·      Daily Bible reading – it should go without saying but it does not

·      Daily prayer – again, it should go without saying, but it does not

·      Weekly longer prayer time – pray daily but then find those longer times once a week

·      Weekly prayer partner – pray with someone else

·      Monthly prayer partner who is outside of your regular networks of people – someone with whom you can be really honest

·      Monthly coach/spiritual director conversation

·      Annual or twice per year solitude retreat

·      Meditate upon Bible passages

·      Meditate upon nature

·      Read in theology

·      Read practical leadership material

·      Read the news

·      Read popular literature and popular culture material

·      Look for mystery and wonder in life

·      Expect miracles

I would love to have someone write and tell me what their experience has been in following some or all of these ideas. Best of times, or worst of times, right now is the only time we have.

An Open Letter to Oil Company CEOs

November 13, 2015

An open letter to oil company executives in Alberta,

In recent years, and in fact, in recent days, oil has become a dirty word. Our federal government is gearing up for presentations in Paris at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Our provincial government will experience pressure to reconsider royalty rates and, if Saskatchewan is any indicator, pressure to create a new price for expelling carbon into the atmosphere. Those who capture carbon will be able to sell their rights and carbon will have a defined price.

In light of all of this, for the sake of our province, for the sake of our children and grand-children, for the sake of jobs, for the sake of my friends who are already looking for jobs and those who may be afraid they will soon be looking for jobs, can I please ask you to stop thinking like CEOs of Oil companies and ask you to start thinking like CEOs of Energy companies?

I have asked my friends in the oil and gas industry if their company is diversifying. They have responded, “Oh yes, we are diversifying. We used to be into nothing but conventional oil and now we have holdings in both heavy oil and conventional oil. With the latest downturn in oil prices we are diversifying back to conventional oil and even gas!” That’s not diversifying, CEOs! Or at least, it is not diversifying enough. What about diversifying into other forms of energy: building high capacity batteries, installing fields of solar panels, building wind turbines, or investing in fuel cell research? What about looking at other ways to provide energy and power?

For the sake of tomorrow, could I please ask you to do something different than wait for the roller-coaster ride of oil and gas to come back to the top? Please show us that you can truly diversify, for the sake of our unhealthy addiction to oil, for the sake of our province.

Keith Shields

Calgarian

Good Work

When I grew up in Western Canada there was a weekly CBC television show called "Marketplace." The theme song was sung by Stompin' Tom Connors and the lyrics I most remember said,

The Consumer, they call us,
We're the people that buy
While everyone else is out to sell
Some kind of merchandise
Another sale on something,
We'll buy it while it's hot
And save a lot of money spending money we don't got
We'll save a lot of money spending money we don't got

Oh, yes we are the people
Running in the race,
Buying up the bargains in the old marketplace,
Another sale on something,
We'll buy it while it's hot
And save a lot of money spending money we don't got
We'll save a lot of money spending money we don't got

 

It was only a snippet of a longer song that spoke of the difficulties of the working population who were trying to pay their bills, get a good deal, buy quality products, borrow more money, and generally get a fair shake. Stompin' Tom was using his platform as a folk-singer to say some of the same things Dorothy Sayers said in a 1942 essay entitled "Why Work?". She says,

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.

Nearly seventy years later, I wonder if we have learned anything from Dorothy Sayers'  important essay. Indeed, have we learned anything from Connors' folk song? Or are we simply "saving a lot of money spending money we don't got?" As economies of the world plunge to new depths and we wonder how it will affect our country and our jobs, politicians encourage us to see things as "business as usual." We continue to consume more than we can afford and individually and collectively go more and more in debt. We are told that it is just a temporary slowdown in the economy. "It will all get back to normal if we put our nation first. But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse."* We spiral into more debt and consume more to stimulate our flat economy.
Sayers suggests,

Whatever we do, we shall be faced with grave difficulties. That cannot be disguised. But
it will make a great difference to the result if we are genuinely aiming at a real change in
economic thinking. . . . The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained in us that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about it instead in terms of the work done. To do so would mean taking the attitude of mind we reserve for our unpaid work – our hobbies, our leisure interests, the things we make and do for pleasure – and making that the standard of all our judgments about things and people. We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?”; of a man, not “what does he make?” but “what is his work worth?”; of goods, not “Can we induce people to buy them?” but “are they useful things well made?”; of employment, not “how much a week?” but “will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?” And shareholders in – let us say – brewing companies, would astonish the directorate by arising at shareholders’ meeting and demanding to know, not merely where the profits go or what dividends are to be paid, not even merely whether the workers’ wages are sufficient and the conditions of labor satisfactory, but loudly and with a proper sense of personal responsibility: “What goes into the beer?”

Sayers is reminding us that our jobs are about more than money; they are about producing a good product. We ought to "clamor to be engaged in work that was worth doing, and in which we could take pride." Work is to be about making a difference in the world. I wonder if we might try that for a while.


*Bruce Cockburn, "The Trouble With Normal."