Keeping Order In Our Work Day With Chaos At The Gates - 4

We continue with our "chaos" theme. To recap:

We need to keep order in our work day. Surely we know this as a practical requirement. But it's critical to our being able to sanctify our work.

More so these days - days of chaos.

Chaos may not be on the tip of everyone's tongue, nor may it be front and center in our experience every day. But it sure does seem to be a force of nature that's been building for some months, no, years now.

We've identified three areas to address: our Church, our Government, our Culture. Last time we discussed our Government. We continue today with our Culture.

Here's a definition of "culture": the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. We'll stick with nation and people. 

How's this for a start: It's "degraded." It's a word spewed by a priest in Confession during the Covid Mess. We had sought out this parish because we heard Confessions were being heard, which they were not in many parishes - including ours. Having not been to Confession is a while (for the a fore mentioned reason), Father was trying to encourage getting back on the wagon of regular Confession. The description was a kind of reminder why frequent Confession is important. 

There's no intent to dwell on the negative here. On the other hand, to cherry pick those bright spots in the midst of the degradation wouldn't be of much use, would it? Venturing out into our world each day with an exaggerated sense of how wonderful the world is leaves us open to at least disappointment, at most disaster.

This world has always been a challenge to those who know and love God. Hence the phrase: the world, the flesh and the devil - a long-standing and infamous trio that greets us each day. This band of "brothers" operates even in the best cultural environments. But when the culture itself goes into a tail spin, these three can easily gain the upper hand. They rise to the level of false idols. When the culture is degraded, these false idols no longer have to operate behind the scenes. They emerge in full recognition, even adulation.

At work, we may have to deal with the symptoms of a degraded culture in different ways, in different degrees, depending on our circumstances.

Here's a striking example from personal experience in those former days of commuting into Manhattan to a workplace:

The scene was a first day session filling in forms under the supervision of one of the HR minions of a big bank. It was my second go-round with what was once considered a sort of venerable institution given its founding close to the time of the founding of our country. It was the only company I worked for twice, but that experience provides our example. 

While I thought the on-boarding would be uneventful, having previous worked there, it was anything but. After the initial filling out, a lecture in the form of pointed instruction commenced. Thence flowed words and phrases making it clear that LGBT (that original alphabet soup hadn't yet expanded), gender (the gender fluid thing hadn't yet appeared), and all that entailed were firmly planted in my corporate sensibility. Any offense against this new Litany of Rules would not be tolerated. Consequences would be severe.

Very little, if anything, was spoken of having to do with the business of this once-venerable corporation. The underlying message seemed to be that personal compliance with this new regime of cultural shibboleths was far more important than anything having to do with work performance. 

It was, as they say, a rude awakening.

And, while the recent dialing back with the new Washington administration has taken a bit of the edge off of all this, it's not gone away. The push-backs have helped, but the "values" and habits that have been finely honed do not just disappear. Will they ever? Time will tell.

But there's more to discuss before we leave our discussion of the chaos fostered by our culture. Next time...