Common ground

Yesterday was a day of reflection for me. It was voting day in America. It would have been Logan’s first time casting a ballot. He loved politics. As a young teen, he was, even more so than my husband and me, a staunch conservative, both on fiscal and social issues. In 9th grade, about the time we became computer-owning, internet-accessible people, Logan’s world view began to change. Access to a vast array of information and to people whose circumstances varied wildly from his own fascinated Logan. He became liberal in his thinking, yet remained very conservative with his finances and his second amendment rights. He and I would often discuss politics and the influence of religion on it. Our discussions often became heated. He was a talented debater--firm in his opinions and well informed on both sides of every issue. He had the ability to make me feel ignorant, grasping for words and resorting to catch phrases when my mind couldn’t keep up with his quick wit. It exasperated me and invigorated him, but I delighted in the fact that he thought I was worth arguing with. By the end of his life, I think Logan viewed himself as a socialist  more so than a democrat, evolving (or devolving, depending on your politics) from Rush Limbaugh to Noam Chomsky.  I hope he knew how hard I tried to be respectful of his opinions. I hope he understood my point that life’s journey might have brought him down a path that led right back to his conservative roots.

Throughout the course of this election process, I have wondered how many times I would have wanted to strangle my Logan. As I filled in my ballot, I knew that his votes would have cancelled mine out, right down the page. We would have loved each other anyway.  We would have worked together on many things. We would have broken bread and built bridges. I would have worked to show him that each man’s opinion is valid and should be respected, that being louder or more eloquent in speech doesn't make one more right. He would have pushed me into acting otherwise. I hope he would still have found comfort and safety in the conservative values of the people in the home where he was raised. I hope I would have peeked at the opposing side of an issue and imagined I walked in another man’s shoes for an short time. I imagine both of us would have grown a little and both of us would have groaned a lot. In the end, I think we would have agreed to disagree.

This morning, I was dismayed by the ugliness that continues in the name of politics on social media. It really amounts to bullying and gloating, to smugness and contentiousness. The party of tolerance seems hypocritical in it’s inability to respect the other side’s positions. The party of self reliance casts blame on government instead of self. Through it all, I think I’ve come to dislike people I once considered to be friends, not for their stance on issues, but for their mode of delivery of their message and the belittling of our differences. We are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We shouldn’t wonder, then, when we consider how we treat one another, that our politicians are more interested in toeing the party line than calling truces and working together for the common good.  We are different, but surely we seek what each of us views as the common good. The common good requires common ground. Common ground requires respect. Respect requires tolerance. Tolerance begins when you get over yourself. I learned that from Logan. I wish beyond wishing that he had been there to cancel out my vote yesterday.

Unbroken chains

I dropped out of college after the spring of my freshman year and moved back in with my parents. Well, technically, I hadn’t dropped out so much as I knew I wasn’t planning on going back in the fall. My parents weren’t aware of my plans, or lack of them. A high school friend, who moved to the farm across the field from us, was working at a turkey processing plant about 30 miles away. She talked me into applying for a job on the line and driving back and forth with her every day. “It rocks!” she said. “The people are awesome!” Turns out, she was half right.

They tell me there had been big improvements made in meat processing facilities across the country by that summer of 1984, which makes me wonder how bad things must have been at one time. My first morning there, I was issued a belt and scabbard, two knives, two sharpening steels, and a metal mesh glove to keep from cutting off my fingers. We were required to wear hairnets every day. I wonder if it was to keep our hair out of the meat or the meat out of our hair. The plant itself smelled of a combination of wet feathers and turkey shit. It was chronically damp and eerily gray. The sanitary conditions were, well, horrible. I remember when the line had to be shut down because maggots were dripping onto the conveyor belt which transported de-fatted turkey breasts. For excitement, someone had thrown a chunk of meat up on the machinery high above our heads, and a few days later, the maggots had moved in. And, they fit right in, too. Some of the less sanitary workers smelled vaguely of rotting flesh because they didn’t bother to scrub their mesh gloves at the end of each day, but they didn't bother to wash their white uniforms very often either, so it's probably not fair to blame the odor on the mesh gloves alone.

The days themselves were usually long and always unpredictable. Work began at 5:00 am; that meant leaving home by 4:15 am to get there on time. The line ran until no more truckloads of birds arrived. Rare were the nights I was home by 9:00 pm. I remember once when the last truck arrived at 11:00 pm and, when all the birds had finally been butchered, we were held over to rework a pallet of breasts that hadn’t passed inspection. It ended up to be a 22-hour day. We left the plant at 3:00 am, and were told to be back to work at  11:00 am, just eight hours later! A couple of indignant workers contacted OSHA, who informed them that, since turkey was a perishable food product, it was legal to work up to 22 hours as long as workers were given eight hours off before being required to return to the line.

When forced to perform under such conditions, most people form close bonds with one another, finding ways to encourage each other. Besides a healthy respect for anyone earning a living doing line work, and an urgent call to return to college, the turkey plant blessed me with a handful of salt-of-the-earth friends. One such friend was Gloria. She was 25 years older than me, but she had a real sense for what it was to be a young woman living in a fast world. She watched over us and encouraged us to be true to ourselves. She told off-color jokes that seemed to make the minutes pass more quickly.

I ended up going back to college that fall, and returned to the turkey plant the following summer. Most of my old friends were still there, but the conditions had changed for the better. 1985 was the last summer I worked at ‘the plant’. I slowly lost contact with the good friends I had made there.  Twenty-six years later, two days after Logan died, I got a phone call from Gloria. She had read Logan’s obituary in her local paper, then asked her daughter to search out my number on the internet. Gloria called to offer me her condolences. She asked a million questions about the years since we'd worked together. She encouraged me to cling to the truths of my faith. She asked if there was anything she could do for us, so I asked her to pray for the other driver in the accident. I had no idea how he was physically, but I knew he had to be an emotional wreck. I asked if she’d also put him on the prayer chain at her church.

Over the next few weeks, Gloria called me almost daily to tell me she had added the other driver to another prayer chain at another church. She would comb the yellow pages for telephone numbers. She called every number in her phone’s contact list, reached every relative she could think of, and in 3-weeks time, had listed him on over 90 prayer chains across the country! Ninety prayers is a lot of prayers, but ninety chains of prayers is mighty.

I have never seen or spoken to the driver of the other vehicle, except through our lawyers. He filed a personal injury suit against me, well beyond what I was insured for, since the vehicle Logan was driving was in my name. The man was not wearing his seat belt and was thrown from his vehicle, sustaining a head injury which required him to be air lifted to a larger medical facility. Four days later, by the grace of God, he was discharged from the hospital. I know his life will never be the same as it was before 12-noon, September 3rd, 2011, but I'm thankful he has the opportunity to make each moment of what remains of his life worthy. I pray he walks those moments with Christ.

I wish I had understood at the time that standing for endless hours in that cold, damp, dirty processing plant would turn out to be one of the biggest blessings in my life. God is good.