Martha Hennessy, granddaughter of Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, reads an issue of The Catholic Worker at Maryhouse in the East Village neighborhood of New York Dec. 4, 2012. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)
VIEW FROM THE PEW
How can you be awake in these fraught times without thinking about working for a living? At least that’s where your thoughts drift as you watch the daily unemployment news or join the family’s urgent conversation. I may be eased out of the job market but, like others, have times of lost sleep for younger generations on worrisome paths.
There are jobs out there, talking heads tell us so. And there’s disheartening reaction to work. “No, no, don’t even think of taking a break, you need the paycheck now.” If nothing seems to click with you, “there’s a first step for everything,” at entry level you’ll learn about the options and move on, but you just gotta take that first step.
Watching some imminent graduates seek their way down the paycheck path, it’s clear they have competition nowadays. So many employed people were driven out or burned out or opted out of the stress they had during or before the pandemic.
For a lot of students, it is a gut-wrenching scary time. It’s always been the season of motivational speakers and recruitment drives. Choices have to be made. Deadlines are ahead. If you make a choice, what if it isn’t the absolute perfect one?
For the lucky minority, it’s doable to continue a formal education … more time to learn forever-more-complicated work skills. In the myth of recent times that translates into moving beyond what “home” has provided, at least financially.
Ha! Parents able to take on that challenge are looking at their checkbooks and thinking “what is so lucky about a six-digit student loan.” Families heading toward high school graduation have tempting dreams but may hope for lesser goals: “Okay, the student loans are choke. But if you get out there, get a start, what about uncle’s business? Just work hard and one step at a time. There are lots of hiring fairs; best step there is to seek a mentor.”
What the world needs now
That’s what the world needs now, lots of mentors, challengers, cheering encouragers. By far the majority facing change ahead cannot afford the college or advanced study choice. And many feel doomed to low pay for work that is not stimulating. What I pray for them is that they encounter a person with a sense of mission or vocation to share with others: be a teacher, a health care worker, a government employee with a moral code, law enforcer whose aim is to be a “peacekeeper,” not punisher, in his community. The goal of big paychecks ahead is not for that dream citizen, obviously.
I met an out-of-the-ordinary mentor last week. She sounds to me like a person whose words from the sidelines are more likely to be “no, no,” than “go, go.” Long-time peace advocate Martha Hennessy has a longer vision than jobs for our time. Her vision for our world is a place where employers, investors, governments start deleting jobs to design, build, stockpile, promote, sell weapons, particularly nuclear weapons and devices.
She’s not just a passionate veteran of anti-war activism dating back to the Vietnam War era — well yeah, she is that. She was released from federal prison recently after serving a sentence for taking her advocacy further, breaking into a Georgia naval base to post an indictment and signs against the nuclear weapons stockpile there.
The 67-year-old grandmother spoke to local groups of Catholic students and advocacy groups here in the past month.
She has worked for years as an occupational therapist and tried to apply that skill by offering therapeutic help to other inmates. “These people have nothing, their needs are not being met,” Hennessy said. “There are people with learning disabilities with no help.” She shared books, worked in the library with inmates.
Part of a group
A student asked Hennessy how she sustained herself during her six months behind bars — reduced from a 10-month sentence.
She said it’s necessary to be part of a group to proceed on a mission like hers. Her group is the “Plowshares Seven.” Their title refers to the biblical challenge to destroy weapons and turn them into plowshares — agricultural tools. “My codefendants and I studied and prayed together. Catholic study has to precede Catholic action.” The admonition to care for prisoners is one of the corporal works of mercy for all Christians to practice.
“Our act of breaking into the Navy base was a sacramental act. We carry Christ to a place of deep sin.”
Hennessy’s decades as an advocate for peace — which began when she was 14 protesting her brother’s draft into the Vietnam war — are part of the family tradition. She is one of nine grandchildren of the late Dorothy Day, who is a candidate for sainthood for her advocacy for the poor in New York starting during the Great Depression. Day was one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement, which fed and worked for homeless people in New York, and a social justice advocate. Hennessey works at a Catholic Worker center, Maryhouse, in New York. She visited Wallyhouse, which provides food and support services for homeless people in Honolulu. It is located at St. Elizabeth Episcopal Church at 720 N. King Street.
She did not, however, go near any military facilities on the islands, forbidden territory as the last weeks of her federal probation winds down.
Clearly, if she were to talk to the folks who line up at the multiple recruiting stations each military service operates in most U.S. cities, her advice would be “Don’t go.”
Hennessy recalls the huge student anti-war involvement back during the Vietnam War.
Now she finds little interest except for a growing concern among young people about climate change and threats to the environment by carbon fuels.
She said what she wants young people to think of is “What does God want you to do?”
“Ask what is your country up to. What does it do to maintain super status as the most powerful nation?
“Are you going to work for the Pentagon or work for the good of society, where you actually bring joy to people?
“There are those who are inoculated with the myth of security,” which argues for buildup of nuclear weapons. She said people need to “get away from the necrophilia of our culture.”
“I am not bringing this as a good news message,” she said. “I believe every person has a conscience.”
“People should remember that peace is a verb” — an action word.
