Small, mean hearts
Decades ago, I visited a place where adults with mental disabilities made a living preparing large-scale mailings for businesses. I remember being impressed by their work ethic and their joy at being productive self-earners. I thought of that place recently when I read about Governor Patrick’s budget cuts that required layoffs at a Malden employment center for the blind, as well as other impacts to social services statewide. I know the Commonwealth faces a financial crisis due to a Wall Street fiasco with global impacts. I also believe the governor is a good and intelligent man, trying to do more with less in a climate overwhelmed with real fiscal problems (not counting the havoc if Ballot 1 passes—see here for earlier mention), but is this really what we’ve come to? How is it that our society cannot care for the least of us—even when it simply means giving them the opportunity to work? It reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem, unlike her in its dark brooding, but so indicative of the day:
Of the Empire, by Mary Oliver, from her book Red Bird
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.