Can You Imagine What You’ll Do with Your Extra Day?

Can You Imagine What You’ll Do with Your Extra Day?

The recovery from the COVID-19 crisis offers the workplace an opportunity to rethink and retool its schedule. Responding to the pandemic caused many employers and employees to quickly and substantially shift their ways of working. Millions of Canadians sheltering in place began working from home and connecting with their colleagues over platforms such as Zoom. Take out and curbside delivery became standard fare.

Recently, another design to revamp the work world is beginning to gain traction, at least as a possibility: the idea of a four-day week. This is not a compressed week with the regular 40 hours compacted into one less day. Rather it is full-timers working fewer hours (30) for the regular pay.  One might ask, “Why would any employer support a shortened workweek at the same salary level?” While this change seems illogical, it makes proven sense. It rests firmly on peer-reviewed research, which concluded that employees can be as productive in 30 hours as they are in 40. Better rested workers waste less time. Studies have affirmed that fewer workdays reduce the number of sick days and decrease a company’s operating costs.

It stands to reason that three-days off per week leaves more time for other things, thereby increasing more free time and better work-life balance. Happier employees increase the potential for greater company loyalty which has been long associated with increased productivity.

It seems realistic for business owners to consider seriously shortening their workplace schedules. This would be a new way to create happier staff and a better bottom line.

Can you imagine what you’ll do with your extra day?

-Submitted by Nancy Wales, csj

What is this time teaching us?

危机 The characters for the word “crisis” in Chinese are made of characters meaning both disaster and opportunity.  If you, like myself, have been following some of the news feeds about the Corona-19 pandemic I think we are hearing more about the disaster side caused by this virus and missing the moments that are also presenting opportunity to us.

Some may wonder what I mean by this.  For sure there is a great deal of pain, of loss, and anxiety present in these days and none of us have escaped this.  Our lives feel more confined, more disoriented.  At the same time, we may find moments in which we can ask ourselves questions like, “how do I understand what this moment is teaching me about myself or about the world in which I live”.  Pre-pandemic days were often so full that we didn’t notice questions like this raising up within us.  But in these days questions are very close to the surface.  We have more time to be with them and are discovering more of what is most important.  We are learning that people we may have taken for granted are really essential in helping through day by day - people who stock the grocery shelves, or collect our garbage, or care for our loved ones at home or in a health care facility, or the police and fire departments, or the transit drivers, or the farmers, and truck drivers.  We are all interconnected and working together we discover that all of us are important and we all depend on each other.

My sister sent me a YouTube link that I share here.  The stories we tell ourselves and others are very important.  This a story I want to remember. Perhaps it is a moment in which opportunity is offered to us.

Stay well and be safe.

- Joan Atkinson, CSJ

Happy “95” in Covid Land

Celebrating birthdays during COVID-time calls for some ingenuity.  Special friends of Sister Eileen Foran arrived, flowers in hand, at our residence with a novel idea for her 95th birthday.  “We can’t get in to visit Sister, so we’ll serenade her under the balcony.”  The always spry celebrant stepped out into the fresh air at 2:00 p.m. She was delighted and happy, coat clutched against the light wind.  A group of Sisters joined the partyers on the ground below and all sang a rousing, “Happy Birthday” to a wonderful woman who has been a Sister of St. Joseph for over 70 years. 

Sr. Eileen’s smile was as bright as the spring sunshine as she waved joyfully to us and received our best wishes with her hallmark joy and effervescence.  The message on one of her birthday cards sums up the beauty of our young at heart ninety-five-year-old:  Ninety- five years look terrific on you!  You don’t seem a day past “amazing.”  You light up a room with your wonderful smile. You’ve made “young at heart” your own wonderful style.  So, no holding back, let the big day arrive – and wish on each candle – yes, all 95!”

Blessings on you, our wonderful Sister and companion.

-Sister Jean Moylan, csj

Strength Amid Sorrow

This week our home is washed in spring solitude and silence after a weekend of heavy hearts and dampened spirits.  Our dear Sister Patricia Hanlon has gone to God after being diagnosed with the coronavirus two days earlier. Twenty-four hours after we Sisters were tested for the virus, three positive diagnoses appeared.  Although the other two are doing well, Sister Pat suffered breathing distress which worsened quickly and ended in her death two days later.

We who mourn her passing wonder silently and aloud, “What more could we have done to prevent this tragedy?”  Each weekday morning, we receive updates from our Director of Care as to the latest security measures from the Ministry of Health. The staff underwent testing and wear masks. Our temperatures are taken afternoon and evening, we practice social distancing, we wear masks when necessary, we wash our hands frequently and sanitize high touch surfaces several times a day.

Sometimes we think that given enough effort, we can control forces beyond ourselves but often we must bow in silence when our best efforts fail to bring us desired results.  By now, COVID -19 has had a lasting impact upon most people on the planet. It might be in the form of losing a loved one, caring for a family member in the long process of recovery, watching essential service providers head off to work.  People wait anxiously to see if there is money to pay rent, buy food and other necessities.  There doesn’t seem to be an end to our anxieties and fears for the future.

The wages of COVID -19 can literally bring us to our knees and maybe that’s the best place to begin to put our lives into perspective.  From a position of surrender, we look up to see what is around us, above us and beyond us.  We look up to God to uphold us and stretch out our arms to family to enfold us and friends to ennoble us.  Together we join with our communities, countries, and continents to face the future and embrace a communion of love and new beginnings in a brighter, more collaborative, renewed world.

-Sister Jean Moylan, csj

A REFLECTION ON THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Last August while in Ireland, I met for the first time the granddaughter of one of my cousins. Eve is her name. When I asked her how old she was, she said in her Irish brogue and without hesitation while throwing her arms up over her head so spontaneously and joyfully, “I’m ‘tree’ and I’m going to be four in December!” I am still enjoying that delightful encounter with Eve and SHE is my way into Advent this year.

Advent is all about the already and not yet. Just like Eve, we are already something and not yet something else. We are already in God through the great gift of the Incarnation and yet we are not yet filled as fully as we can be with all that this great mystery of Christ’s birth has in store for us. At one and the same time, we carry with us both joy and longing, both rootedness in God and a certain yearning for more to bloom in us.

Advent calls us into gratitude for what we already are and have and at the same time these weeks also invite us to open up even more. “Rejoice!” this Sunday’s entrance antiphon proclaims to us! Throw your arms up over your head and enjoy the presence of our loving God who is always with us! At the same time, though, “do not let your hands grow weak” (Zephaniah) or your hearts be satisfied. Make your needs known to God (Philippians) and be generous with your food and your clothing (Luke) for that is the way we show who God is.

We know well all in our world today who need our food and our clothing and so many other gifts that we have been given so that they too can “throw their arms up over their heads” in joy. Maybe they need our food of kindness and acceptance, and just as they are. Maybe they need our coats of care and compassion to warm their spirits into hope again. “Out of the mouth of babes,” as Psalm 8 says. Indeed! I thank you Eve for your gift to me last August and now too in Advent! I yearn too for even more joy and wisdom this year from the Babe of Bethlehem.

by   Mary Ellen Sheehan, IHM, Monroe, MI