In the company of a plongeur and the tamed cynic

I have reached Paris on my journey with George Orwell, but not the Paris of museums ,chic street cafes and the Eiffel Tower. No this is the Paris of the backstreet hotels where bugs parade across the walls and restaurant basement kitchens where conditions certainly would not meet a modern one star let alone five. It is 1928/9 and Orwell is so poor he has pawned most of his possessions and got a job as a plongeur, a dish washer and kitchen hand.  In those days pawning seems to have been common. I remember being told about my Nan taking my grandfathers best suit to the pawnbrokers each Monday and then retrieving it on a Friday. I always wondered what would have happened if she did not have the money to do that!! Well Orwell finds himself working all hours of the day seven days a week in a new  restaurant set up by a Russian. He gets the job through another Russian friend called Boris. In the end he describes the job as being like a slave. He then asks the question does this modern slave actually do anything of use? " Is the plongeur's work really necessary to civilisation?" What the plongeur does is so others can have some experience or luxury, in this case eating in a restaurant.

At the moment places like restaurants cannot open. Perhaps we can spare a thought for those who work in the hospitality industry for whom things are uncertain because of this. Perhaps also we might try to be aware that there still is "slavery" like the type Orwell describes and much worse, including in Britain.

In " Notebook of a Tamed Cynic" Reinhold Niebuhr comments on his early life as a minister in Detroit in between 1915 and 1928. At the time Detroit was growing into a great industrial city based on the car industry. Niebuhr raises questions about the conditions of those working in this industry and what the Christian response should be. He gives thought to what the church is doing about important issues of the day and how effective it is in living out the Christian message. The interesting thing is that almost a hundred years later what he is saying I find still relevant and thought provoking. Even some of the issues and concerns about the state of the church and its future seem to be the same.

As food for thought I leave you a phrase Niebuhr uses :

"The representatives of God are seldom divine and the minions of Satan are never quite diabolical".


Gracious God

Today we give you thanks
for the gift of work.
Work that can give meaning
as well as reward.

We pray for those who have
challenging jobs, or who find
themselves exploited through
the greed or indifference
of others.

We pray for justice in
the workplace for all people,
so that all can work with dignity,
to build a better life for themselves
and world for us all.

Amen