Thursday, April 30, 2009

Workplace Stress and Mangroves


I hear of many people who are highly stressed in today's workplaces There's a lot of pain flowing among employees and managers. I am reminded of some work I did a few years ago on the mangroves that surround our Northland coasts.
The mangroves stand between the sea and the land, providing a zone of separation. They also accept all the debris and pollution that flows from the land and absorb some of it so that it doesn't reach the sea.
The thesis for the book I didn't write was that the church has those kinds of roles: separating two different ways of being, and cleansing and absorbing some of the pain and evil in society, without passing it on.
That's perhaps also the role of middle management. Someone has to take the pain and anger and stress and absorb it, so the poison isn't passed on through the organisation.

I am posting one or two excerpts of Mangrove Theology on my web pages.

No comments:

Post a Comment