I needed sheets, towels and pillow cases. But in Kodiak, Alaska where I live, the choices for linens can be summed up in one word: Wal-Mart. So I climbed into my late model Subaru and drove to the giant box store, never realizing the life lesson waiting for me.

The cash register rang up a total of $250. I felt a little sheepish buying so much from a store that is bashed to pieces in the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Yet my guilt was quickly displaced with gratitude toward the clerk who cheerfully went beyond the call of duty by boxing--not bagging--my purchases. (I didn't relish the idea of balancing several dozen plastic bags of white linen to my Subaru, the car that's forever dusted on the inside with potting soil left from various gardening forays.)

At home, I shuffled the boxes into the laundry room and began to cut the labels off the sheets and towels before placing them in the washing machine. As I herded the dozens of labels into a pile, I looked at them more carefully: "Made in Bangladesh," "Assembled in Brazil," "Made in Sri Lanka." I stared at the international symbolism.

In the Wal-Mart movie, the Citation of Statistics Used in the Film lists page after page of studies, findings and lawsuits. For example:

+ WAL-MART Drives Down Retail Wages $3 BILLION Every Year
+ $86 MILLION a Year to California Taxpayers
+ In Texas it is estimated that they cheated workers out of up to one hundred and fifty million dollars in unpaid wages

And so it goes.

It's easy to enter into the "group think" and say that everything Wal-Mart does is unethical. Looking at the pile of labels representing not just nations around the world, but the people behind the work, I thought of the Chinese saying, "Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." Where's the love in cursing anything? If you believe that we're all connected, then what good is it to bash, hate, or curse a person, a company, a country? It's that same, "we against them" attitude that fuels wars, whether in your kitchen or in Iraq.

Standing in my laundry room, as the washing machine whirred with flick-of-the-switch electricity and gushed with cheap, on-demand water, I inhaled deeply and said a quiet prayer: "Lord, please bless every person, every family who helped cut, sew, hem, assemble, fold, and package these linens with joy, peace of mind, health and happiness." Amen.