Bringin it home -- 4

It was interesting to see how, during this financial crisis, the first reaction of some of the leaders and pundits out there was to tell us to spend money. My first reaction would have been to tell people to pray... 'course in the line of work I'm in, well, it kinda goes with the territory.

I know public figures are reluctant to get people praying. But this to me sounds very much like times the Old Testament prophets would have lived in and spoken about.

One thing people misinterpret about OT prophets is the notion that they "predicted" the future. More often than not, they were just astute observers of their time and environment. They "saw" possible outcomes of their people's follies kind of like the outcomes a parent might see if they saw their kids do something not-so-smart. "Son, you're gonna hurt yourself if you ride your bike on the ice!"

"People of God - if you keep living this way... 'X' will happen" -- but they put it in "God-language"... "God won't be happy with this!"

Now, today, it doesn't take much smarts to figure out that if you base a financial system more and more on greed, then something is bound to throw the whole system out of whack. Truth is, for our capitalistic/financial system, a certain amount of greed keeps the system running... but too much can... well... cause what's happening now.

Now, if we have a system based on greed ("a little is good"), and yet we teach our children not to be greedy, is there an inconsistency there? Thou shall not covet. Is this realistic? Not in the system we have. If none of us were greedy - at all - from this point forward for about one year... our financial system would collapse! And we'd have to reinvent ourselves.

When the price of gas went up to $3.+ a gallon and oil was at almost $150 per barrel, we thought - Oh no! We have to change our ways! We must not be dependent on oil! So we changed our habits. We started driving less. We made a mad scramble for renewable resources.

Now... that oil is around $50 or less a barrel, and gas prices have come down... are we going to stop moving towards renewable energy? Is the urgency any less now?

Well, what about our spiritual lives? Many people feel a spiritual emptiness, and we long for a means to satiate that thirst. "Where is God?" "How can I experience God in my life?" "I'm looking for something, I just can't quite put my finger on what." We buy the books, go to the workshops and conferences, talk with our friends about spiritual stuff, we search on line for this stuff.

I go back to some of those cultures where the people are surrounded by God-stuff. They believe they are in some way living right smack in the middle of the Sacred. And we tend to romanticize this. We idealize the American Indians for this, not knowing the reality is close, but not exactly what we're idealizing.

The point is - because we miss this - this sense of the sacred in our lives - we seek it! We're starved for it, we're thirsting for it. And I don't think our capitalistic system (which I have to say is as dominant in our lives today as the church used to be in the lives of the medieval European villagers) helps us satisfy this urge.

I can see an economist say (or a tax preparer), "Our financial/capitalist system is not designed to fulfill spiritual needs... that's what religious institutions are for!" And that's true. But when this system dominates almost all other systems, when other systems in our society are based on a system like this... I'm not surprised we have so many people that are so spiritually hungry!

I don't want to sound like a biblical prophet - repent, God is not happy-. I believe God loves us no matter what. I'm not so much worried about God as I am about us! We can't sustain such a spiritually empty system indefinitely without paying some price for it. And for many of us, that price is a hungering , a longing for something Sacred.

Maybe this Advent season, this time of expectant waiting... is the perfect time for us to readjust our own lives. What can we, each of us in our own lives, do to seek and be open to the sacred?

First step - ask God what we need to do. Second step - be open to the answer. If you get a message to pray more, do that. If you get a message to travel somewhere, go. If you get a message to go on some pilgrimage, go... a vision quest... meditate more... find a communityof like-minded people... whatever... start there I say.