Thank you for this meditation. It expresses how I’m feeling - a combo of sadness, anger, and dismay at the lack of concern for the common good. It’s the same feeling I have about the billionaires not paying taxes at the same rate the rest of us do. But the drive on roads, use airports and ports, etc that are built and maintained by our taxes.
Another example of enough is the feeding of the 5000. Everyone was full. No one hoarded. There were 12 baskets of leftovers. Hopefully given to hungry people who weren’t on that hillside.
“How much is enough?” Is a question I ask myself and my congregation in sermons. For people like Musk, Bezos, Trump there is no such thing as enough.
This - as with all your posts Rev T - is so thought provoking. I think your last sentence, asking whether we still have the 'moral imagination', has really made an impression. 'Imagination' requires us to want to see where our thoughts and feelings go... to take the thinking further. Imagination sounds easy, but it's effortful when the subject matter is troubling. I think this is, maybe, the heart of the problem. Imagining what might be or what could be, or should be doesn't feel pleasant or easy, so we avoid it. And the work that needs to be done is individual as well as collective... we need to engage that moral imagination, I think.
I believe Pope Leo recently said -- and I'm paraphrasing -- that a country's moral wealth is seen in how that country treats its most vulnerable, the "poor" being one of the most vulnerable. The Department of Defense wants a trillion more dollars, while millions in America suffer from food insecurity and a host of other trials that require government assistance. Where is our country's heart? What does it hold? Does it hold the Beatitudes or fear, fighting, and an insatiable thirst to covet and gain? As far as this administration goes, I'd say the latter.
From years of spiritual research, it is clear that at the core of all religions, the bread of life, the sustenance for abundant living is the wisdom of a living active vital relationship with Source, God, Creator.
Hoarding monetary wealth to obtain power is actually a form of poverty called greed. We actually do not “own” anything. Existence is a free flowing provision of grace that desires the well being of all.
Any hindrance to this loving support is an aberration and surely not something to be admired or held up as a worthy goal.
Lynne Twist, founder of the Pachamama Alliance and author of The Soul of Money says it this way: The Principle of Sufficiency: "When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, and appreciate what you it have, what you have, naturally expands." In this sense sufficiency is not a measure but a declaration: Who I am and what I have is enough.
You have such a gift for moral clarity. This message was an especially powerful example of that. May those of us who have enough be grateful, and may we work for a world where no one suffers because their most basic needs for food, shelter, healthcare, education, and community go unfulfilled.
A very wise spiritual mentor I met states, "Apathy in the face of relievable human misery is radical evil." That is the society we live in today. Just the cuts to USAID alone have resulted ithousands of deaths and more human misery. People are starving because the U N World Food Program is short on funds - funds that in the past we have helped with.
I have a hard time believing we even need to ask the question of whether we should try to even the playing field so all may have enough, but many Christians object to "handouts" and center their caring works on "the ones who deserve it" calling aid "socialist" and worrying ever so much about fraud, when the system allows for public fraud by government in plain view with no concern. I think your best point is that our culture "lets one person’s IPO feel like a national event while USAID’s dismantling gets a paragraph." Pointing at the failure to care for your neighbors asin USAID demonstrates a callousness that is ungodly. We need to keep raising the questions and holding up human life consequences if we shirk our responsibility to our brothers and sister. I think if we cannot at least try to turn this around, God will have some opinions on the subject. Israel disappeared, and Judah went into exile. Hard ways to learn this lesson.
You said what I've been saying all along. There is no way to accumulate that much wealth (even billionaire-level) without exploiting a lot of people. Others have to go without basic needs in order for one person to have that much. Plus, anyone who even WANTS to be a trillionaire is only after the prestige attached to it - just being able to say, "I've done something that no one else could ever do." This is fine if you're developing a cure for a disease or inventing something that makes human life better. If you're just going for the ego boost, however, that's straight-up sin. (Not that Musk cares about that 🙄😡)
Your article deserves and merits larger distribution.
Thank you for this meditation. It expresses how I’m feeling - a combo of sadness, anger, and dismay at the lack of concern for the common good. It’s the same feeling I have about the billionaires not paying taxes at the same rate the rest of us do. But the drive on roads, use airports and ports, etc that are built and maintained by our taxes.
Another example of enough is the feeding of the 5000. Everyone was full. No one hoarded. There were 12 baskets of leftovers. Hopefully given to hungry people who weren’t on that hillside.
“How much is enough?” Is a question I ask myself and my congregation in sermons. For people like Musk, Bezos, Trump there is no such thing as enough.
Thanks again.
This - as with all your posts Rev T - is so thought provoking. I think your last sentence, asking whether we still have the 'moral imagination', has really made an impression. 'Imagination' requires us to want to see where our thoughts and feelings go... to take the thinking further. Imagination sounds easy, but it's effortful when the subject matter is troubling. I think this is, maybe, the heart of the problem. Imagining what might be or what could be, or should be doesn't feel pleasant or easy, so we avoid it. And the work that needs to be done is individual as well as collective... we need to engage that moral imagination, I think.
I believe Pope Leo recently said -- and I'm paraphrasing -- that a country's moral wealth is seen in how that country treats its most vulnerable, the "poor" being one of the most vulnerable. The Department of Defense wants a trillion more dollars, while millions in America suffer from food insecurity and a host of other trials that require government assistance. Where is our country's heart? What does it hold? Does it hold the Beatitudes or fear, fighting, and an insatiable thirst to covet and gain? As far as this administration goes, I'd say the latter.
From years of spiritual research, it is clear that at the core of all religions, the bread of life, the sustenance for abundant living is the wisdom of a living active vital relationship with Source, God, Creator.
Hoarding monetary wealth to obtain power is actually a form of poverty called greed. We actually do not “own” anything. Existence is a free flowing provision of grace that desires the well being of all.
Any hindrance to this loving support is an aberration and surely not something to be admired or held up as a worthy goal.
Lynne Twist, founder of the Pachamama Alliance and author of The Soul of Money says it this way: The Principle of Sufficiency: "When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, and appreciate what you it have, what you have, naturally expands." In this sense sufficiency is not a measure but a declaration: Who I am and what I have is enough.
You have such a gift for moral clarity. This message was an especially powerful example of that. May those of us who have enough be grateful, and may we work for a world where no one suffers because their most basic needs for food, shelter, healthcare, education, and community go unfulfilled.
100% agree that this is a SYMPTOM of the delusion most people are under. The delusion that wealth can offer anything but more delusion.
Thank you
A very wise spiritual mentor I met states, "Apathy in the face of relievable human misery is radical evil." That is the society we live in today. Just the cuts to USAID alone have resulted ithousands of deaths and more human misery. People are starving because the U N World Food Program is short on funds - funds that in the past we have helped with.
I have a hard time believing we even need to ask the question of whether we should try to even the playing field so all may have enough, but many Christians object to "handouts" and center their caring works on "the ones who deserve it" calling aid "socialist" and worrying ever so much about fraud, when the system allows for public fraud by government in plain view with no concern. I think your best point is that our culture "lets one person’s IPO feel like a national event while USAID’s dismantling gets a paragraph." Pointing at the failure to care for your neighbors asin USAID demonstrates a callousness that is ungodly. We need to keep raising the questions and holding up human life consequences if we shirk our responsibility to our brothers and sister. I think if we cannot at least try to turn this around, God will have some opinions on the subject. Israel disappeared, and Judah went into exile. Hard ways to learn this lesson.
You said what I've been saying all along. There is no way to accumulate that much wealth (even billionaire-level) without exploiting a lot of people. Others have to go without basic needs in order for one person to have that much. Plus, anyone who even WANTS to be a trillionaire is only after the prestige attached to it - just being able to say, "I've done something that no one else could ever do." This is fine if you're developing a cure for a disease or inventing something that makes human life better. If you're just going for the ego boost, however, that's straight-up sin. (Not that Musk cares about that 🙄😡)
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