Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Today is Thanksgiving. It is a time to gather with family and friends and give thanks and show our gratitude for the many blessings we have received. It is also time to reflect on the fact that many people are not so blessed and to devise actions plans to alleviate human misery and suffering. God’s bounty is meant to be gift for all, not for the 15 or 53% who are not takers.

Have you noticed that Black Friday has morphed into Black Thanksgiving evening? What a consumerist abomination. Employees will not be able to enjoy a full day with their loved ones. Walmart workers who cannot afford to lose pay or their jobs are threatening to strike. I went to Home Depot to get squirrel shields for my bird feeders yesterday. Throughout the store I saw big skids wrapped in black plastic with signs not to open until 5 AM on Black Friday. Continue reading

Greed Lectio for 10_22

[I have decided that writing notes as I do lectio divina helps me to stay focused—most of the time. Anyway I will post these when I can especially if you find my ramblings helpful.]

Ephesians 2

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Continue reading

Greed and the Current Economic Crisis and Occupy Wall Street

Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh

[I published this article in the Merton Seasonal, Winter 2009. I am posting it here because it gives background information from the scriptures and Thomas Merton on greed and economics and speaks directly to informing Christian conscience with regard to the Occupy Wall Street movement.]

We have been in a shattering worldwide economic crisis for the past several years. When people discuss the root causes of the crisis, the word most often heard is greed. I saw a book in a bookstore in Ireland this summer. The title of the book was The Banksters. Obviously bankers and Wall Street are bearing the brunt of blame for the crisis. It is commonly agreed that irregularities in the housing industry played a large role in precipitating the crisis. Generous loans with skyrocketing adjustable rates mortgages (ARMs), bankers extending credit where credit was not due, financial institutions bundling and selling this potentially bad paper, and prospective homeowners who wanted more house than they knew they could afford created the perfect storm, a cycle of greed. Continue reading

Jesus Speaks to Occupy Wall Street

Jesus today addresses the Occupy Wall Street protestors around the world. He says:

Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.” (Lk 12:14)

Using the words written by Rabbi Lerner, Jesus spells it our for us:

We want to replace a society based on selfishness and materialism with a society based on caring for each other and caring for the planet. We want a new bottom line so that institutions, corporations, government policies, and even personal behavior is judged rational or productive or efficient not only by how much money or power gets generated, but also by how much love and kindness, generosity and caring, environmental and ethical behavior, and how much we are able to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement the grandeur and mystery of all Being. To take the first steps, we want to eliminate ban all money from elections except that supplied by government on an equal basis to all major candidates, require free and equal time for the candidates and prohibit buying other time or space, and require corporations to get a new corporate charter once every five years which they can only get if they can prove a satisfactory history of environmental and social responsibility to a jury of ordinary citizens. We call this the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the US Constitution (ESRA). We want to replace the mistaken notion that homeland security can be achieve through a strategy of world domination by our corporations suppoted by the US military and intelligence services with a strategy of generosity and caring for others in the world that will start by launching a Global Marshall Plan that dedicates 1-2% of our GMP ever year for the next twenty to once and for all eliminate global poverty homelessnes, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care–knowing that this, not an expanded militarr, is what will give us security. And we want a NEW New Deal that provides a job for everyone who wants to work, jobs that rebuild our environment and our infrastructre, and jobs that allow us to take better care of educating our youth and caring for the aged. That’s what we are for! And you can read more about them at www.spiritualprogressives.org

Jesus continues:

These are Gospel values which we must proclaim to empire. We must shout from the parks and the rooftops, “Jesus is Lord.” Do not build barns for your surplus because you cannot take it with you.

 

Resist the Anti-Christ

I am sad to report that the anti-Christ John warned us about is alive and well and has is attempting to repeal Jesus’ message of Good News for us and for the least among us.

The spirit of greed is upon us
because it has elected us and commissioned us
to bring more bad tidings to the poor.
It compels us to order more incarceration for more people

and to repeal funds for giving sight to the blind.
It compels us to oppress more people for their resources

and to proclaim a year that is not acceptable to God.

But we do not despair because John assures us, “And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.”

Jesus proclaimed the message of faith:

He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Resist the anti-Christ. Proclaim Jesus’ Good News!

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Greed

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is worth a watch. We saw it yesterday. Today we get a second reading from Amos and his condemnation of riches. Even more powerful than the sequel to Wall Street is the story Jesus tells in today’s Gospel—the rich man and Dives at the gate. What is it that we don’t get from the prophets and the One Risen from the Dead?

Last week we heard the startling statistic that one out of every seven Americans live in poverty. While the rich fight to keep the Bush tax breaks that have cost the Treasury trillions, one out of every seven Americans languishes at the gates of the rich man’s manor. In America and around the world the income gap between the haves and have-nots is increasing at an alarming rate. Continue reading

Famine, Greed and the Fourth of July

Grizzly with Cubs in Denali

Amos is one of my favorite prophets. When Amos prophesies at the king’s shrine, the king tells him to get lost. Amos does not back down. He continues to speak. In effect, he tells the king to stick it in his ear.

In today’s reading, Amos address the injustices done to the poor. He denounces exploitation, faulty scales, and anything that oppresses people. He issues a strong warning to the ruling elite.

Now Amos, in his day, believed that God directly punished injustice. Today we are more likely to say the what goes around comes around. When people treat others unjustly it usually redounds upon their own heads in some way. Alaska’s indigenous people say, “Live Carefully—What You Do Will Come Back to You.” Continue reading