a reflection in 3 parts. part 3

But there are so many blocks to us forming any sort of community where vulnerability, compassion, and service are considered values. The most obvious would be our dominant culture that we were raised in that values strength, dominance, individualism, wealth, and power among other things like donating money to a non-profit each year so that our wealth looks like a means to helping the world when our wealth is what is sucking it dry. I think wealth is one of those things that creates divisions between people. I'm not saying that poverty doesn't, but most people don't choose poverty, although a few come to mind…, but when people choose poverty the divisions that come are usually between them and those that feel threatened as if a choice towards poverty is somehow a challenge to a choice towards wealth, and it is, so they are correct. But anyway, I see it here around me so often. There are families that have divisions between themselves and their neighbors. Take Doña Nieves who tells me the other day that she is just worked to death. She is 62 and her husband has left her recently, who knows why or where, but he didn't do anything before anyway, and she cooks and cleans, and sews things to make money… she's a great seamstress, and on top of this she offers help to poor children in the area and visits an old lady that has no friends or people to buy her food. Sweet. But when she asks her old friend Doña Adelia for a little help with some of the visiting and volunteering and giving time, Adelia just offers some money. Her little hotel has taken off and she doesn't really have time to give of herself anymore, but Nieves doesn't want her money, just her time. Why did I tell this story? I have no idea. But it reminds me that in communities people look after each other and offer themselves to each other, but when money, or better, Capital, comes in, so often people fall out of the way of offering of self and into the way of offering money. And nieves doesn't tell adelia that she feels hurt or offended, she just keeps trucking along. So these two old friends can no longer be honest or vulnerable with one another and somehow I'm sure that adelia's new found wealth has something to do with it. Have you ever read the brothers Karamazov? It's fantastic. You should read it. There is a great section on the temptations of Christ in the desert. He rejects using the magic of the devil, then rejects a miraculous sign of the tempter, and finally rejects political power… I don't remember all the symbolism right now, but the Grand Inquisitor was pissed because he rejected all of the means of controlling people to ensure their happiness. And that's another example of our breakdown in community. People with power that want to control to ensure happiness. Long ago I signed onto the power corrupts bandwagon. Lots of people say it, but only a few really try to live it. And historically we have had many powerful that gained their power through military conquest, or kingly inheritance, but it wasn't until relatively recently with the development of capital—money for wealth's sake, not for trading's sake—that power through business has even been an option. And I think this is somehow at the roots of many of problems of self destruction today also. We live in fear of what tomorrow brings instead of hope and so we work really really hard to save up money for all of those just in cases and we never stop and realize that we are standing on sacred ground and that all those around us are vessels of the divine spark and sometimes when we wake up from a nap, or on Tuesday afternoons when we freak out for a second there is that deep knowledge that our way of living is somehow drastically disconnected from the roots of humanity, and a deep realization that we are moving further away, not closer, but there is no guide on how to get closer and we feel lost. But there are guides and people throughout history and prophets of an age to come, not our own, that have moved closer to our roots in their own way and function as a sort of light for our path, not the path itself, as we journey together. So I think there need to be some radical changes. Some good examples of those changes, for me at least, are catholic worker movements or sustainable farms. Its just difficult because as I look at all the problems around the world, and feel more and more as if a revolution is what is needed, I still see the man down the street that needs my attention right now. So where do we find ourselves between reform of a way of destruction and a revolution of life. It is obvious for me that I cannot force my way of being or perceiving on others, because to do that in the way of the socialists or the capitalists de-legitimizes my ends through violent coercive means. If you are familiar with Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand thought that the rich and powerful supported all of the poor and weak, but she had it backwards. And what the world needs is for the poor and weak to shrug off the oppression of governments and militaries and police that exist to protect the interests and the property of the powerful… but they (and maybe we) are poor and weak and shrugging off the weight of the world is so much. People must oppose those forces of power and wealth and form communities that are small and local and not huge, distant, and bureaucratic. So for me, I feel only small pangs of panic as I see the world I love dearly spiral down and wonder how I stop it. And only small pangs of pain as I realize that the life I live so often is not in sync with my dreams and understandings of how one should live to transform one's own life and thus invite others to follow. I think, though, that regardless of whether or not the worlds structure as it stands now collapses due to oil, or water, or hatred, or foolishness, that I will try to live my life as one that watches the lights and looks for my path. I will probably try to live in some Catholic Worker house that has a farm connected to it or live on the farm that has a house connected to it and try to work on addressing immediate problems while at the same time participating in and encouraging a way of life that is more sustainable and holistic. And I will do foolish things that people will see such as stand in front of large marble buildings holding signs that quote from a 3000 year old text with quips like swords into plowshares when nobody even knows what a plowshare is anymore, and I will stay in my house to play with children or plant some seeds on election days and people will ask why I've given up on reforming the government—call me hopeless or a quitter—and I will smile, and questions myself if they are right, and maybe… but no. I have more hope, and I am trying all the harder to be one that lives as the Lord is calling me. And the master that I serve has some serious issues with large organizations that take money at the threat of violence from the workers to give to the business owners to build better bombs to kill women and children wherever they may be if they oppose our system of taking money (or oil, or trees, or water) at the threat of violence. And maybe none of this will happen. Maybe someday without looking I will step out in front of a car and the lord will take me and give me rest from all these questions that have no answers and all of this searching that has only one goal, which is "on earth as it is in heaven." But I guess until that day I'll keep exploring things and wondering and hoping hoping hoping and praying praying praying.