Saving Habits

Sure he was frugal. Frugality was lodged in his DNA. Dad’s religion included thrift like a night watchmen job includes a flash light. Never mind the distance my father had to gas up for vegetables on sale. Never mind the extra minutes. Fresh spinach, dicy cucumbers, or savory leeks at a bargain. Ads drew him. When a bright tomato danced in the evening’s tossed salad, we’d hear his boastful story of saving a few pennies.

As for me, the child eating and listening and catching warmth on his saving graces, his stories passed over into patterns of my own money behaviors. I’m compelled to claim a bedside bank close. No matter my age, I watch precious pennies drop into a “piggy bank.” to affirm that I’ll always be safe and secure when it comes to having enough

I think about his pennies. Dad called them “opportunities.” In them, he said, “God shines.” So now, for me, I spot one, which I did just yesterday and I stoop to grab it just quickly as my father grabbed juicy looking tomatoes. And on a bike ride, my feet can easily sqeak to a stop, turn back, pick one up and right there, polish it and savor that little instrument of joy.

Sure, it doesn’t buy much. But echoes of dad’s words: “it’s not about what it will buy. It’s about being vigilant, about all that is promised by God.” After all don’t we believe that embossed shiny inscription on it: In God We Trust?”

Love Dwells

Sufis celebrate God’s world by loving it, dancing on it, and serving the beauty of it. Sufis are the mystical part of the Muslim religion. Like Christian monks, they declare their love for God by living it in everything they do.

Like Sufis, our own spiritual path can serve the beauty of God’s world, regardless of place. In my case, when in my garden, love dwells even in the intricate lace work of a dying leaf, and in the plush redness of a blooming rose, and in the extragavant delicacy of a purple orchid.

Love even smiles on the words that I write on this page. Love dwells on your own eyes as you read my words.

Love dwells and dwells and goes on dwelling.

Is there a place in your world where love dwells?
Could you put a price tag on it?

I don't care what your religion or creed

I don't care what religion or creed you hold. That doesn't interest me. What interests me are what values you hold and how you manifest those values. I care how you see yourself in this world of plenty and scarcity and how you respond to either state.

I'm interested in how you feel called to make a difference, no matter what the good difference might be. I'm interested, really, in your soul's work. In how you turn your failures into growth, how you handle the events that come roaring into your world, and how you want to grow your spirit while you still have a chance to do so in this life.

That's a subject that interests me and I'm proud to declare it and I welcome your comments about that.

Thoughts on a blue/gray morning:

The gospel of money again. I’m wildly back pedaling, looking at the journey.

I like what I do, but if I do it being half there, then, my gosh, who am I?

I don’t know why things and life and death have to be dark, why my parents Great Depression scars pressed into my own skin. I don’t know why I had to say “F” you to my inheritance before I could say that I loved the money, was grateful for its presence, and finally got on my knees to God for all of it. I had to get rich before I got smart?

But it’s all there, all the black and blue of it, picking myself up, over and over with all the paper bags of stuff still clinging. I keep holding those old bags. When I arrive, hey, I can say I carried my load. I ran the slower race, but I wasn’t whipped. It’s no life if there hasn’t been a million tons of “why’s! Why this and why that?”

The church taught that we were blessed with guardian angels. I hope mine accompanied me in all the harshness of learning to grow up, to see things in brighter light. I hope my angel closed its wings in prayer for me, maybe even lifted me when the bridge to sanctity split in two, but stayed away at night when my nightmare got me crying, so that maybe, the next night, I slept with a smile.

All of us must learn before we die, to know what we are running from and to where we are running and why.

How my book, Money As Sacrament, Was Born

Long after Mom’s death, I found myself desperate to open up about the subject of money. For sixteen years as a teaching nun, there had been little enough attention paid to money. When I left the convent aswirl in confusion over this vast yet personal subject, I proceeded to take on three jobs, somehow fearful for my very survival. I worked day and night and nearly wrecked myself. Soon I had to admit that all that holy silence on the subject had done this pilgrim little good. Clearly my ideas and approach to money needed much retooling..

I sought to unearth the hidden emotional places where I had lived with money, places both mystic and archaic. My trust in God to go on showering manna on the world ran up against formidable financial insecurities I never realized I had.

In my follow-up incarnation as beneficiary of a substantial inheritance from my parents, I wondered if I could bring myself to embrace, at last, this illusive energy that had danced around me for so long. Maybe there was even a deeper spiritual truth to discover here.

Church sermons were often critical of the rich, as if possession of money made one less a Christian. I struggled for a different slant. I longed to affirm the use of money as an extension of human identity, perhaps even one of the most effective ways of expressing who we are. When I define money without reference to me or you it lacks any meaning; could it be that each of us simply defines money from his and her own place? That whatever moral value money possessed was merely up to us? That sounded familiar . . . “By their actions, you will know them” could be very close to “by their money, you shall know them”. Of course not in the sense so much of our culture sees it, in the size of our stockpile. But known by what values we assign to that otherwise most neutral of commodities. A conclusion became unavoidable, and I continue to share this truth wherever I speak: the healthy love of money actually empowers the soul, widens its horizons and grants it the possibility of an extraordinary role in the world.
Think about it.