Spirit, Meaning, and Money

Witness to a Funeral

2011-10-06T16:56:00.002-04:00

Dear friends, my piece is long and I thank you for reading it to the end.

Troy Davis was killed by the state of Georgia on September 21, at 11:08. Jim and I were privileged to attend Troy Anthony’s Davis' funeral last Saturday in Savannah Georgia along with 2000 supporters. Held at the giant new and beautiful Jonesville Baptist church where security included no large handbags allowed. A bevy of volunteers escorted us to our pew.

Inspiring singing, praying, and clapping from the large choir drew in everyone around us. Above the wide altar hung two giant screens which projected the speakers and often flashed back to Troy’s picture and that moving quote: I am Troy Davis and I am free.

I wish I could quote all tributes paid to this man. His attorney, having gotten close over the seven years he represented him, Jason Ewart became Troy's close friend and delivered a most telling account “Troy is not only symbol but very soul of somebody much larger. Together with similar tributes from his many family members, friends, pastors, attorneys, and even prison cellmates, here was a man of truly transcendent substance. No accident that the word spread across the globe to people who'd never even met him. A million signatures had been collected from all over the world opposing his execution, including pleas from the pope, politicians, celebrities everywhere.

"When," Jason concluded, "we learned that they had murdered him after hoping for another stay, we simply said: 'This makes no sense.' Troy's execution was noteworthy because so much doubt existed over it.

Those allowed in the killing chamber spoke of Troy's amazing calm, exemplified in his last words. To the family of the murdered policeman he said: “I am sorry for your loss, but I did not take the life of your son.” Then he turned to the man who would shoot the “murderous juice” into his arm to said: “I forgive you, and may God bless you.”

What other evidence is needed! No man guilty of a crime could ever be so aware and compassionate at the very moment of death. He refused the calming sedative they offered him for he was already calm.

A young woman attorney, spoke of how Troy became a mentor to her and to her husband. Through many conversations, “he was always strong, always comforting us," she said. I’m profoundly grateful for having been his friend. And grateful that he was no longer #657678 but Troy Anthony Davis and he was free.

A black friend who’d served his country in two wars asked Troy in his last visit: “What do you want people to know?”

“Even though they kill me, you must continue to fight for all the Troy Davises before and after me. Young people must work to take away this death penalty in our country.”

"Even in death," the man concluded, "Troy wasn’t thinking of himself.”

Ben Jealous, director of NAACP brilliantly spoke of our un-just system: “Justice is clogged when innocent people can be murdered, and when one of the white guys on the Georgia Parole board changed his vote making it two to three to kill him, obviously, our criminal justice system is more criminal than just."

Larry Cox, head of Amnesty International spoke passionately, bringing many of us to our feet amid our tears. “Every killing removes the basic rights of a person. The murdered policeman, McPhail’s rights were taken. But the state of Georgia turned around and took another man’s rights away by killing again. And what do you call it while a condemned man watches guards prepare to take his life? No other name for it: TORTURE! This system of ours is EVIL.

Everyone joined the fiery Cox in wrapping his talk up. “Georgia believes the Troy Davis case is over. Let’s be clear about that. " And a cry arose from the multitude: “No! this case hasn’t even started!”

Finally, in his ardent eulogy, Rev Raphael Warnock, pastor of Martin Luther King's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta proclaimed that Troy Davis transformed his prison’s death sentence into a powerful pulpit, a light to the Netherlands, to Nigeria, to London, and to the entire world.

Friends, join me to personally do everything we can to change America’s violent death penalty. (Really State Sponsored Murder) America is only one of five countries practicing this barbaric form of death. It’s about time it comes to its senses!

generating a powerful relationship with money

2011-07-17T22:20:00.000-04:00

Money is a subject that has held both endless challenge and fascination for me.Whether that is genetic or comes from example, I don’t know. At 20, I entered a convent, embracing a solemn vow of poverty, refusing to have anything to do with even a dime in my pocket. At 38, I left the order to face another reality: earning a lean salary working in the service of the church. Then suddenly, everything changed. A generous inheritance from my parents presented me with a far different struggle. Was there no end to the money puzzle?

Led by a friend, I read Jacob Needleman’s book, Money and the Meaning of Life. I realized: It’s not that we consider money too important, but that we don’t consider it important enough.

Money was vital and I needed to be okay with it. In the end, I came to see that all God really wanted was for me to be myself – a woman deeply shaped, conditioned, and blessed by a unique relationship with money. Taking in that truth, I set out to explore other women’s unique relationships to money. The result was I wrote a book called Money As Sacrament.

In this article, I share how some remarkable women healed their money anxieties.

Chris, a striking redhead, trustingly told me of a hidden dark past. “I had placed myself in relationships that financially drained me. I hear about women who get divorced and come out smelling like a rose. But, damn,” she said, pulling a strand of wavy hair behind her ear. “That didn’t happen to me.”

Chris’s voice cracked like dry weeping each time she spoke of her former marriages. “My first husband and I made a lot of money, but he spent it as quickly as we made it. My second husband couldn't hold a job. I spent long hours trying to cover a flood of his bills. When I discovered that he was spending uncontrollably, and that the bank was foreclosing on a home that I alone had purchased, it was too late. I lost my home.”

Even now, Chris remains amazed at her dysfunctional behavior. “Do you wonder how I could have been so naive?” she wondered out loud. “I can’t believe it myself!”

I’d heard similar stories from other women: stories of bankruptcy, stories of lost inheritances. Yet, in some mysterious, “God-crazy way” Chris’s dark past had now forged a confident and reverent woman.

“Let me tell you about Ben, my miracle,” she says. “He’s a phenomenon of enchantment. Yes, he lives in a wheelchair, suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. Yet Ben is a soulful optimist and despite his disability, he affirms over and over that life is good. As for our money, he handles it all electronically. When I write a check, he enters it into the computer. We make all our financial decisions together. No longer am I kept in the dark about what’s in the bank. No longer am I paranoid about what’s in the bank and what isn’t.”

So often, we women cannot see much beyond a narrow financial focus. Healing often comes from someone helping us find a new mind, a new trust, a complete renewal of sensible behaviors.

Linking money and spirituality

The majority of women interviewed for my book believed that money and spirituality are intertwined in deep and mysterious ways. One couple I’d like to tell you about now didn’t make the pages of my book. Money as Sacrament was already on the bookstore shelves when I first heard about them.

Margie and Peter’s story is one of strength and blessing, a story that goes to the heart of the money and spirituality link. As Margie puts it, “The universe listened when Peter and I determined to live debt-free.”

Before they met, Peter, 31, had been diagnosed with stage-four cancer. Each year, doctors checked him out and questioned how much more time he had left. Alone and despondent, purchase after purchase, Peter ran the fool’s race of credit card sprees. Bills arrived, including medical statements. and he simply dumped them unopened into a laundry basket. When Margie met him, there were two basketfuls of unopened bills.

As for Margie, she carried a debt of her own: more than $45,000. “Debt was second nature,” she says. “I never even hoped I could be without it.” Finally she sought the aid of a counselor and with her help, began to develop a spiritual consciousness about money. “Clearly, the burden of debt wasn’t what God wanted for me.”

Margie moved in with Peter and as their love grew stronger, new doors to possibilities flew open.

“I saw the necessity of continuing that money consciousness I had started,” she says. “So each week, Peter and I sat together to discuss our money status, and how that debt impacted our relationship. More importantly, how it impacted his health.”

They became engaged and soon after, Peter landed a job in Florida with Disney. His health was miraculously back on track.

Led by some inner determination, Margie found Suze Orman’s book, The Seven Steps to Financial Freedom.

“Each week, we faithfully sat together, read a chapter, examined our fears about money and what baggage we carried. We learned a lot about each other’s fears, about our lack of trust in each other, our spending, our saving, that sort of thing.”

What was increasingly clear to this couple became the basis for action, almost second nature.

“Working together on the cancer issue, we saw results: Peter was becoming more healthy. So we could free ourselves of debt if we both worked at it. It didn’t matter whose debt. Debt was debt! We were in this together.”

How long did it take? Not the ten years they had supposed, but as Margie reports, “We were debt-free in two and a half years.”

Margie’s final summary rings true for us all. “In our move to higher consciousness, we found that by mindful intention to pay down all debt, the universe responded,” she says. “Money started showing up from unexpected places. Little job opportunities rolled in. The final miracle was that the hospital freed Peter from a $10,000 debt. The forgiveness of that debt would never have happened without our radical intention.”

Peter remains cancer-free to this day.

It is impossible not to hold in reverence these stalwart women who climbed the mountain from ignorance to financial wisdom. Money became their upward path to healing and yes, to holiness. I wish that kind of healing for all women reading these stories. And don’t forget to honor your own story. You have no idea how profoundly it speaks to another.

Learning From Other Faiths

2011-07-17T07:20:00.001-04:00

Dear Special Friends,

With so much depressing news in the media, I share this good news by a Christian monk in a Maryknoll book of Inspiration.

"When I was teaching in Turkey, I had a small apartment in a working-class neighborhood and was known as a Christian monk. One afternoon I returned home to find a man sitting on the steps waiting for me. He said that his wife had stopped by earlier but found the door locked. I said, yes, I usually lock my door when I am not at home. He said that I needn't bother, because the women of the neighborhood were always around and would know of anyone who didn't belong tried to get in.

I realized that locking my door was an indication that I didn't trust my neighbors, so I never locked my door again. Often I would return from the university to find that someone had left a covered bowl with rice and eggplant, borek, or a few kebabs on the counter. After finishing the food, I use to wash the bowl and leave it in the same place and in a few days it would disappear. Some days later, I would receive another gift of food. Other days I would find that my clothes had been washed, floors swept bed linens changed, shirts ironed and folded, and so on. I never saw who performed this service, although I presume that it was done by women of the neighborhood.

This went on for six months until it was time for me to return to Rome. I told one the of the men who had stopped buy to wish me a safe journey that I had a final request. I asked if I could meet the neighborhood women to thank them for their generous help during the previous months. He said, "You don't have to meet them. They didn't do this for you; they did it for God, and God who sees all that we do will reward the. The Koran teaches that monks are one of the reasons why Christians are the closest community in friendship to Muslims, so it is an act of worship for us to treat you with kindness."

Thomas F Michel, S.J.

Buy the Best

2011-07-09T00:11:00.000-04:00

After not so patiently answering a thousand questions, Janice, the Sears sales lady started pecking at her hand computer, obviously sick of my anxiety. But I couldn’t help myself. Two thousand dollars for a Frigidare oven? Sure we needed one, but a top of the line? I stepped away knowing that I’d been thrown back into the crazy ‘we don’t have enough money’ place.

Now you might think that’s a reasonable price for a range that’s going to fill all needs, that has a look any kitchen could die for, and that I own a check book that can handle the exchange. But the old emotional nemesis kept shouting, “Hey, Adele, it’s too much.”

Jealous of milling customers who didn’t suffer this ancient fear, I dived into an inner conference with my father; Rescue me Dad! “Yes, you always counseled to “buy the best”. Isn’t the best here a little pricey?

Jim, husband, and new precious mentor, leaned down after moments of respectful silence, “Honey, don’t we want this stove?” Serene face, untouched by my cold feet. I searched that face. Damn, why can’t you get scared too? Is it just because it’s “my” money.

I looked into the mirror across the aisle. Get a grip, Adele. God blesses you with a blooming money tree and you make yourself worry sick? Was I still the nun holding a vow of poverty? Idiot!

I felt better.

“Sure we want this stove,” handing Janice my visa. I picked up my wallet and turned toward Jim, “Honey, I’m ok.”

“If you say so.” He smiled. We joined hands and left the store. What a partner I married! Someone who understood my silly money noises.

You should know that anxiety attack when buying that stove happened early on in our marriage. Now, fourteen years later, I’m happily calm when it comes to flashy purchases. Only yesterday, I laid down my credit card for a Magellan navigator—excessive price tag—and no one heard a peep out of me.

Letter to friend writer

2011-06-27T16:43:00.000-04:00

Oh, how your note touched a deep place in me. And coincidentally, Jim and I had spoken of you only this morning. You must have been emailing me while we thought of how you were faring. It seems from your note, you're handling your existence pretty competantly.

Jim and I attend a Writers group in Mount Dora, been doing that for the last four years. I love it, love the group, love the writings we hear from each other. I'm working on a book, a novel..and feel brave to try such a lengthy thing, brave to read parts of it to the group. But something in me pushes me forward to make it a reality. When we visit I'll share some of what and why I must write it.

I think of Ed a lot. I wonder if he, like Jim, carried on despite setbacks. Jim is handling (footing?) an arthritis challenge. He limps a bit, and had accepted that reality. I find it hard to see him walk, but he's walking. I guess that's the best part.

Gosh, 14 years of having that writing class of yours. They must love you, and it's true, it is faith building. All writing is. Whatever pieces of faith are being allowed to break through, whether we speak explicitly of God doesn't matter.

I just finished James Carroll's book, Practicing Catholic. A real sweep of Catholic stuff since before Vatican II. Wow. He spoke at the American Catholic Council in Detroit. For some reason, Jim and I were led to go, and it was for me, a baptism of sorts. My catholic faith bloomed as never before. Oh, I won't go back to Mass, but realize how happy and deeply is my faith in Jesus. That's what really counts.

And of course, we belong to Pax Christi Florida, and I partake of its socially conscious efforts...that's the kind of stuff I find best follows Jesus' way.

Oh, I could go on, grateful that your note pushed me to go on!

Stay well, and someday, in God's time, we'll meet.

Voices of Inclusion

2011-06-18T13:17:00.002-04:00

Voices of Catholic Inclusion

American Catholic Council, 6/10-12/2011

Jim and I attended the recent American Catholic Council gathering in Detroit along with some two thousand other wandering Catholics. The breath of fresh air let loose by Pope John XXIII blew as strong for us this past weekend as it had for the attendees of that fabled call to awakening & reform in Rome fifty years ago this week, the Second Vatican Council.

We rejoiced hearing noted ACC speakers authoritatively voice the ancient and deep realities of what it means to be a Catholic, as modeled on the inclusive and loving practice of our founder. We were reminded of how Jesus warmly welcomed everyone at his table, how in particular he spoke to the essential role both women and men play in facilitating the community of faith.

We were brought back to the reality of an early church which all the people of God helped to govern, one never known as well to cease welcoming its married clergy.

Two clear points of emphasis emerged over our weekend: the role of experience in our church that down through the ages has always influenced and informed Catholic teaching. And the right & responsibility of every Catholic to develop and act on his/her own conscience.

Swiss theologian Hans Kung, American theologian Anthony Padovano, author James Carroll, long time Dominican and activist/mystic Matthew Fox, and Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, all fired our spirits as they brought us back to our authentic Catholic roots and updated us on numerous issues plaguing today’s church, including an inexcusable bias against both women’s ordination and full membership of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

The gathering was only a beginning. As Detroit’s own Cardinal Deardon long ago remarked, “We are trying to begin a new way of doing the work of the Church in America. We may fail, but let us try and let the people say, ‘They cared enough to try!’ ”

Even so, how glorious to resonate again with a sound we can believe in, voices of catholic inclusion -- expression of glaring redundancy if ever there was! For us the weekend amounted to nothing less than a holy rebranding, a Baptism. Before the first day’s events concluded we’d been drowned in another gift of the spirit. There is hope. Change can't be far!

talk at Rally to boycott Bank of America

2011-04-18T13:20:00.001-04:00

Earlier this week, MoveOn.org sent an email to us, more than 3 million members urging us to mobilize to oust Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. May it be so.

Finally, we are paying attention to the unpaying corporations especially in this time when state and federal governments are facing massive budget problems. It’s about time.

The Bank of America uses subtle loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying their fair share.You and I standing here paid more in taxes than the big tax dodgers like GE and Bank of America.

I’m proud of us who stand here today, knowing that we paid our taxes. Well, why not. Aren’t taxes about the common wealth, that is the common good: money for roads, libraries, police protection and many other needed social services.

It’s to our shame that we have allowed so many loopholes enabling corporate life to withhold money from us, yes, yes, from us, from our common good.

My husband withdrew our accounts from the Bank of America. Money talks and by his withdrawal the money talked to this Bank saying: we refuse to support your crimes against communities, the common wealth.

Let us who are standing here change over to smaller banks. Let us tell our Central Florida friends and relatives to do the same. When we keep our money in our local financial institutions, that money in turn is reinvested in local businesses, which is important for building a stable economy and encouraging local growth. Not so with Wall Street banks like the Bank of America. They use your deposits to make risky investments, gambling at the expense of the economy as a whole.

So, Mr. Bank of America CEO, Ken Lewis, shame on you. You have betrayed your mission. You have not benefitted us but have tried to destroy what is the real America. Rather you employed your bank’s resources to upscale your bonuses, to invest in fine houses, yachts, and other greedy acquisitions. It’s time for you to go, .. for you not only betrayed your clients, but as a leader, you have betrayed yourself, turned yourself into a crook, withholding your corporation’s share of paying its tax share to the common wealth. I feel sorry for you. You have lost your conscience, and if you ever had it, your moral high ground.

Resign, Mr. Lewis. Just resign. Today! Before dinner!

A weekend of growth

2010-09-16T07:02:00.000-04:00

Dear friends,

The Pax Christi weekend was a blast! God was totally around. I don’t own enough words to express my thanks to Pax Christi Florida for this mind expanding two days. Five speakers witnessed their activism and we were swept away by what they offer the world. Take a look at God’s professionals who addressed us:

Patrick Finn-Schultz, a member of our Pax Christi board, became a recent father, and is a dedicated Coordinator of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE). He let us in on the way our prison system is unfairly going, calling for a paradigm shift in the way we think about prison reform. We used to regard prison as a form of societal protection. Now its all about fear based social control. The United States has really gone “coo coo”(my words) in increasing prison buildings rather than rehabilitating men and women, especially young blacks living behind bars. I weep at our loss.

Second, Samar Jarrah, International speaker, a Palestinian-American Muslim, and Professor at USF, addresses American and Arab audiences everywhere. She hosts a regular radio show in the Tampa St. Pete Area. The title of her book says it all: Arab voices speak to American Hearts. So articulate, she was a bright Muslim light to all listeners. Emails constantly pour into her university, asking her to come, to answer questions about Islam. Her words and her book grew from the sad fact we call 9/11. Her talk made me more proud to be an Arab American. Yeah, Samar!

As if all of that weren’t enough, we heard an attorney and a very Catholic John Hushon, speak of current renewal going on among disenchanted Catholics, citing the Pew Foundation Research: a hefty thirty million have left the church.

Called The American Catholic Council, it’s a coalition of organizations, communities and individuals attempting to restore the promises of Vatican II documents.

Since Jim and I no longer attend Sunday Mass, we again discovered that our authentic Catholic roots are still very much alive. As a result, we said yes to John Hushon’s call to attend the conference in Detroit on June 2011. Ya’ll come! I know it promises to be another expanding mind and spirit journey.

Then there is Haiti. Daniel Tillias’s moving presentation, Hear the Cry of My Haiti revealed how much work is still needed. Daniel comes from Citi Soleil slums, the poorest section of the capitol to lead the Pax Christi chapter. What was amazing in his talk that no matter how much work lies ahead, thirty-two year old Daniel personifies the positive spirit of the surviving Haitians as they put their lives back together. In his own words, Daniel says, “I have a big ambition that the world one day would be inspired by Haiti in the path to justice and peace.”

Finally, OhMyGod, More? (We did eat!) We learned of The Trail of Dreams! Two young undocumented men who walked 1500 miles from South Florida to Washington D.C. They brought the immigration message and, tired as we were, these youngsters captured our close attention. Tall and handsome, Carlos Roa and Juan Rodriguez, men in their twenties, shared their story when as kids, their families brought them to the United States, and it was only here that they have been schooled. They are as American as you and me. This land is the only home they know. Yet, our country denies them citizenship. Does it make any sense? Not to me. Let’s fix this unfair system which strips them of the opportunity to participate in our society. Go to Trail of Dreams.org and learn much more.

So, dear friends, as you can imagine, much pulsating life was poured into our hearts and brains this weekend. I’m tired, body wants more sleep, but totally thrilled and filled with hope, glad that so many activists are out there engaged in work which obviously, is the sacred work of Christ.

Oh, Golly. Can I offer another “Finally?” A plug for my beloved husband. He’ll be leaving for a 300 mile plus bike ride in California for Climate Change on Saturday. I ask your prayers that he’ll be totally okay riding those steep mountains on his beloved bicycle and come back safely to me.

Adele

What to do with your Diamond

2010-07-07T10:25:00.002-04:00

Spirituality and Health magazine printed an Indian parable that I wished I'd put into my book, Money As Sacrament. (Ten Speed Press) It's a profound tale on the meaning of true wealth. It first appeared in his newest book, The Jesus Guide to (Almost) Everything by Rev. James Martin, S.J.

The sannyasi (wise man) had reached the outskirts of the village and had settled down under a tree for the night when a villager came running up to him and said: "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone!"

"What stone?" asked the sannyasi

"Last night the Lord Shiva appeared to me in a dream" said the villager "and told me that if I went to the outskirts of the village at dusk,I should find a sannyasi who would give me a precious stone that would make me rich forever."

The sannyasi rummaged in his bag and pulled out a stone.

"He probably meant this one," he said as he handed the stone over to the villager. " found it on the forest path some days ago. You can certainly have it."

The man gazed at the stone in wonder. It was a diamond, probably the largest diamond in the whole world, for it was as large as a person's head.

He took the diamond and walked away. All night he tossed about in bed, unable to sleep
Next day at the crack of dawn he woke the sannyasi and said, "Give me the wealth that makes it possible for you to give this diamond away so easily."

Dear readers, pass this story on. It's meaning is meant for all of us.

musings on Moving Forward

2009-12-07T10:37:00.002-05:00

I lost myself the other day. I can’t find her. The self I mean. Where did she go? Self, Self, come back. Did you go because I was blind to you, the real you? Because I was off in some foreign place looking for meaning after my friend died, a force that broke my heart? Come back self, come back. I’ll give you time, my smile, Come back. Speak.

This early dawn, I race my bike along the river walk, glad my aging legs can travel 11 miles an hour. The river quickly captures my heart. I feel her presence, her moods, her quiet murmuring nourishing my hope of finding myself again.
I sail past every ripple and out beyond, I see white patches of sailboats, calm, serene, moving toward some star. Self? Are you out there? A Pelican glides above the river’s radiant surface. The whole site is wonderful, a vast body of life to every flashing animal underneath, every hyacinth on top, every moving sunbeam.
The wind whips around me. I sniff happiness from fisher folk who sit at the grasses’ edge, holding hard their fishing poles for a St. John’s dinner. I love how their strong black fingers tighten around their long poles digging below river’s surfaces. Wide brimmed hats turn, eyes smile, notice me and wave. I’m a part of these folks. God, knows, they are a part of me.

I bring my reading to the monthly writer’s group. Butterflies never cease to accompany my readings. I worry! Will they listen to what I say, really listen? I want them to like me. I want to spill something of my soul to them.
But Jim believes I get mired in too much seriousness, prone to shout out what’s wrong with the world. Too much shouting about suffering?
But damn it, what good am I if I don’t attend to the weeping around me? If I miss the you in the you that is poorly dressed, the you that is like me. What good am I if I fail to honor the hungry, the green Ford that broke down by the river walk?
Soren Kierkegaard ‘s line rings in my head: “What the age needs is not a genius but a martyr.”
Okay, okay I’m still a Catholic.

I like my writer’s group. I wish I saw them more. They smile when I breeze in, ask questions like “how ya’ doing?” I smile, say something silly. But open my heart in a quick second? Tell them how I’m really doing? That I can’t find my self right now, my real self? Tell them how I weep for the loss of my long-time soulmate, about other friends that have moved away, leaving me empty inside. Tell them that I am hardening to life, growing tired of the darkness?

When I was a young nun, everything focused bright. Sure, I wore heavy black serge, topped with a weighty white cap. But honestly, my classes nourished my soul. Life was easy. I had religious rules and I followed them. Rules governed my classes also, but there was much fun and spirited learning. We sang Gilenau’s Psalm 8 for prayer: “How Great is your Name O lord Our God!” We sang as if God were leading the sing-a-long, perfectly in tune.
We played classroom exercise games, practiced and performed Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado in shiny Japanese costumes for the entire parish. My little yum yum, Elizabeth, writes me fifty years later about her new title as Delray’s Superintendent of Schools. Oh, I need those kid’s love now, to hear their shouting: “Sister, he pushed me.” Or not knowing how to answer brainy Rochina’s Colandro’s furious challenge: “Sister, what does adultery mean?“

In my office, I click these forlorn thoughts and stare at my framed antique Mother Mary, whose eyes reflect the sweetest of mothers. She hangs beside the arched orange and black Abbey du Thoranet, a French monastery. They are a pair, mother and monks. I pause to take in the moment. It feels like I’m being religious.

As for my self, well, maybe she’s on her way. Last night, I finished rereading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings classic, The Yearling. The final chapter completely pierced my soul. I broke down. I found oneness with the pioneering sorrow, the growth, the change that happened to son, Jody,
A not so simple tale of loss. Jody’s beloved fawn, Flag, grown now to adulthood, continued to pinch away the seedlings of their meager corn crop. Nothing could stop him, so Penny, the best of fathers, directed: “Jody, take your gun out and shoot him.”
I felt Jody’s horror, his adolescent feelings turning to hate, his refusal to do such a thing. Life without Flag wasn’t possible. But he obediently shoots the animal, and stricken by total alienation, runs away, far into the dark Florida woods, hungry, sleeping under live oaks, uncaring of the forest danger. After three days, starvation finds him longing for the father who always knew what to do to make things right.
He returns, finds his aching bent father sitting alone hunched before a fire. Penny weeps at seeing his lost son. Looking up closely, Penny sees a son that’s different now, grown, a new self. Suffering had born him as man.
Penny speaks, not only to Jody but to me: I read them aloud again and again:

I’m goin’ to talk to you, man to man. You figgered I went back on you. Now there’s a thing ever’ man has got to know. Mebbe you know it a’ready. ‘Twa’n’t only me. ‘Twa’n’t only your yearlin’ deer havin to be destroyed. Boy, life goes back on you.”

....You’ve seed how things goes in the world o’ men. You’ve knowed men to be low-down and mean. You’ve seed ol’ Death at his tricks. You’ve messed around with ol’ Starvation. Ever’ man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. ‘Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but ‘tain’t easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I’ve been uneasy all my life.

.....I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin’. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever’ man’s lonesome. What’s he to do then? What’s he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”

I put the book’s pages down, feeling a new and strange sense of sorrow. Somehow, I was swept back to that young nun that was once me, no longer a nun and definitely no longer young, but now, in her long lifetime, has had to face losses, and recently, that of her beloved friend.
Perhaps, when we go looking for the lost self as I had done, maybe we find it in segments, in unsuspected places, in the moving flow of a giant river, in the heartfelt stories of a good book or in a simple wave from a black woman fishing for her supper.

More than any biblical narrative, Marjorie’s words pierced deep my unknown places, pushing forth so many more tears, granting me discovery of a new self that perhaps can move forward.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-20T10:48:00.001-05:00

Last Sunday, my husband and I visited the local Unitarian church that feeds us so well. Jim and I sat near the front. The day’s leader took her place, lit the candles, and led the prayers that are prayed each Sunday -prayers of peace, of thankfulness for the freedom we’ve been given.
I held Jim’s hand as I listened to a rare litany that captured my heart, that came across as a basic Jesus teaching. I sat forward not wanting to miss one word . . .
Litany of Restoration

If, recognizing the interdependence of all life, we strive to build community, the strength we gather will be our salvation . . .

If you are black and I am white,
It will not matter.

If you are female and I am male,
It will not matter

If you are older and I am younger,
It will not matter

If you are progressive and I am conservative,
It will not matter

If you are straight and I am gay,
It will not matter

If you are Christian and I am Jewish
It will not matter

If we join spirits as brothers and sisters, the pain of our aloneness will be lessened,
And that does matter. In this spirit, we build community and move toward restoration.

As we drove home, I reflected on the coming Thanksgiving feast, and what, after all, does really matter as we approach our table laden with all sorts of traditional nourishing fare.

In my many years I’ve attended numerous Thanksgiving repasts, felt all manner of Thanksgiving grace poured out, lost myself in endless chatter with my tablemates about mundane and not so mundane matters.

Would it be too much to ask that this spirit of Thanksgiving continue throughout the year? Rather than what I heard last weekend from the lips of my friend, a savvy and totally caring pastor.

This world’s becoming more dangerous, more & more evil. Even if he thought so, does such a statement help to change anything? I guess he didn’t realize it -we rarely do- but that sort of fear mongering conversation accomplishes exactly the opposite of this season’s ennobling goodwill.

This Thanksgiving, I pray for the goodness that matters, that we take a good close look at how goodness falls into our everyday life. This Thanksgiving I herald the gift of a fresh season from nature, of my neighbor’s kind deed of donating her bicycle to a homeless man, of my joy at finding a new friend at my toastmaster club. Of even of a recent spirited conversation with a friend of such (surprise!) different point of view. Yes, it all matters, every bit.

I give thanks for a gay neighbor who prepared a special meal for a club member recently hospitalized. I’m thankful for the cheery volunteers of Grace ‘n Grits with whom I meet each week to prepare a huge breakfast for the homeless of Sanford. I lift up in prayer my stalwart immigrant friend from Bolivia who teaches me about perseverance, refusing to give up after losing his engineering job of long standing, not losing faith during the following lonely weeks until he landed an even better paying position.

Dear friends, in this special season let’s renew our watchfulness over the airwaves’ prevailing currents of fear, to be receptive instead to God’s persistent goodness everywhere manifest. Let’s offer thanks for even those undesired economic mysteries we live with, if only as God’s topsy-turvy ways of teaching us things we evidently need to know and would otherwise shun. Let us honor both life’s highs and lows, including letting go of so much of what’s not good for us. Let us live with reckless trust in that constant gospel injunction crying out more than any other: Fear Not!

I’m happy that my husband and I were there last Sunday to hear that beautiful summation of what really matters, and of Thanksgiving blessings that only await our proclaiming them.

Spirit, Meaning, and Money: Feeding the World

2009-11-09T11:49:00.000-05:00

Spirit, Meaning, and Money: Feeding the World

Feeding the World

2009-11-09T11:48:00.002-05:00

It’s a Miracle!

Every story explodes more story. Take the example of how a few loaves and a few fishes once wildly burst into a feast of overflowing baskets. I love that story. I love the smile on Jesus’ face as the people are filled. It’s one of the few stories found in all four Gospels.

Thousands of people lounge on the hillside, hungry to hear Jesus’ words of wisdom. For hours, he offers simple, truthful guidance. Like us, the people are starved for authentic truth, for the deepest meaning of what religion has to say. Jesus has holy answers.

Exhausted, first thing Jesus does is sit down. He spends time looking over the crowd. He then shares some of his most insightful parables. When finished, he sees how his nourishment for their souls now calls for another kind of food. So he tells his disciples, “These people are starving. I am too! What’s for lunch?” Sitting in that crowd, I would have been starving as well.

Remember, we’re looking for a miracle here.

Holding up those five loaves and two fishes, Jesus utters the most beautiful of prayers: “Thank you, Father.” Then he blesses this sparse food, consecrates it, giving it power, rendering it so much more than just another hurried picnic.

Then Jesus delightfully doles out the morsels. More food is on the way; generosity begets generosity. He smiles. In fact he laughs with this insane, pure joy of giving. All the people laugh too. The wonder of it all.

Can we do something similar? Don’t we always have something for someone under our noses who can use an extra dollar, a meal, a helping hand at just the right time? When we happen to be the one on call, doesn’t it usually end in something like joy?

As if on cue, Jesus hears a child shout: “I’m full!” He toasts his disciples, then directs them: “Okay, collect the leftovers. We can send them over to the next town.” The men collect and continue to collect. Is there no end, they ask themselves? A tiny meal had become a banquet. A miracle!

Well, yes and no. Perhaps it’s better understood as the most ordinary of outcomes in God’s paired down economic order: give to get! And you multiply your giving.

This story reminds me of Leandra J. Carroll, mother of the current famous singer: Jewel. She writes in her book, The Architecture of All Abundance how her own money continues to multiply: "Though it varies from year to year, I challenge myself to disperse up to 60 percent of my income, after taxes, to benefit areas other than my own personal gain, primarily humanitarian endeavors. I am aware this constitutes a radical generosity, yet it seems my income expands exponentially as a result of my commitment.” Leandra smiles at her own miracle of giving, a personal loaves-&-fishes explosion that overflows, an experience too much to bear and must itself be shared in her prosperity book.

Finally, another loaves and fishes story I found yesterday as told by Paulo Coelho in the recent issue of Ode magazine: Abd Mubarak was on his way to Mecca when he dreamed that he was in heaven and heard two angels having a conversation.
“How many pilgrims came to the holy city this year?” one of them asked.
“Six hundred thousand,” said the other.
“And how many of them had their pilgrimage accepted?”
The answer: “None of them. However in Baghdad there’s a shoemaker called Ali Mufiq who didn’t make the pilgrimage, but did have his pilgrimage accepted, and his graces benefited the 600,000 pilgrims.”
When he woke up, Abd Mubarak went to Mufiqu’s shoe shop and told him his dream.
“At great cost and much sacrifice, I finally managed to get 350 coins together,” the shoemaker said in tears. “But when I was ready to go to Mecca, I discovered my neighbors were hungry, so I distributed the money among them and gave up my pilgrimage.”

And now, onto us! Consider our own filled hands, our soul’s capacity for a loaves-&-fishes miracle. Perhaps our coins could be feeding the needs of five thousand. Perhaps our hands could be feeding the world.

One Family Under God

2009-10-08T11:05:00.001-04:00

Sounds so red, white, and blue, doesn’t it! But will you be my friend if I think differently from you? Will you be my friend if I believe a woman has the right to choose whatever’s given her? Will you be my friend if I believe gay people have just as much right to love as heterosexuals? Will you be my friend if I believe those without a home are given us to befriend? Finally, will you be my friend if I believe that a Jew, and a Muslim, are just as “saved” as any Christian brother or sister?
"Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you." Noted religious writer Karen Armstrong, a favorite hero of mine who has authored over twenty books on religion and who like me spent formative years as a nun, identifies this golden rule as the bedrock directive of all the world’s faiths. I watched her the other night on PBS Bill Moyers’ Journal. Her words rang with a welcome rock-solid basis for universal inclusion.
Religion isn't about believing things. It's more like ethical alchemy, about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.
Yes, behaving! Even as I walk downtown, past Sanford’s famed church-on-every-block of every denomination, I’m reminded to behave in a way that reflects the goodness of each of those expressions of good faith, to love them for their traditions, even for what I may take to be their shortcomings.
In our post-9/11 era Karen Armstrong has become a powerful voice for ecumenical understanding, for the virtue of compassion that links us, makes us connected beings. She presents her current project, a worldwide Charter of Compassion, in a video that can be found on Google.
Compassion is not pity, but the ability to walk in another’s shoes.
I’m reminded of my favorite New Testament scripture: Matthew 25: I was hungry and you gave me to eat, thirsty and you gave me to drink, in prison and you came to visit me. I was naked and you clothed me . . .
It seems I’ve always been chasing religion’s Good News. Baptized into the Greek Orthodox church, I attended a Baptist Sunday school and then a Catholic grade school. Following college as young Sister Mary Adele I enrolled in Barry University’s Religious Studies graduate program. There, in lively classroom discussions that exploded any easy theological complacency, I heard the definitive voices of Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Karen Armstrong’s current voice fits into that probing theological chorus.
A visiting professor ended my Miami classroom experience to say: “You all possess some part of religious truth, but each of your truths is simply part of an entirely bigger sphere of God’s truth.”
It has taken time, but slowly I am coming around to accept the ground of that reality, that any downplaying of another’s belief is venturing far from the mandate to walk in his or her shoes.
Here’s how another prominent thinker sees our Heinz-57 clan. Albert Einstein, who upended the way we think of our physical world, was often asked, “What religion are you?” His most famous retort: “I’m a mosaic!” Which is to say, “Yes! I am all of them.”
In my weekly life for the last three years, I attend an energizing group who have become more family for me than many I can remember. Our Toastmasters Club in Altamonte Springs, begins with a traditional Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Then I listen to heartfelt talks by dark-skinned Americans, by Asians, Jews, Buddhists, Christians, and who-knows-what shade inbetween, altogether a tasty soup of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. Sometimes I’m stretched by the differences. More often Jim and I come home richly nourished: how we see ourselves in each of these brothers and sisters! God’s family lived up-close.

A matter of Time, A Matter of Love

2009-07-05T10:34:00.000-04:00

A Matter of Time, A Matter of Love
(Gay)

Because of the reigning media frenzy regarding gay marriages, I recently pulled out last year’s Christmas card from a male friend living in Los Angeles. On it were three little boys in bright colored smiles. His two year old gazes down with delight at a new pair of twins all bundled up; three precious children setting out on a remarkable journey with their two dads, a committed gay couple together now for about six years.

Its a great photo. But of course one dad happens to be a professional photographer. These days though he takes few pictures: Leonard is a stay-at-home dad while his partner Dan works. Their children are solid proof that love, no matter how manifested, does indeed work.

Is anything lacking here? From where my camera focuses, these dads have everything required to propel their sons into healthy, fulfilled adulthood, beginning not leastwise with their rambling four bedroom home and its recently redesigned nursery room of perhaps too many toys. From where I sit these guys have got it together.

These men didn’t adopt. They arranged the births with the help of a young woman in need who played surrogate mom for them “one step removed”. One of the men is father to the children; they are physically his offspring. But to see this family you’d never guess any distinctions in parenthood. You hear a lot of fussing and gurgling in that household these days. And like any other family meeting life’s unexpected twists, they were overwhelmed when the second go-round delivered a set of twins.

Against this backdrop of domestic bliss experienced in truly generous proportions, I hear the chorus of so many Christian leaders hammering away at any idea of gay union. The facts, the evidence of so many stories like Leonard’s, argue otherwise. As Leonard himself once simply put it to me, “I’m called to live a gay life and have responded to that vocation.” Gay partners, both men and women, in our time are bravely forging a new way to fulfill the most venerated of all biblical vocations, the call to love.

So what of these other biblical calls, so-called, peppering us from so many pulpits? Well, what is seen to be biblically correct, the black-&-white defined for all time right-&-wrong, has in fact been undergoing enormous shifts --you could say like everything else connected to our vital human condition. Check the record in even my own lifetime . . .

In the South, we once preached that God’s law prohibited African-Americans worshiping in the same church as us. “Build your own churches!” we said. “God’s Law demands it!” Mercifully, in our own time that “biblical” truth was left to die a natural death so that in many christian churches today blacks and whites can be heard singing Amazing Grace in one voice.

Then there was that commandment that God never intended interracial marriages. They even came up with a fancy word for it, although I have yet to find linguistic traces for miscegenation in the bible. But ministers insisted the bible said whites and blacks couldn’t mix. Well, who stares anymore when an interracial couple passes by on the street?

Only last Sunday a charming young couple sat ahead of me at Mass, a black man with his white partner. At the sign of peace, they turned around to smile and shake my hand, and later, as they took communion I could see that at last we were coming around to accepting what marriage is really all about.

Changing truths! Do truths change? As a former nun, I’ve seen many “commandments” in my own little community of sisters find new expression in today’s world. Maybe we’re simply digging deeper to find the same basic truth: that life is about love. And that that never changes. If anything is changing, mercifully it’ll be us!

That same Sunday, after my church experience with the inter-racial couple (the expression itself is already dated), I delighted to see in the Sunday New York Times marriage announcements a photo of two men announcing their union. How brave of the Times to print it! How brave of the couple themselves! Our culture and our religion will one day follow suit. One day we won’t be the least surprised to see same sex announcements.

I smoothed out that delightful photo of Trevor, Ethan, and Garrett with their Kodak-perfect smiles that speak a thousand love words, placed it on my fireplace mantle and lit a lavender candle beside it. It burns that we may soon leave all this verbal violence far behind us. I know love will win out. It always does. It’s only a matter of time --and a few brave souls to help us move forward.

I’d like to be around when these three boys pay tributes to their dads, airing their treasured memories of how their dads read to them and took a day off for a day at the zoo together. Maybe how, when one dad caught the flu the other took his place at work and hired a nanny for them. But maybe by then they won't need to tell the stories: two dads will be just another commonplace in this great pulsing kalidescope we call life.

Yes, one day I expect gay marriages will be pretty normal. Who knows, maybe on that day the pulpit itself will at last be abandoned as last ditch defense for a belief on its way out.
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Adele is a money peacemaker and the author of Money As Sacrament, a book for women. It's in all bookstores. She's available for personal money coaching at 407-263-4482 Visit her website:www.moneyassacrament.com.

In Paradisum

2009-05-11T12:35:00.000-04:00

Sitting close in her Hospice room, I held her limp hand in mine. I sought her mostly closed eyes. Her frail, cancer-wracked body lay still, her voice limited to a few trailing whispers. I turned and looked out the large bay window hoping to catch some meaning to all this, finding only deepening sadness. Never had I been present to anyone lingering so long this side of death; never before had I faced an end with such a young mother.

It seemed just a few years ago that she was that vibrant teenager, the lively Sunday school student of mine, cheerfully questioning, always a joy to teach. She belonged to an amazing, big Italian-American family that only a couple of years ago had lost their eldest son. Now they were being called to say goodbye to their second child, their first girl, their Annmarie. No reason could explain it.

Relatives and friends flew in by the droves. Hugs, handshakes, intimate conversations abounded, life's deepest mystery hovering wordlessly under our embraces. I marveled at her engineer father's solid faith as he confronted head-on this most perplexing reality. "My daughter is completing her work here on earth." It called to mind a poignant letter the spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, sent to a family whose young daughter had been murdered, where he postulated that when we go, no matter how, we have completed our calling. Could I believe it?

The reality of death continues to baffle me, although as a young nun, I was often turned toward death's face. We were shrouded in yards of black serge. Daily we prayed the Divine Office that spoke of life's end. Not infrequently we sat silently all night in chapel near an open casket, sometimes moving to stand over the nun's body confronting our own mortality. Yet, the next morning we'd joyously intone the gregorian hymn, In Paradisum, as the body was wheeled out. May angels escort you into Paradise.

After visiting Annmarie, we lolled the next morning at our motel under a magnificent south Florida sun, balmy breezes rustling my book's pages. I looked up at a giant Washingtonian palm standing rock still while huge fronds played about each other, obeying nature's irresistible choreography. Brown fronds hanging down danced too, though they were completely spent and wrinkled, and obviously dead. The metaphor wasn't lost on me as I tried to probe the lesson to its depths.

At some point, I took liberty with what I thought Annmarie might be lovingly dictating as she moved into the unknown . . .

Mom and Dad, cry, but not too much. I'm proud of my accomplishments, my marriage, my two beautiful sons. I'm proud of you, the cruise celebrating your fiftieth anniversary. I'm ready to go. Oh I'm missing you already. Yes, Dad you were right. I say with deep satisfaction that I've led a full and rich life.

Only a few weeks after we were back, I received the email I'd been dreading. Death had released Annmarie on April 26 at 4:56 a.m. Tears took over. I rushed to share the news with Jim, but stood transfixed at the door to his studio. For on his radio, loud and clear, had burst the chorus of Gabriel Fauré's hymn, In Paradisum. I stood overwhelmed as Jim and I hugged. The tears flowed warmly as the soaring words and music flooded my heart.

Death, at least for that moment, had suddenly became beautiful.

Toting Tolerance

2009-04-29T10:52:00.001-04:00

Yassim is a bright-eyed student leader who attends a high school in Brooklyn, N.Y. She’s also a devout Muslim and was much challenged by an insensitive school rule; ‘to hold elective office, you are required to attend school dances.’ Like my former high school Baptist friends, dancing was forbidden. So Yassim was forced to resign her leadership position, but definitely unwilling to let it go at that.

Her story is recounted in Moustrafa Bayoumi’s riveting survey of growing up Arab in America, How Does It Feel To Be A Problem? As he tells it, “this heavyweight fighter stuffed into a tiny, ninety-five-pound frame wearing the hijab” battled that school rule for over two years of letter writing, soul searching, and googling. Finally, a pro bono lawyer attracted to her case skillfully led the school to reverse its decision out of court. The coordinator of student affairs, a sharp, principled man, finally acknowledged the inexcusable harm done to this outstanding student. Today, amazingly, they are good friends.

I find this story one of shining perseverance as well as exemplifying hopeful possibilities for change in unbending institutional environments. Mostly I think Yassim’s youthful struggle represents the ever-enfolding story of learning to honor God’s different faces.

As far as I can remember, my convent years of being totally wrapped in religious garb never brought on anything like Yassim’s incident of hurtful prejudice. Even earlier, during my school days at Winter Park High surrounded by a bevy of Baptist friends, I rarely ran into any of the anti-Catholic taunts making the rounds during the fifties. Blessedly, some of the mindless hatreds we lived with then, e.g. the Pope is the Antichrist, burned themselves out in the wide bin of falsehoods.

More recently exist hatched versions of inhumane mindsets still making the rounds. At a Rollins College diversity workshop a few years ago, my Muslim friend Luby, shared how she found herself suddenly ostracized from public school chums after years of close classroom and extra curricular experiences. Christian companions were suddenly mouthing attitudes fresh off a minister’s pulpit: “Luby, my Bible is the only true source to finding God. I’m sorry we can’t be friends anymore.”

Luby, pondering how the winds of global conflicts had inevitably blew onto her own environment, wound up years later conducting lectures and seminars she calls Connecting Cultures, now much in demand to clients the world over. Ah, how those winds of change sometimes blow in our favor.

Some years ago, I again heard another plea for evenhandedness at a New Year’s ecumenical retreat. A Jesuit priest and a white bearded rabbi, led the evening’s session, calling us to take turns speaking from raised symbols of our particular messages. Holding up a handkerchief, one beloved Jewish friend announced, “this represents the hundreds of tears shed over religious discrimination. Christians quote Jesus saying: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ Why can’t that divisive statement read “I am A way rather than THE way?”

That heartfelt plea deeply affected me. Could Jesus, love itself, have really intended to separate us from our brother Jews and non-Christians. More recently, having seen the documentary of James Carroll’s book, Constantine’s Sword, I realize how our Christian tradition has chosen to separate itself from, and inexorably had moved even to exterminate our close Jewish neighbors.

Though I walk and deeply appreciate the traditions of Catholicism, I hold that God’s presence vibrantly lives in diverse religions: Jew, Hindu, Moslem, or Baptist. And best selling religion scholar, Karen Armstrong, has written extensively on this subject of tolerance for the other. She notes the basic truth that abides in all beliefs: LOVE. “Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.”

Perhaps this tolerant love happens only one person at a time. Perhaps, as Yassim shows, it can even be launched at a little high school in Brooklyn.

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Hail to the Chief

2009-01-27T15:48:00.001-05:00

Hail To The Chief

I stand with my husband in our heavy coats. We mingle easily, shoulder-to-shoulder in this sea of people. Barack’s sonorous voice breaks through on nearby speakers as he repeats the sacred words committing him to the care of the country. A deafening cheer sounds. At the final “so help me God” my explosion of tears surprise me. I am not alone: countless mittened hands around me soak up countless tears. Yes, freed at last. Freed from years of dismal crookery, from this free-fall into chronic me-ism. We are renewed, pledged to one another. Or as President Obama put it, “to work alongside you to make your farms flourish, let clean waters flow, to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.”

Who could have dreamed of such a possibility! An old teary-eyed African-American nearby loudly sums it up: “I have lived to see the day!”

At last we have a leader prepared to really lead. President Barack Hussein Obama gives me back the America my immigrant father believed in, a country of limitless possibility, without torture, without spying, without fear. Constitutionally guaranteed values are about to lead once more. Who could’ve guessed they’d ever be in peril.

I stand on the threshold of an America about to remake itself - yet again. America’s “patchwork of culture and religion” will be all the stronger now. Black and white, Jew, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, nonbeliever: E Pluribus Unum. We are one again, as on stage renowned Jewish-American violinist, Itzhak Perlman joins with celebrated Chinese-American cellist, Yo-Yo Ma to revive the deep call of the Quaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.” The celebration turns mythic.

The energizing myth extended itself into instant enthusiastic communities of citizens. Riding the crowded Metro to the inauguration, I struck up a conversation with a young Jewish mother standing alongside her African-American spouse and their striking 14 year old, curly-headed “Obama” child. When my feet began turning to ice, we bonded even more as Stephanie Weisman bent over to help place tiny warmers inside my shoes. Behind, diamond in her ear, a smiling Indian woman held tight the hand of a young daughter with huge doe-eyes. To our left, a savvy young council member and champion pumpkin chunker from Teaneck New Jersey entertained us with nonstop hilarity. Suddenly he uttered something that propelled me beyond his easy humor: “My life” he said, “has been guided by kind forces.”

Having set out without a chance for tickets, on our flight, we were surprised at meeting Member of Congress John Mica. Before we landed, the legislator graciously arranged for an aide to meet us at the Sam Rayburn Building and hand us tickets. It seemed our new friend’s “kind forces” had us in mind as well.

As the inaugural poem, recited by Poet Elizabeth Alexander echoed over the loudspeaker, we began our trek home. Hoards of street walkers knotted together at a choke point around the metro station, suddenly making it impossible to move in any direction. For the first time in that crowd my husband and I became suddenly aware: if a mob incident were ever to happen, here were all the right conditions. Clinging to Jim, tempted but unwilling to panic, I edged on. The spirit of the man who had just called us to community prevailed and calm remained with us all. Jim and I found our way out. Later, I could well appreciate the press report that not a single person had been arrested, not a single one injured in that record-setting melee.

We’re home now, still digesting the momentous happening. A line I once read came to mind: “A rising tide lifts all boats, and each of us empties his or her own cup into the ocean of spirit.” We know that Obama’s promise cannot be kept without our own work. From where I write, here in Sanford, I aim to pay attention, to learn and do what I can.

Gaza

2009-01-07T07:09:00.001-05:00

When Bill Clinton was President, I worked for Mideast peace alongside Jews, Muslims and Christians in Central Florida. We labored together in the Foundation for Mideast Communication. We gathered people of ethnic diversities around tables where we could safely talk, create dialogue and understanding, destroy old myths and hatreds. Arabs heard a Jewish woman share how back in the forties, her family had saved pennies, clothing, anything to welcome the new state of Israel for Holocaust victims. A Palestinian man who had lost his home on that land, now a successful American business man, was moved to understand better what the creation of Israel meant to Jews. Within the gathering, the dialogue continued. This was but one example of how dialogue helps create understanding. Ours was a community of safety releasing enormous pent up feelings.

In those workshops, old attitudes fell away, friendships formed and remained, some even to this day. Dialogue was key. Peace was possible. The Christian Bible, the Koran, and Hebrew Scriptures all led us to dutifully embrace one another, different or not. Joyfully, our work bore fruit.

I am an offshoot of that fruit. As an Arab American, I now have Jewish and Muslim friends. We had met at those tables. We shared beliefs. We grew in the process.

It is hard to know what to write about in this recent Mideast brutality. Words like “Tragic” or “massacre” don’t even come close. American F-16 and Apache helicopters with Israeli markings have dropped over 100 tons of bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing over 300 civilians. I want to shout: Stop! Just stop! I can’t look at the computer image of a father weeping desperately over the body of his dead son. It hurts too much.

In his book, The Road to Joy, Thomas Merton, dismayed at our involvement in the Vietnam war, wrote aptly for this current crisis in Gaza:

“In our technological world we have wonderful methods for keeping people alive and wonderful methods for killing them off, and they both go together. We rush in and save lives from tropical diseases, then we come along with napalm and burn up the people we have saved. The net result is more murder, more suffering, more inhumanity. This I know is a caricature, but is it that far from the truth?”

This is no caricature, In the Mideast, at the same time Israeli trucks were bringing in humanitarian supplies for hungry and medically denied Palestinian, their planes were bombing these civilians. Isn’t this a kind of insanity? Is this Merton’s truth repeated? We have wonderful “methods for keeping people alive and wonderful methods for killing them off?’

I am a Jewish ally. I dialogued to honor and uphold the state of Israel. I am torn that the Hamas government has yet to recognize the state of Israel. Yet, Israeli occupation of Palestinians will not encourage the duly elected leadership to recognize Israel while Gaza Palestinians sit easily angered, unable to feed families no matter how hard they work. As long as this continues, neither side will e safe. Have both forgotten the dream for a peaceful homeland?

That Jewish woman mentioned above has started a dialogue right here in Central Florida between Jewish, Muslim and Christian school children. Her project is called the Multi-faith Education Project, HYPERLINK "http://www.multifaitheducationproject.org" www.multifaitheducationproject.org. That’s the constructive kind of peacemaking for which the world cries out.

Remember Jimmy Carter was successful in bringing peace between Egypt and Israel through months of dialogue. He cared. I believe in dialogue. Rather than sending bombs and money to Israel, I encourage America to send peacemakers, young people, a kind of Mideast Peace Corp, to dialogue. We can show the world that we care, that we are so much more than simply a Department of Defense. How about a Department of Peace? It’s not a new idea.

So what can you do? No idle question. Surely there is always something whether it’s letter writing, making a phone call, or simply dialoguing with God about these unfortunate suffering civilians.

Shamed an aspiring entreprenaur

2008-09-18T17:47:00.001-04:00

I write what I've heard. A lovely young woman approached me after a talk on money as sacrament. This is what she said: "I had a Catholic upbringing. I can't help but feel guilty as my vitamin business is now making lots of money." We talked further and I heard how her business had grown but anxiety had grown with it. "Being rich means I'm not following the poor Christ." Susan felt isolated, unworthy of an abundant income, and conflicted. Is there not a better way our churches can preach the good gospel about earning money? About having money and the good we can do with it?

Testimonial for Money As Sacrament

2008-08-20T08:42:00.000-04:00

Dear reader,

I received this email from a woman who gave me permission to share parts of it. Since I'm still speaking and writing about money issues, I felt her words might encourage you, my reader, to order Money As Sacrament. Like S., I know you won't be sorry.

This is, in part, what S.had to say:

"I want to thank you for writing Money As Sacrament. It was an answer to my prayer. I have been on a spiritual path for many years, probably all my life, although the early years too, in the form of religion - Lutheran and Pentecostal - because my Dad was and now is a retired minister. .... (then)there was a drastic transformation from religion to spirituality which stated in 1990 and now, I feel closer to God than ever before.

... Though unique circumstances, this amazing book became a major turning point of my journey. I am one of six kids and having a minister father and being born in a third world country like Guyana, money was scarce. We grew up in Canada, but still, I felt like Dad was protecting us from the 'evil' of money. ....

I firmly believe God wanted me to change the way I saw and thought of money, stuff I didn't even know I had in me. ... Your book brought all of this to the surface and I was forced to look at myself and tell my own money story, which I did in my journal.

.... So Adele, thank you so much for this book. I will always cherish this time in my life when the transformation was made inside of me. ..... my mantra is now 'money is my friend, and my friend will always be faithful to me.' I own money. Money doesn't own me. I am not scared to be rich anymore and I do not have to make excuses for my wealth. This is good.

With eternal thanks and gratitude,
S.M.

Hatching Lifetimes of Resentments

2008-08-14T17:17:00.000-04:00

Women have been hatching lifetimes of bottled up resentments and money quandaries. At money gatherings, I hear their cries with compassion and sadness. “I hate dealing with money. I just don’t fit with it.” One even thought it sinful to want to be rich. Sinful? A single mother was so depressed about a particular money loss that she couldn’t get out of bed for a week.

Okay, so historically, men did the business, woman did the dishes. Yet if we look closely, I make no exaggeration, we women have been money specialists all along. Haven’t we handled thousands of family dollars over the years Haven’t we written checks, received salaries, cashed the checks or deposited them. Haven’t we handed lunch money to our children, cash to our spouses and aging parents. Often, aren’t we’re the ones who pay the taxes, collect unemployment, and most always, the ones to figure out how to squeeze more money from tiny piggy banks. We are far more educated about money than we express.
So dear ladies, not only do we do dishes, we do finances. Not only do we fit in this society but perhaps, we run it. Take heart.

It's All in the Bread

2008-08-13T16:22:00.000-04:00

Dropping a piece of bread on the floor raised my young mother’s eyebrows. “Kiss it! she’d say. No matter the kind of bread, no matter the dust on the floor, bread was holy! If we dropped it, we kissed it. We not only kissed it, we touched it to our forehead.
An Arabic custom, bread was not considered ordinary food. Bread was representative of a man’s labor and basic sustenance. Bread was divine a symbol for God, the real nutrient of life. “You must honor bread with complete respect,” Mom would direct.
Mom was the faithful bread baker back in the forties, the kind of bread that most of us now call “Pita Bread.” Although I was only seven, I still see it all: the mixing, the kneading, the baking. Blend flour with water, create the right dough consistency, pull and separate the spongy stuff into small balls, roll each into tiny mounds on the dining room table. “Now, they have to sleep.”
In the Florida heat, the mounds swelled under the additional warmth of an old Army blanket. “It’s like pregnancy. We have to wait until it’s time.” Every few hours, mom escaped clerking in our Orlando 7-11 type grocery store on highway 17-92 to climb upstairs and peek under the blanket at her growing babies until she’d finally smile: “They’re ready”.
Now, she’d pull away the blanket, flatten each of them into circles, turning them like pizza dough. And yes again, a couple of rounds of sleep time until they finally made their way into a 500 degree oven. Sweat like a mini waterfall dripped from her face as she leaned down before the magic oven to pull out each browned loaf with her flat wooden shovel and toss it into a pile on the kitchen table. (I still have that dear flat wooden shovel) We stood by wanting to grab that first warm loaf, to pour real butter all over it and go at savoring the joy.
“Let’s give thanks.” Mama never forgot. Like a yeasting, a waiting, a solemn gathering, we circled for a ritual of thanksgiving. Though panting and sweating, mom retained enough saintly strength to remind us of bread’s deeper force. “If you drop a piece, make sure you kiss it.”
There is a custom in the Catholic Ritual that echos mom’s teaching. If when the priest is giving communion, the holy bread falls to the floor, the priest must pick it up and kiss the sacred bread as well. My mother knew well her ritual, and perhaps under the influence of memory, mom’s practice stemmed from her religion, a Greek Orthodox ritual.
Now, forty years later, I drop a piece of bread, I can’t help myself: I instinctively kiss it and touch it to my forehead and feel an automatic connection to my adored mother. But even more, I instinctively feel linked to something holy.

Garden Epiphanies

2008-08-02T09:52:00.000-04:00

Take your money fears to your garden where all nature addresses that fear. Notice how, for example, when you prune a plant, at some point, it comes back fuller than ever. Pruning is difficult. I hate to prune. It feels as if I'm hurting my baby, but that hurt turns to fulness. Unexpected joyful fullness.
Another of nature's examples for your money fear: note how long your orchid is bare and you wonder, maddeningly, if you'll ever see its magnificence. One day, Voila! a blossoming Vanda, purple and cream with vibrating lines of blood red opens to your eyes. You scratch your head. What did I do? You didn't do anything except wait. It was your patience. All growth appears in the fullness of its own time,
Stand open to your money fear. Water it down with prayer, vision your success, rich and bright and fertile. Give gratitude for all of it. Watch all your fear turn to joy.

How Money Connects me to God

2008-07-31T13:17:00.002-04:00

The air I breathe these days is filled with excitement. There are workshops, presentations, a gathering of women over a cup of Tea. The subject? Money as a Spiritual Entity, our relationship to it and how we are improving and deepening that relationship. Questions fill the room and reflections abound.
I come with my book "Money As Sacrament" as it presents my life's theme: how my immigrant father’s single minded ambition for making good in America paradoxically propelled my own ambition to a life of vowed poverty as a teaching Sister of St. Joseph; how later, out on my own, I addressed my own need to swell my coffers by overworking just like my father, not to mention dealing with a troublesome, substantial windfall after my parents died.
To add to my money’s spiritual vision, I met and married a college educated, once production but homeless Jim, forcing me to resolve cultural issues about his empty pockets.
Fourteen years later, I testify that I’ve never been happier. What Jim had money couldn't buy, a poetic sensibility, writing and editing skills and a love of everything real.
It amazes me how by God’s mysterious hand, all “found confluences” enlighten and educate the readers of my book. I walk in gratitude.

Dangling Daily Bread

2008-07-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

I don't think, as I've often mused, that anyone ever gets completely comfortable with money. It's like getting completely comfortable with who we are and most of us are always in a state of becoming, in an evolving state of loving who we are.

I need to take time to ponder the money in my hands. I think about it, budget it, save it, set aside some for a rainy day, but as to "what" and "who" it is... I want to allow it to commune with me.

Give me this day my daily bread, daily bread in my pocket and purse, jingling - jangling. A beloved reminder and symbol that says God is filled with giving... is giving, always gives. Oh, what joy to hear that dangling daily bread.

Prayer Coming out of Nowhere

2008-07-14T09:44:00.002-04:00

Thank you God for - well - for all my gifts. Know what I like about you God? Everything! Sure, I’ve never seen you, never heard the sound of your voice (except inside me), and I never know for sure what you want of me, or for the world. But some strong thread connects me to you, and I’m not dangling on it but somehow sewed into your reality. Again, thanks for making my life seamlessly purposeful.Amen.

Editor's Request

2008-05-12T09:07:00.002-04:00

My editor, Annie O'Shaughnessy of Soul Flares magazine, asked me to back track and tell her how and when Thomas Merton,spiritual writer came to be such an influence in my life. I took a few minutes to simply stream my thoughts:

"I still remember the day. I was a novice in the Sisters of St. Joseph, standing before the side book case looking for a good read. I caught the title: The Sign of Jonas. I pulled it down, opened it at random to read a journal entry about two black men observed by the author, Merton, who were sitting outside on a long log reading a newspaper, and happily laughing at something, maybe what they were reading? Merton commented: These men were having more fun than we who are supposed to know so much, like these uneducated guys knew more than the monastery gurus..

I took the book out on the long dock over the St. Lucie River in Jensen Beach, to the edge where the wind really blows. This wild monk and writer was blessedly piercing my soul, teaching me how to find more of God. Merton made it sound so easy, so fluid. But of course, it was tough work. Here he was saying I could just be me, as I was, with my stuff out of place, with my dreams askew. Yes, I could trust God. But more, I could trust myself.

And after that, I read every Merton book we had in the convent.

Years later, as a single woman with my own name, Ms Azar, I initiated a Merton Group in my home. People were drawn to his idea of holiness which, simply put, meant being and becoming more of who we were, which any fool knows is the hardest of holy paths to follow. That group ran for almost twelve years. Some friends stayed for all those years.

And of course, Annie, I met my future husband, Jim because of Merton. His mother had read Merton, and he easily contracted the spiritual disease.

I have, and can't seem to let go of them, almost every book Merton ever wrote. I read him still, almost daily. His journals make me think and pray and yes, despair about the way governments lead us into destruction. His government at the time was the Nixon era, the bomb shelter buildup, and the horror of the Vietnam War.

But how we just can't give up. He poo pooed Television, but was so inflamed when he saw police dogs going after black people in Selma (was that the place?) he decided that TV had a place since good television was able to affect hearts.

Merton believed that a spark of God lived in all of us, and we could never, no matter how bad we were, (Hitler included), extinguish that spark. I think because of Merton I was lead to work for peace, for prejudice reduction, for feeding the homeless, for Middle East resolution... well... you get the idea.

Enough said???

Blessings,

Adele

Branching To Another Desperately Needed Peace

2008-05-05T12:20:00.005-04:00

I am an Arab American women who writes about making peace with our money. I'm also involved in praying for peace in the Middle East. In the 90's, I worked long and hard with devoted American Jews to bring Jews and Arabs, both Arab Christians and Arab Muslims to a greater understanding of each other. Many times, we succeeded and groups that had once been alienated from each other became friends.

I received this essay a few days ago. I weep that it is so, that the Middle East carnage continues. The essay was signed by over 109 Jews. I want to honor their word and print their sadness on my blog. I wanted you to know, many of my own Jewish friends mourn this reality as well.

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On the subject of celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.

This article appeared in the Guardian (UK) on Wednesday April 30
2008

. It was last updated at00:00 on April 30 2008.
================

In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler's genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.
>
In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.

>
In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda andRamleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.

>
In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from the Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.

>

We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.

>We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.

Secular Sanctity

2008-04-29T10:37:00.006-04:00

As you know, the title of my book is Money As Sacrament. Back in 1984, Father Edward Hays wrote about money in one of his many books, Secular Sanctity. Only last year I found his book. What Joy. He wasn't a bit shy about calling money sacramental. At the time, ten years later that I had decided on my title, I was definitely feeling I was in new and scary waters. Sacraments in the Catholic church, were just seven. Yes, seven and only seven. How many times as a Catholic Nun had I taught these church truths. So besides feeling that I was original by using that title -not any longer- I really wondered if the church might kick me out.

Well, they didn't kick me out and I've been spreading this truth: That when we use money with integrity, honesty, and good will, we bring God into the process and our exchange with another becomes sacramental. This truth is catching on and I'm feeling blessed about the whole matter.

Won't you spread the idea as well?

Here are a few paragraphs from Father Hays thoughts on the sacramental use of money:

First we should love our money and take pride in it. It is good to be proud of having earned it, for money is one sign of a job well done. Every paycheck is a pat on the back.

Next, mindful that our money is a sacrament in which we can say “This is me... this is my sweat and toil...” we should use it to nourish our bodies, which it represents. So, part of our income goes for food, clothing, shelter and also for entertainment and fun. This expression of self-love is good and holy.

The dollar bills in your billfold are not only a sign of you, but also of the community to which you belong. They are the frequent reminder that you belong to a certain nation whose money you use symbolically. So, with part of your money you pay taxes. You should rejoice that this communion of self helps to build highways, pay teachers’ salaries and patch up the potholes in the street in front of your house...

Some of your money goes into our Social Security system and is given to the elderly and the needy. So a part of you puts food on the plate of some aged man or woman or helps pay the rent of an elderly person. By means of this withholding payment you are able to put flesh on the words that Jesus speaks about seeing him in those who are in need...

Finally, in numerous ways we are inclined to use parts of our money on gifts to those we love, to friends, and to those organizations, and activities we feel are important to the world and to growth of the human spirit. Whenever we give a gift of money we could seal it with a kiss or a wink...saying, “This is my body...this is me...this is my love.”

Edward Hays. Secular Sanctity, Leavenworth, Kansas, Forest Press of Peace, 1984, 41.
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Dear reader, you can see why I fell in love with the words of this unknown priest from Kansas. He had prepared the way for my own thinking and I didn't even know it.

Moving Beyond the Bruise

2008-04-13T15:47:00.001-04:00

Recently reading the French word, “chantepleure” brought to mind the emotion I felt when I suffered the loss of five thousand dollars in an attempt to learn Arabic at Vermont’s Middlebury College. Chantepleure means to weep and sing at the same time.

I had enrolled in Middlebury’s immersion program. I contracted to speak no English for nine weeks in order to read and write this Middle Eastern Language. I desperately wanted to take on Arabic since I was involved here in Orlando in Middle East peacemaking. I would bond more easily with the local Arabic people.

As the class progressed, there was no doubt. Arabic’s strange calligraphy and guttural sounds were leading me into a depression so strong that one day I simply got up from class, tears rolling down my cheeks, and walked down to the river’s old Middlebury bridge. To this day, I remember staring down long and hard at the dancing rapids inviting me to join them.

That night, I lay in bed, eyes swollen after that long cry. I could not talk to anyone there. Unlike hermits who value their silence, I felt desperately alone by my imposed quiet. Never before had I been so violently thrown apart from a community, so beaten down as if I were a nobody, a dunce. I was fifty-five years old. It shouldn’t be happening to me.

At some point that next morning, with the help a bright beaming sun, I began to reinvent the entire experience, wondering if I could turn trauma into triumph. Could I discover something far more essential? I decided to skip class and let my bike take me to the Middlebury library. Something sparked as I moved among the library shelves, pulling off books, dropping some in my haste, taking them outside onto the lawn chairs, desperately hopeful to heal my drooping spirit. I sat reading and rereading. I marked passages in my notebook, studied stories, poured over self-help books, bios. I asked God to speak to me through these familiar letters and words in the author’s English language.

English was singing in my head, and I realized how much I had missed its loving melodies. For weeks, I had not spoken or listened to this native language. I threw down that promise not to speak or write English and under leafy Maples, I pulled out my notebook. My pen pushed into my story, my questions to myself. I wrote Dear God letters and letters to my bruised spirit. I felt sweet kinship with the whistling birds in tree tops. Little did I suspect but my ability to write was being born from that quiet of times under Vermont’s green.

Calmly resting in the serene landscape of Vermont, I found my sanity returning from this language freedom. I sang, other times wept, chantepleure happening in its deepest meaning. It was abundantly clear. I was the caterpillar gestating and longing in the moments to break free.

Now, only with years passed, can I look back with gratitude for that summer’s chantepleure. That writing of a heartbreak exchange between pain and loss included prayers to God who, in the entire process, had never failed to move me forward to a place where, unknown to me, I really wanted to go. It was not so much wanting to stand up as an Arabic speaking communicator, but to enter a field where my communicating words would inspire others by life’s good twists and turns.

Eventually, my writing focused on a subject that grew out of the $5000 loss. I spent that money, not to learn Arabic, but to fall in love with my native language. I published my first book, Money As Sacrament, the product of a silent hope, a gift to others and most especially, God’s gift to me.

A Soulfull Orange tree

2008-04-07T07:29:00.003-04:00

The backyard garden calls forth a deep happiness. I walk its pathways amid flowering and fruited gifts and peeking weeds. There is stability here. It grows on me. Papaya, grapefruit and orange trees rest in their familiar places, green and growing. They beam in smiling sunlight.

It was my delight to enter each into the ground. I watered, fed. and picked off enemy bugs. I talked with them. Today, they answer me: heavy oranges and grapefruits hang low on thick branches. I laugh, pulling them off as many as my arms can carry. Some roll off and even more as I bend to pick them up.

I am my immigrant father of years ago who honored and worshiped his first Florida orange tree. “Florida is sunshine itself.” He bowed before that first planted fruit tree as if bowing at the communion rail... as if holy bread had been given from the hands of the priest as if this tree had come directly from God.

I too, bow and can’t help but exclaim as I hold the round balls above me: “God, You shower me with earthly benedictions, planting me in a bed of delight.”

The more I get into this experiment called life, I resonate with something called “enough” I focus more on what I’ve gained rather than what I might have lost. This garden carries me through, connects me with that place of contentment. I am rich and and the flow doesn’t stop.

Enlightened Money

2008-04-01T20:21:00.004-04:00

Enlightened Money

A deep yearning exists in each of us to find the sacred, yes, the holy even in that medium of exchange we call money. It is this vital tool of our culture that sustains and comforts. So how can we better see its blessedness. How can we know its goodness, not only in the work of commerce, but in our philanthropic insights.

Let me be clear: any fool knows it’s not the paper money that is holy but the human will, the heart, the good intention of the user that makes this symbol sacred. And when it happens, I’m right there.

I chanced upon an article in Ode Magazine, a magazine that refuses to publish “doom and gloom,” characteristic of so much media, but spreads good news, publishes the reality stories that say people are making a difference.

When I came to this banking story, a corporation that is all about money, I was thrilled to read how the ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadi lives up to its motto: “Let’s change the World.”

This dedicated institution is doing just that. Their stated mission is to support rural communities, people who have poor credit, or who are low-income, or otherwise ignored by the “normal” banking world. In 2007, they provided $13.7 million in loans, eighty percent of them in rural communities.

Most recently, when the landlords of Tryon Life Community Farm in Portland decided to sell their land to a residential developer to build 23 upscale homes, the Farm’s resident renters faced eviction. This Portland farm community had to raise more than $1.4 million to buy the land themselves. They went after the money, fundraising and seeking help from all sectors of the Portland community. ShoreBank loaned them $600,000.

The president of the Farm’s board of directors had this to say: "Other people (banks) would have just shaken their heads and said, ‘You have no track record. You’re hippies. No Way.’ But ShoreBank thought that what we were doing was important.”

Oh, if only the myopic American banking system could be that enlightened, could aim not only toward profit but balance financial goals with the needs of the communities. I believe that when our institutions do this kind of good with their money, they bring a bit of divinity into our commercial world. No one really loses. Communities would thrive, and yes, the banks would thrive as well. Where good will is practiced, there is always something of God at work.

Saving Habits

2008-03-28T20:29:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-23T17:55:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-18T10:43:00.004-04:00

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:

2008-03-14T13:00:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-07T12:57:00.003-05:00

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.

Check that Dollar Bill

2008-02-26T10:18:00.006-05:00

Note the God on that money bill you carry in your purse and wallet. There's God's eye that sees and calls you and me to grab an eternal truth that we are part of the planet's community. We are part of bringing well-being to the grocer, to the banker, and the flowers we purchase from the kiosk owner in that giant mall. Well-being to all from my wallet. It's that simple.

It was in my writing the book, Money as Sacrament that I uncovered so much more than what I originally thought vital. Writing, journalling, and speaking about money delivered me to understand dollars and cents not simply as medium of exchange, something I simply hand over to another, but as something that connects me to others, draws them into my life and brings me into theirs. We are bonded in that moment of exchange. I celebrate that connection.

Thomas Merton, proliflic spiritual writer says it best: "My response must be to open myself to being a partner with God, working with Him, co-operating with the God who is my Maker and Redeemer. I find that it helps me to think of this in terms of stewardship, responsilility, accountability. What use am I making of the raw material (our green bills and plastic cards) that has been given to me?"

Everything Will be All Right

2008-02-13T14:42:00.004-05:00

After not so patiently answering a thousand question, Janice, the Sears sales lady started pecking at her hand computer, obviously sick of my anxiety. But I couldn’t help myself. Two thousand dollars for a Frigidare oven? Sure we needed one, but a top of the line? I stepped away knowing that I’d been thrown back into the crazy ‘we don’t have enough money’ place.

Now you might think that’s a reasonable price for a range that’s going to fill all needs, that has a look any kitchen could die for, and that I own a check book that can handle the exchange. But the old emotional nemesis kept shouting: “Hey, Adele, it’s too much.”

Jealous of milling customers who didn’t suffer this ancient fear, I dived into a inner conference with my father; "Rescue me Dad! Yes,you always counseled, 'buy the best.' Isn’t the best here a little pricey?"

Jim, husband and new precious mentor, leaned down after moments of respectful silence: “Honey, don’t we want this stove?” Serene face, untouched by my cold feet. I searched that face: Damn, why can’t you get scared too. Is it just because it’s “my” money.

I looked into the mirror across the aisle: Get a grip, Adele. God blesses you with a blooming money tree and you make yourself worry sick? Was I still the nun holding a vow of poverty? Idiot!

I felt better.

“Sure we want this stove,” handing Janice my VISA. I picked up my wallet and turned toward Jim: “Honey, I’m ok.”
“If you say so.” He smiled: We joined hands and left the store. What a partner I married! Someone who understood my silly money noises.

You should know that anxiety attack when buying that stove happened early on in our marriage. Now, fourteen years later, I’m happily calm when it comes to flashy purchases. Only yesterday, I laid down my credit card for a Magellan navigator- excessive price tag - and no one heard a peep out of me.

Wealth's Varied Faces

2008-02-03T20:04:00.000-05:00

Wealth’s Varied Faces

When mother came into her own bank account, and could spend it freely after my father’s passing, she confided that now the Arabic community “thinks I’m somebody.” For mom, it was a step-up in esteem.

Others might see their money as avenues to purchase. The red sweater, the red car, a new Ipod. It is their medium of exchange, and they give very little thought to what’s really going on.

There are varied meanings we attach to the concept of money: “It’s a burden. I’d be better off without it.” So spoke teenager Susie, working at Burger King, while Nurse Sheehy confessed: “I can really say, ‘I love money.’”

At this moment, my husband is flying a glider on his computer. He’s got pedals attached to it, and a steering wheel in front. Jim is traveling the islands, landing and then taking off, immersed in geography, in a quiet ride through this rainy evening. His CD plays the gentlest of musical sounds. He meditates on the stars. A contentment flows in him, a kind that I hadn’t yet seen our marriage. He wouldn’t exchange this entire experience for a home by the sea.. well, maybe not a home by the sea. Yet, I don’t think anything, even his afternoon peanut butter sandwiches can satisfy him as much as flying his computer glider.
Look into your heart. What’s your meaning of wealth?

True Wealth

2008-01-15T15:56:00.000-05:00

Remember, nobody hands out gifts like God, large gifts, spiritual gifts.

There is always one more gift to discover, even though it might have been there all the time.

The sight of an apple orchard, or the sun’s beams on a barn roof.

Check all the tastes a tomato offers in that evening salad you're consuming. Watch how a giant watermelon ripens on the vine. Natural gifts and then the gifts of the spirit:

That new neighbor who brings a warm pound cake to your kitchen back door.

The birthday present bought and paid for by your eldest child.

The surprise bonus your boss silently shoved into the mailboxes of all employees.

Gifts abound.

Someone once said: It’s all gift.

Saving Habits

2008-01-04T17:08:00.000-05:00

Sure he was frugal. Frugality was lodged in his DNA. Dad’s religion included thrift like a night watchman's 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 as 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?”

Money Metaphysical Musings

2007-12-30T20:01:00.000-05:00

I love the story, one of the few found in all four Gospels. Jesus feeds 5000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. I think about it, especially in the light of how a few pieces of food exploded into overflowing baskets .

The scene is set. Thousands of people lounge on the hillside, hungry to hear Jesus’ words of wisdom. For hours, He gives truthful guidance. They’re starved for truth, for the deepest meaning of what it really means to follow God. Jesus has answers.

Then I see Jesus sitting down to think. He must have been exhausted by then. Preaching can be, to put it mildly, tiring. He tells his disciples: “the people here are hungry. I am too! What food do we have?” By that time, I would have been starving.

Remember, we’re looking for a miracle here.

Next, holding the five loaves and two fishes, Jesus utters the most beautiful of prayers: “Thank you, Father.” He blesses them and they are consecrated.

Now, Jesus shares. He doles out the food and it seems to never stop. MORE and MORE food on the way. He smiles, in fact he laughs with it all. He feels the deep joy of giving. And all the people laugh too. They see something wonderful going on.

Sure, Jesus had a crowd in front of him to feed, but don’t we always have someone within our sight who can use an extra bill or two, a meal or a school tuition paid for a student who can’t afford it? The generous soul knows how to see, how to size up a situation and respond.

Finally, Jesus hears a child shouting. “I’m full!” Probably Jesus feels full Himself. So He toasts his disciples, then directs them: “Okay, collect the left overs. We can send them over to the next town.” The men collect and continue to collect. Is there no end, they ask themselves? The baskets are stuffed. Everyone is shocked. A tiny meal became a banquet with everything given.

This story reminds me of a close personal friend who calls herself a Distribution Center. Her faith loves this miracle and she is strengthened by her constant giving from her Center. “I try to sow in love, and love returns,...usually multiplied.

Speaking of multiplication! It was in Lenedra J. Carroll’s deeply spiritual book, The Architecture of All Abundance that I read and felt deeply moved: "Though it varies from year to year, I challenge myself to disperse up to 60 percent of my income, after taxes, to benefit areas other than my own personal gain, primarily humanitarian endeavors. I am aware this constitutes a radical generosity, yet is seems my income expands so exponentially as a result of my commitment that my personal wealth continues to grow rapidly.”

In other words, five loaves and two fishes explode into basket fulls, too heavy for one person to carry, too beautiful to behold

Try it! Consider your ability to multiply your own loaves and two fishes. You could be feeding more than five thousand. You could be feeding the world.

Up From the Dumps

2007-12-27T10:08:00.000-05:00

Listen Up! You will fall, you will make silly purchases along with the bigger ones. You will buy a house for which you are ill-suited, or invest in a stock that goes belly up just after you got it, or purchase a car that becomes an obvious lemon because you finally get that it uses too much gas in this down economy.

But, I'm convinced that all money "failures" are meant to stretch us, move us forward, out of the ordinary. I'm convinced that God uses money to reveal us to ourselves. I can't spend a penny without realizing something about myself.

In a Pause For Beauty, author Ann E. O'Shaughnessy says "I think the real heroic moment is the gray morning, .....when you wake up feeling discouraged and alone, thinking about bills and politics, and you want to pull the covers up over your head and hide from the world. But, instead, you say a kind and patient good morning to your fears, get out of bed and get back to life -- this business of trying to live a truthful, soulful life...

As a former Nun, I harbored a little booklet in my pocket called; Confidence in God. It was my Bible fighting any discouragement take over. Discouragement, it said, is the "tool of the Devil" More, I heard our reverend mother proclaim. "Have confidence. God speaks loudest in times of our darkest moments."

Kick that idiot called discouragement or failure out to the sea. Call on God as you do it! You're not going to a slow boat to China. You're going to succeed and no one, not emotional dumps, not business woes, not hurricanes or tornados will triumph. God alone holds you close. And when you think there is no hope, no love and no mercy, you are being lead into deeper mercy and love. Trust me. It happened to me and I slowly, and yes painfully, saw how my failures finally turned to joy.

Whiplash

2007-12-11T12:50:00.000-05:00

“Marrying you and your money was like whiplash” uttered my new and loving husband one night he and I were out at dinner. I was stuffing bills into his wallet, wanting it to look as if he were paying for the meal. Over the months, I had dizzily watched a new Jim, homeless no more, awakening again to what being in a money society meant. While he pulled out the bills and laid them on the tablecloth, he smiled again: “ Actually, I’d say life with you has been nothing less than three years of whiplash. I’m still scratching my head.

I was scratching my own. What had I done to enjoy the blessings of a close partnership to this man off the street! Yes, we fought, we prayed, and we laughed at ourselves as we reworked the marriage and money contract. Somehow we endured, found friends and a therapist to push us where we wanted to go. And from all that shifting and counting and enduring, Voila! a book, Money As Sacrament, was born. What I wrote on those pages - what thoughts I shared of my confusion, is the journey of a woman who candidly faced her money demons. They are not the same demons for all, and probably evoke disbelief or even comic responses. But these revelations I could only discover in the process of writing and interviewing other women. I liked what I learned.

I encourage you to read these inspiring stories of other women who challenedged their own money demons. You’ll find yourself living in some of their stories. My prayer is that you’ll be led to change beliefs and notions that don’t work for you. And I rejoice that many of the women on my pages became my own mentors. I hope they can become yours as well without the whiplash that Jim experienced.

Sacred or Profane

2007-12-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

I seldom walk out my front door without thinking, "Whoa, have I got my purse?" Then I'll feel the familiar tug of the shoulder strap. I'll stop a moment to rummage, checking for my wallet, my checkbook, feeling the edges of a plastic card tucked within. I don't feel right going out without a few twenties or a fifty hiding in my wallet's folds. These are the forms of money that I "need" to have with me even if I don't plan to shop. I'm not the only one. Rarely do you find a woman without cash on her, no matter how paltry the sum, "Ah, it's there; I'm safe," she thinks. We might touch the bills for reassurance. It's that comforting feel of cash, the miraculous commodity that keeps life moving -- pays the grocer, the postal clerk, tips a waitress.

But it's more than that. You don't think money can buy happiness. Maybe it can't, but it certainly seems to stand for it. Fixed in my worn wallet are limitless possibilities for nurturing myself. No longer is money a source of shame and ambiguity in my life. Nowadays, whether I drive my car, pick up a birthday present, or splurge on another orchid, I celebrate this gift we call money.

True Abundance

2007-11-25T20:06:00.000-05:00

This is how one of my spiritual teachers described the meaning of wealth.

"When I’m alone on a starlit night, in the moon’s rays, I see an osprey descending on the tip of a telephone pole, thoughtfully to feed his chicks; I'm with that animal.

When I visit a city park, I observe giggling children at play and my heart leaps in delight at their unsupressed loudness.

I walk along the shore of the Atlantic Ocean and waves caress my feet. I can’t help but feel in my heart, a surge of infinity from that moving water. I don’t want to hold onto anything. I want to let everything go, to fly to the heavens and be free."

I resonate with his teaching. I pray for that soaring of vision that empties us of our clinging, of our need for so many possessions. That vision fills me with beauty, and wonder, as if a giant cup of God's grace is being poured all over me.

Loving What's Right Under My Nose

2007-11-25T16:52:00.000-05:00

You know it is its very commonplace that gives money its enormous value. Like the water that we drink, money slakes our needs and is all around us. It lives in our pockets, our bank accounts and in the salaries or dividends yet to come. It is a best friend in the here and now. It is a soul's well-being.

I smile with this truth. I feel delight as I hand a bill to a florist, her flowers now in my hands, and soon to live in my friend's home. What is flowing through my hands, whether cash or card, is gift, is a sign of my communion with others. I love this gift we call money.

My Introduction as Table Topics Leader

2007-11-19T11:40:00.000-05:00

Hello Dear Reader,

I've been a member of Toastmasters International for over a year. I belong to the Central Florida Facilitators chapter in Altamonte Springs. It's pure fun that happens in this group while we learn how better to craft our speeches.

I thought for this blog, I'd share my toastmaster introduction for my role as Table Topics Leader in this week of Thanksgiving.

"If the Catholic Church hasn't yet proclaimed a saint of Thanksiving, Adele Azar Rucquoi wants to be canonized as that Saint. Adele wakes up each morning feeling the gratitude of unbelievable blessings: the blessing of a loving husband, the blessing of loving friends, and the blessing of a new career in speaking about the beauty of money. Her aim is to lift the hearts of those who hear her, to help them lessen their financial anxieties, and to improve their relationship with their money. That's a blessing the whole world could use."

So there you have it: my public thanksgiving prayer.

Perhaps you can write your own prayer, and make sure you include the blessings that money has brought you.

Adele

No Money Talk

2007-11-11T12:40:00.000-05:00

In my forty-seventh year, the mailman delivered a business envelope one day to my recently widowed mother. Her hands quietly tore it open and she pulled out a $12,000 check, - quarterly payment on the sale of a Kane Furniture building that my father had mortgaged before his death. She verified the numbers, walked quickly to her desk, made out the deposit slip; there was “no time to lose” she said, before getting it into the bank for additional interest. To me, twelve thousand dollars was a lot, yes, quite a lot of money.

Mom noticed my wide eyes following her. Exactly what I said to
her just then I forgot, but I do remember the strong authority behind her reply, undoubtedly a precept from God: “Honey, don’t ever talk about your money. Nobody does it. It’s nobody’s business.”

Contrary to mom’s advice, or maybe because of it, I began to look squarely at those dreaded “what if’s” regarding money talk. What would be the consequences of personal money talk? What if I did tell all, for example, tell and come clean regarding the amount of money sitting in the account I put my name to? Would friends consider me plain silly?

In our group’s talk back session, women replied: “How often do we daily catch ourselves wishing to connect particular money issues with a friend -- a purchase, a loss, a new development in our finances -- and then falling silent because of popular convention, or so-called “good manners.”

Another declared: “Look what the rule of silence about sexuality has done to past generations. Isn’t it time for money talk to come out of the closet?”

A kind of liberation catches us when we put our money fears and joys on the table. After one of our money workshops, one woman theorized: "The words and money stories spoken in our group were blessings to all of us. We helped each other."

Hey, Mom. You were so right about so many things, but sorry, not on this one.

Nuschar Allah

2007-10-28T10:31:00.000-04:00

In this time of Thanksgiving, when we attend a table laden with the fruits of the earth and the stuffed turkey draws us together in community, everyone pauses in reverence even as we as we delight in swapping stories about all sorts of things. I give thanks both for the obvious bounty surrounding this day, but also for something greater - the very given Ordinary: the roof over our heads and the money in our pockets.

Early on, I was led to the certainty that the flow of money comes from a Divine Source, and that my best return to God for that currency was making sure to say, Thank you. More pointedly, Meister Eckardt, the twelfth century mystic taught his students: “If the only prayer you say is ‘Thank You,’ it is enough.”

My Arabic father was very sure about certain matters and the everyday back and forth flow of money was one of them. To him, all money’s blessings came from God. “You work hard, you take risks, you pray like hell and for all of it, you never forget to say thank you.” Or more to the point, I would hear him utter the Arabic phrase, Nuschar Allah at every turn: Thank you God.

Underlying my immigrant father’s sense of awe in the market place was always that simple Nuschar Allah. It was daily grace bestowed and he rarely forgot it as he stuffed precious green bills into our grocery cash register or later on, banking bigger profits from land acquisitions.

Profits in our grocery grew. Every gain sent him escalating to ever wider ownership. Soon he was expanding beyond the walls of his little store into the surrounding Florida land he loved so well, one parcel after another, even to acquiring an orange grove. Of course, Dad didn’t have a clue about how to grow oranges. To him it was a simple matter: “Florida is orange groves. We have to acquire one!”

Azar’s Market stood amid the galloping whiff of orange blossoms. It was about the size of an average convenience store, lit by white fluorescent lights and cooled by wooden ceiling fans whirling the Florida heat out the door. Orlando, in the forties was a sleepy city then, only two core department stores, surrounded by cattle ranches and crystal lakes. In these days of Orlando’s blown away commerce, I sometimes long for that forgotten old time neighborhood.

I spent much of my youth playing grocery store until, at one point, my father looked down on his nine year old daughter and saw another helpmate. Even though from behind the counter I could barely reach the cash register keys, I got my first lesson on a rainy afternoon when the playground was only puddles. “Push these keys down, hard! Listen to the bell, count out loud when you give customers change”

Soon, the money flowed through my own fingers. Pure Grown Up! I totaled patron’s loaves of bread and ice-cold coke on the counter, weighed bunches of tomatoes, and even advised them they could get two cans of black-eyed peas for the price of one. Customers smiled at this little dark-haired child pressing the right keys, and who always honored dad’s mandate: “Never let them go without saying thank you.”

In the sixties, Charles Azar sold Azar’s Market and at last viewing, it had morphed into a Vietnamese grocery where other young immigrants set themselves on the path to the American Dream that my father had pioneered so many years before. Dad retired to his kitchen, singing his Syrian songs as he prepared various ancient recipes - today’s touted health conscious offerings: tabouli, humus, stuffed grapevines leaves to name only a few. He pursued readings in his huge Arabic Christian bible at the dining room table, savoring God’s words about the abundant blessings given to old King Solomon. He continued to thank God each time a profit of some sort came to him, regularly returning a portion of that bounty to St. George’s, his local Greek Orthodox church.

When finally he lay dying in what was then called, Orange Memorial hospital, his soul was ready. He had carried the twenty-third psalm, The Lord is my Shepherd in his wallet and which now hangs framed in my own home. This Orlando pioneer completed his earthly work Every piece of Florida land he owned had been blessed. Every untethered risk he took flowed from his deep sense of faith, love and gratitude expressed by that ever blooming, Nuschar Allah.

It's a Spiritual Thing

2007-10-04T07:25:00.000-04:00

Sitting a table in the mall’s food court, my husband Jim and I watched an oriental woman, cleaning tables. At some point, she glanced over and smiled the sweetest of smiles. Her face was that of a child, bright eyes and clear skin. I couldn’t resist, and Jim agreed. Timidly, as we never know how the beneficiary will respond, he crossed over to her hiding a bill in his palm. This bill to us is, in a sense, was just another bill, but perhaps to her, it could be the bill that might buy her week’s groceries. She smiled again, and looked over to me with yes, love in those bright eyes. Was she an angel sent by God just for us?

I struggle with that awful question: How can I use money and not be used by it? How can I give and not feel foolish after the giving. How can I know when I must give to someone less fortunate?

There are many incidents of confusion that I might relate here, but one that comes to mind was a particular incident that happened about 9:00 p.m. driving home through dark, and quiet streets after a visit with a friend. I stopped for a red light at an even darker and yes, scary corner. Secure in my cadallic, I saw this homeless man, or so he seemed, leaning against the wall of a run down building. One knee was bent as his foot rested on the wall He seemed intent on watching passing cars, apparently waiting to catch a stopped car at the light. No other car was in in place with me. The light kept me waiting not far from him.

Suddenly, I felt an onslaught of emotion, streaks of fear, glad that I had electric locks which in one quick press of a button, I secured all doors. All windows were up. I was safe, locked in.

But this man stepped into the street walking to my passenger side. I was conflicted, conscious of the inequality. Here I sat comfortably driving an upscale, air-conditioned car while he seemingly employed his feet for transportation. Sure, there was ample money in my pocket to give him. That’s probably what he wanted. And probably harmless, I, nevertheless, felt that demon of fear. That fear held me, took me captive, emotionally apart from this human being. I failed to reach out and hand him a twenty living in my wallet. Paradoxically, that long wait for the light to change forced me to grab that twenty in my hand. “Give him the damn twenty, I thought. What I did was to press the side window button, slit it just enough to pitch the bill out, forcing him to stoop to the ground to retrieve it. He walked back and away. The light turned green. I revved up the motor and scooted out of there.

So what did I carry home? No great feelings around the virtue of generosity but only feelings of shame. Blinded by fear, I had treated another human like an animal, throwing him a bone, forcing him to stoop to the ground for it. Fear can be an awful distraction from doing the good we want to accomplish.

One friend attempted to console me: “Honey, that was smart. Keep those doors locked.” Was she smart? Maybe. Yet, I don’t pass that corner without remembering that needy young man. One nun friend told me “You weren’t your best You. You’re going to have to live with it.”

There is always someone within sight who can use an extra bill or two. The habit of generosity moves a soul to stretch, to play a vital part in the world’s movement of money. And you and I have to decide when it’s part of God’s direction to send out that money. But when we resist, we have to live with it. It’s a spiritual thing.

Small Gifts - Good Stewards

2007-09-28T09:55:00.000-04:00

Good Stewardship! Aren’t we always guessing, hoping, wondering if we are being good stewards, following God’s mandate, yet never really knowing for sure? One thing became very true for me: a good steward treats all creation respectfully. Yes, even a penny!

Remember how the woman in Jesus’ parable, searches for her lost coin? Her search wasn’t for a wad of bills, a cache of jewels, or a boxed treasure of stored gold. Her search is for one single coin. She pulls out a broom, sweeps the house thoroughly. She lights a lamp, (oil costs!) to help her find her missing coin. When she finds it. Voila! She grabs the phone, now energized by her find, and calls her neighbors: “Hooray! I finally found my penny!”

What’s the lesson here? One biblical commentator offered: “The looking for that penny and the celebration may have cost her as much as the coin itself. But to her, it was worth it” It’s curious how yes, even a penny can mean so much. What is Jesus trying to tell us?
Here’s a modern twist on a penny that I caught on the internet. Horrified to see a very wealthy man on his walk with her picking up, more than once, a copper coin, Marion spoke up. “How can you take time to stoop for a simple penny.” Nonplused, the rich guy, took his time to look into her question and then turned to search her puzzled eyes:

“Dear woman, all my gifts have come from God. I want God to know that I really believe what it says on this penny: “In God I trust”.

Worldly wisdom would have the biblical poor woman too poor to make a difference and the rich man too rich to pay attention. I think Jesus honored both. Regardless of our preconceived ideas of either wealth or poverty, aren’t we all, as good stewards, enjoined to care and be grateful for the smallest of God’s gifts? Think about it.

Welcoming Wealth with a Goodbye

2007-09-02T10:49:00.000-04:00

My heart holds deep reverence for an elderly man, an artist poet, Harry Wiseman, who was recently interviewed on National Public Radio’s Arts Connection. He confided that, paradoxically, his wealth emerged when he could let things go. “Worrying about my possessions just seems to make me feel poor.” he offered his listening audience. “It’s how to hold onto them, how to lock them up safely, a million how’s to keep them. But when I give away some tool of mine, or even a chair that I designed, I feel richer. Nothing owns me. I’m at peace.”

Happiness Does Not Consist in “How Much”

2007-08-27T08:17:00.000-04:00

“If you believe strongly enough in yourself and God, and don’t spend all your energies on making, questing, or worrying about money, you will get what you need when you need it.” spoke John’s mother, Josepha. And, sure enough, despite an alcoholic husband, five children to feed, the family never went hungry. They found woods where natural foods offered themselves to the family, fresh and nourishing. Josepha never allowed money or the lack of it to determine her course, her feelings, her faith. “I live each day fully. Happiness is never dependent on how much I have, but what I do with what the little I have been given.”

Josepha discovered her inner wealth “from nature walks, flower gardens, and the silence of the woods. I found refuge in books, treasures in the public library brought the outside world into my dreary one.”

Years later, and now happily married to a man of modest means, Josepha exclaims: “My new husband and I often laugh at how rich we feel.”
(Adapted from Wisdom Women in the best seller, Money as Sacrament.)

Nine Things I Want My Neighbors to Know

2007-08-19T15:13:00.000-04:00

1) Honor the money as gift. The amount is secondary. Know that it comes as gift. When you are conscious of this, your soul is alive in peace and contentment.

2) Shift your position from ego satisfaction to spirit satisfaction. Spirit doesn’t seek control, power, or symbols of wealth. It seeks Other.

3) Do what you love doing. Try never just to do it for the money!

4) The truth is always wanting to come up. By being spiritually aware, you will discover more of what enriches your soul. And then, like they say, it will set you free.

5) Yes, you can give without loving but you can’t love without giving.

6) We are not physical beings seeking some spiritual experience. We are already truly spiritual beings who happen to inhabit a physical dimension.

7) Celebrate the energy that comes from hearing and believing in God’s call to you

8) Know that when you render to Caesar the things that are his, you render to God everything since it all belongs to Him.

9) Care for yourself. Theilhard de Chardin advises that: “To the degree that I care for myself might be the degree in which I care for another. If there isn’t much love for the me inside, I diminish my care for those outside of me

Backyard Potting Soil

2007-08-09T13:41:00.000-04:00

One day, Jim saved me from my backyard soil. He’d made a trip to Green Gardens Nursery, came home and breezily announced: “Honey, I bought some potting soil.”

I was furious. Why spend money on something we already had. I pointed out that our backyard consisted of an acre of potting soil. Of course, I didn’t mention an aching back, dirty fingernails, or a possible Florida heat stroke.

After breakfast, the next day, as I pulled out my purse for a day’s shopping. it finally hit me! One purpose of money is to save time and labor. Unlike some unfortunate neighbors, I wasn’t exactly called by God to dig in the dirt. Saving dollars on soil stemmed from some old-brain thinking, a time zone belonging to my parents or who knows, perhaps to some long-forgotten rural farmer living in me still wanting to wrestle with soil.

Now, thanks to my husband, I’m free to lay a few extra bills on a nursery counter for a luxury called potting soil. What will be next?” Jim and I both laugh over the switch. “Look, honey, clean fingernails!”

Generosity As Bridge to God

2007-07-19T10:25:00.000-04:00

Sophy Owens’ mother, a longtime and talented bookkeeper, had one outstanding parent quality. She never failed to make sure her daughter had extra money anytime she was leaving the house. From the time Sophy was a child, just walking to the library or to the drugstore in busy upper Manhattan, or later, off to some high school event, this single-again mom forever asked: “Honey, have you got enough money with you?” And before Sophy could respond, there was a small wad of green bills shoved into her hand.

According to Sophy, “mom could be impossibly generous, bestowing gifts wherever she felt the urge. And always with that smile. Never extravagant because we had only modest means, just giving what her heart could give. Sophy’s name for mom? “God’s Great Distributor”

“Once when my cousin came to stay, mom went after all the change in the cookie jar for that leg of lamb she’d been eyeing at the butcher’s. It would be an afternoon of culinary effort. Before it was over, like Babette’s feast, magic appeared from nowhere. We all toasted Sophy for that gourmet celebration.”

Sophy discovered these guiding thoughts in her mother’s diary after she passed on: God sees a reflection of himself when we practice generosity toward others. This kind of generosity, perhaps given through church contributions or directly to a child becomes a glorious bridge between ourselves and God. Something so honest and simple as disposing of bills into my daughter’s wallet links me to my Creator.

Who do You Trust?

2007-06-23T09:55:00.000-04:00

Back in the 18th Century, Benjamin Franklin, American patriot was appointed to design our paper money. With consciousness of the God living in him, he made sure that paper included the inscription, In God We Trust. He hoped that in seeing that inscription every time we pulled our money out, we’d value its worth and its Source.

Coming from his Colonial British Pound, this must have seemed a revolutionary idea indeed. God and money had never been connected before. But he also knew from his experience in the fast paced Colonial life, how money could be immorally used. That inscription was to remind us to hold money as sacred, pass it on to others, never allow dishonesty to diminish the sanctity of our exchange.

Do you and I still notice that inscription? Do we allow our identity with God to connect to the money. Aren’t we all more inclined to substitute: “in business we trust,” or “in government we trust,” or “ even in church .....? So who do we really trust?

The Eye of God

2007-05-22T09:05:00.000-04:00

As a young Nun, I figured a Good God would never connect with an evil like money. After all, didn’t holy scripture tell us that the love of money is the root of all evil? Years later, long out of the convent’s four walls, and after much thinking and writing about it, my entire picture has been upended. Money and God are best of friends!

It happened one day as I looked closely at a dollar bill! There it was, the eye of God, proof that God and money were buddies: Benjamin Franklin thought that if God was connected to our money lives, we would never betray its good uses.

I’m forced to my knees, grateful to God that finally, I see how closely God and money team up Money is all gift. Money builds community. Money bonds us together.

I continue to ask for what I need. I live an abundant life and rejoice in it.

In what way does money lead you to God?

who owns who?

2007-05-06T10:19:00.000-04:00

No joke. I have a friend who owns a very fine car, who parks it far from anyone else. "God forbid it should get scratched." When I'm with him I don't ever dare have a drink or eat while we're riding.

On the other hand, I know a bachelor who has lots of money. He dedicates his life to saving the environment or other worthwhile projects. He tells me, and these are his exact words, money is to flow! Obviously he isn't owned by his money.

Then there are those normal ones like you and sometimes me who, sad to say, worry they don't have enough. Some will drive four extra blocks to spend five cents less on a can of peas. Most of us don't even know how much a can of peas cost.

Only with God's grace will we feel that we do have enough. And that, good gracious, we can even get two cans of peas if we want to. So ask yourself. Do I own my money? Or does my money own me?

welcome to my blog on finding the sacred in money

2007-02-13T19:15:00.000-05:00

Check here! I'll be noting my next speaking engagments. And periodically, I'll be sharing some insights about how money can play in a sacred way in your life. Be seeing you.