The temptations of power and wealth
I know, I know, I'm going to lose half or more of you because it's toooooo loooooong. I get it, already. :-) But maybe you have a little extra time and patience during your holiday to take a relaxed read and a walk down my memory lane. If not, no biggie, I still love you and feel your love for me. Have a great day, everybody! This is my practice, requiring my discipline, not yours, so no worries, whether you read or not. My therapist, Joan, just gave me a wonderful book as a gift, honoring my Philadelphia roots (it's called Walking Broad, by Bruce Buschel). It inspired me to go there and visit today.
For those of you who are living in the "stratosphere" of human existence (in other words, the equivalent of the U.S. upper and upper-middle class, or in approximately the top 5% of the world's population as it relates to family income, and this would tranlate roughly to a couple/three hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars per year) or who are striving for upward mobility into this elite strata, please consider this important warning in a quiet moment of honest reflection:
"One of the worst temptations of upper-middle class life as a way of life is to create sharp edges of our moral sensitivities that allows a comfortable and convenient confusion about sin and virtue. The difference between the rich and the poor is not that the rich sin more than the poor, or even that the rich sin in a way that is more damaging to more people than the sins of the poor (even if that's true, like in the recent and tragically widespread Madoff debacle). No, it is that the rich find it easier (and have plenty of peer and societal reinforcement) to call often rather blatant sin, virtue (and the nature of their sinfulness is often not fully discovered until it erupts into obscene blatancy and way beyond). When the poor sin, they can't help but call and have it called sin; it is usually unavoidable and undeniable (and it's so often rammed down their throats and up other places by those with power and wealth). And when they see holiness, they are free to identify it as such. This intuitive clarity and openness is often absent in the powerful and wealthy, and that absence easily leads to the atrophy of the moral sense. ... What makes the temptation of power and wealth so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power and wealth often offer easy substitutes for the hard tasks of living and loving in real life. It seems much easier to 'be' God than to truly 'love' God, easier to control and manipulate other people than to genuinely love them, easier to manage and 'possess' life than to honor and respect it."
-- Henri Nouwen, in In the Name of Jesus
I came into this world and spent the first 6 years of my life in a multi-ethnic (mostly Irish, German, and Polish), poor, working-class community that sits slightly northeast of center-city Philadelphia called "Fishtown." We lived in a small, cramped row home, had very little in the way of luxuries or niceties. My parents lived simply and kept their noses clean. Yes, we were simple, obedient folk in a poor neighborhood in a monotonous existence. And it was almost dangerous to try to be anything otherwise there (especially sneakily or illegally) during the days of Frank Rizzo, as he was rising through the ranks of the Police Department to become its Commissioner in 1967 (by then, as an eager, odedient, striving 13-year-old, I lived in a slightly nicer neighborhood called "Mayfair," in a slightly nicer row home), and then its mayor in 1972 (the year I was off to college). Quite the character he was, and oh what a reputation! But anyway, life for me looked pretty much like this as a little kid - playing on sidewalks, "stoops," and between parked cars, trying not to get hurt or killed (sorry, no photos here)
Life was pretty simple most of the time, and yet it could be really dangerous from time to time, as emotional and physical violence would occasionally and unpredictably break out either inside (usually from my Dad's frustration boiling over) or outside (usually from neighbors and wandering "undesirables" losing their cool) our home. But none of the monstrous mayhem I witnessed as a child (mostly physical, often including body parts coming detached from someone or other in a fight) ever came close to the destructiveness of the polite, quiet, sneaky, subtle shenanigans I have either pulled or seen pulled during my climb up the social ladder to the "land of milk and honey" - to the world of exclusive living, playing, and busily "succeeding." In the streets, everyone knew who was being wrong when they were being wrong, and they would get caught rather quickly and treated rather harshly, either by the police, or sometimes even worse, by the neighbors. In the bedrooms and boardrooms of my rise to the pinnacle of social standing, no one knew who was being right or wrong, and the wrong often "looked" so right, and they were rarely if ever caught in their wrongness until it was way too late, and they acted and were treated like heroes and saints until the embarrasment was just too great to bear any longer.
I have come to remember and now fully acknowledge - after experiencing both poverty (as a young child) and excess (as an ego-driven young adult) - that humbler, simpler, and smaller is far better, and yes (and I say this from experience as well), actually better for everyone. There is nothing more soul-killing than being knowingly or unknowlingly "full of crap," compromising yourself completely, while actually getting "rewarded" for it by peers and society. If you want to see a great (and even mostly true) character study on the subject, check out one of my favorite movies of all time, "Quiz Show" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110932/), which came out in 1994, coincidentally (yea, right) at about the same time that I was both grabbing the brass ring of my life and coming apart at the seams. Success, or should I say the rabid pursuit of its imposters - fame, power, and wealth - sure has a funny way of destroying everything in its path, and it sure is hard to live down (which, by the way, is the only way to live, as was so powerfully shown to us by Jesus). Here's to living down, to the level of your highest awareness!
"What?!!!," you might ask. What was that again? Well, it goes something like this. The key to life is NOT to make or have more and more money and/or power; it is to gain more and more awareness of the movement of God's hand (and His power) in and through your life and your relationships, as well as the character that naturally gets cultivated by Him in this awarness, so that you might move along with it and Him in synchronized co-creativity and perfect harmony. More money and power is not an inherently bad thing; it simply tends to "block" awareness, as the world tries to make a god out of you, and an immature part of you would love to go along for the ride. Less money and/or power is not inherently good (just as abject poverty and powerlessness is certainly not a blessed state), because we must have just enough of what we need to maximize awareness (and, ironically, sometimes it is just enough "lack").
See clearly, however, that it is the awareness, not the money or power, that we really need to truly live. Just as I was preparing this message two really interesting things happened: 1) I got another extra shot of money (a significant hit, which, under my current circumstances was way cool) from someone who I love dearly, and 2) I received the following from my buddy Lloyd (which is equally cool in its total synchronicity), which I edited oh so slightly to serve the purpose of this message. Enjoy!
TODAY'S REAL AMERICAN DREAM
By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.
Eighty years ago, the Great American Dream was to work hard, get a good education, prepare yourself to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in America, become financially successful, and leave what you created to your children so they would be better off than you were.
Fifty years ago (about 1958, which was exactly the time of my young Fishtown boyhood described above), the Great American Dream hadevolved into: living in a house in the suburbs, having two cars and two-point-three children, working forty hours per week or less, havinga salary which steadily increased regardless of your performance, acquiring more paid-vacation days, spending all of your money and more on consumer goods, increasing your debt load by borrowing more than you earned and waiting to retire on Social Security.
Today, I suspect that a warped version of the Great American Dream is to hit the jackpot, win the lottery, or at least to be given enough money after high school or college to maintain the lifestyle given to youby your parents. Given the current economy however, today's American Dream is much more than a desire to "get rich quick," but a wondering how one will survive, not in real terms, but relative to thedreams of the past. Our unemployment rate is high. The number of homeless Americans is higher than ever. People are having to make decisions between food and medicine. Food banks are empty...even after this "season of giving." The "dream" is to be lucky enough to win: the Lottery, Lotto, Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes; at Atlantic City or Las Vegas; the Irish Sweepstakes; at robbing others legally or illegally; or waiting long enough to access to your "rightful inheritance."
Children dream these days of becoming a sports super-hero, a film or music star, or a lucky gambler, not by working hard at their own character or skill development, but by being in the right place at the right time, and "discovered" by a person, parent, or business with unlimited money, who will give it to them merely because they want or need it. After all, they are "entitled." Conspicuous by its absence within the current American Dream, are the elements of "good character," "hard work," "self-discipline," "self-responsibility," and the emotional and spiritual fitness that comes only with regular practice.
Someone once said, "Luck is that spot where opportunity meets preparedness." If you are not personally prepared, when the opportunity arrives, you will not be able to grasp it. For seven years, Jeff Hostettler was the back-up quarterback for the New York Giants. For seven years, he prepared, practiced and sacrificed, as if he were the starting quarterback. For seven years, he never threw a pass that had any influence on the outcome of a football game. For seven years, he was self-disciplined enough to keep himself ready to perform. Then, one day, Phil Simms, the starting quarterback, was injured. Hostettler's opportunity had arrived. Was he prepared to take advantage of it? Had what he had prepared himself for, from seven years of hope and determination, finally occurred? You bet! Was it luck that made his dream come true? Not at all! It was when the opportunity met his preparedness. And his hope, dreams and good character had sustained him for seven long years.
In all of life, there are sequential phases of growth or development. If you don't complete the first phase, you cannot acquire the second, third, or fourth. This fundamental law of evolutionary process appliesto physical things, learning, personal and interpersonal growth. And there are no shortcuts. Like the activity necessary to reap a harvest of corn, one has to follow a certain sequence of activities. First you prepare the ground, plant the seed, fertilize and water. Only after you have engaged in these behaviors can you expect to have the harvest.
Motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, writes, "You have to 'be' before you can truly 'do.' And you have to 'do' before you can truly 'have'." Long-term success in any endeavor, whether it be personal, interpersonal, organizational, business, or sport, is determined by the process which preceded it. You need to become the person you dream of. Then you need to practice doing those activities which necessarily precede your dream. Then and only then, will you have your dream come true.
Dreams are wonderful, and necessary to have. But it is only after you engage in certain sequential activities, like regular practice, character development, hard work, self-discipline, focused learning, and responsibility, can you hope to reap the harvest of your dreams fulfilled. No one nor nothing will hand you your success. Only you can engage in the necessary process to attain your own version ofthe American Dream (or maybe an even more meaningful one thanthat. To paraphrase a current slogan, "Just become it. Then, just do it. Then, you can have it."
So, in my own words, "Become more aware of Him, whatever that takes (even if it does temporarily take you personally 'inflating' - consuming like the caterpillar - 'succeeding in worldly ways way beyond what is needed' until you 'crash into awareness,' exploding into your 'butterfly state,' the 'transcendence of self'), then do what awareness would dictate (shedding all hesitation and resistance), then (and only then) you can have the peace that passes all understanding, as you spread your wings and take flight."
