Here I Am

Sorry for the radio silence.  Actually, I just haven't had much to say this week--things are just chugging along, more of the same. 

"But Mom," my precious ones said today, "Why haven't you posted about selling Cub Scout popcorn?  Or that MPD's eating baby-food carrots now?"

Um, no.  I don't have any deep thoughts to ponder about those, or any jokes, or even any cute pictures.  I'm reading a couple of good books, but I'm not ready to give book reports on them yet.  As for current events--I'm quite freaked out, and just speechless on the whole situation.  I am so sorry, by the way, for saying "who cares" about the economy.  (Still true relative to murdering millions of babies--in fact, as a point of reference, Hitler had all kinds of sound economic reasons for murdering the Jews, right?)  But do you think if I take back my words, things can go back to the only-sort-of-bad condition that they were in a couple of weeks ago? 

This summer the kids and I, like so many of you probably did, enjoyed reading the American Girl Kit books and seeing the movie, which portrays life during the Great Depression.  I pray that's not what we're facing!  But actually, speaking of the books I'm reading, Barbara Kingsolver is making me think that maybe we Americans have actually earned a bit of economic comeuppance.  No doubt, we Americans are over-the-top consumers, to say the least.  Consider this, from Small Wonders, which is Kingsolver's collection of essays composed as a reaction to the events of September 11, 2001:

"Even in the simple realm of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations estimates that $13 billion above current levels of aid would provide everyone in the world (including the hungry within our own borders) with basic health and nutrition.  Collectively, Americans and Europeans spend $17 billion a year on pet food."

Yikes.  Here's another one:

"In every culture on earth, the right to live in a home is probably the first condition of citizenship and humanity.  Homelessness is an aberration.  It may happen anywhere from time to time, of course, but when I look hard at the world, I see very few places where there resides an entire, permanent class of people labeled "homeless."  Not in the poorest places I've ever lived, not even in an African village where everyone I knew owned only one shirt (at best) and most had never touched an automobile.  Because even there, people without resources are taken in by their families.  Even if someone should fall completely apart and have to go to the hospital, which means a trek on foot over dozens of miles or more, the whole family goes along to make sure the sick one is taken care of...They had families they could not forget under any circumstances, or ever abandon, or be abandoned by, however they might fall on madness or illness or hard times.  I don't believe that the word homeless as it's used in our language could be translated there."

And finally:

"Imagine that you come from a large family in which one brother ended up with a whole lot more than the rest of you...Imagine his gorgeous house on a huge tract of forests, rolling hills, and fertile fields.  Your other relatives have decent places with smaller yards, but yours is mostly dust.  Your lucky brother eats well, he has meat every day--in fact,let's face it, he's corpulent, and so are his kids.  At your house, meanwhile, things are bad:  Your kids cry themselves to sleep on empty stomachs.  Your brother must not be able to hear them from the verandah where he dines, because he throws away all the food he can't finish.  He will do you this favor:  He's made a TV program of himself eating.  If you want, you can watch it from your house.  But you can't have his food, his house, or the car he drives around in to view his unspoiled forests and majestic purple mountains.  The rest of the family has noticed that all his driving is kicking up dust, wrecking not only the edges of his property but also their less pristine backyards and even yours, which was dust to begin with.  He's dammed the river to irrigate his fields, so that only a trickle reaches your place, and it's nasty.  You're beginning to see that these problems are deep and deadly, that you'll be the first to starve, and the others will follow."

So, okay, maybe our current economic woes are just what's coming to us, or something.  Maybe it's even time to redistribute things in the global economy.  (If only murdering pre-born children didn't always have to go along with that, politically...)  As I sit here in my comfy leather chair, musing and blabbering deep thoughts onto my brand-new laptop, wondering if I should have a snack before I go to bed--right this minute, I think I will take a minute to thank God for loaning me these many worldly blessings, and ask Him how He would like me to use them.

Actually, you know, the Catholics have an appealing perspective on materialism.  It is God's stuff, as all Christians know.  The twist I never heard before I was Catholic is that God wants us to just "take what we need."  We're supposed to share the rest. 

"So," says me, "you mean something like, uh, blowing a bunch of money on, say, an expensive vacation or a fancy car might not be God's idea of what we should do with His money?"

No, actually, it's called stewardship.  We're only supposed to take what we need, and we should be sharing the rest with our neighbors with the dusty yards and the hungry kids.  I understand that some of the more holy among us (St. Francis comes to mind, of course) don't even think it's properly Christian to keep a big savings account--give it away; God will provide.  Scary, right?  Talk about a camel going through the eye of a needle (you know, as in it's easier for that to happen than for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven?!)!  As I look around at my house and my lifestyle, I am truly humbled.  It's amazing how little we really need.

I even thought about this today when I gave MPD his bath:  What a blessing to have abundant clean water!  I also remember when WWD was born into his life of relative luxury or at least safety and comfort on Chicago's suburban north shore, I had a very vivid sense that other babies were born at the exact same minute (I'm sure they were) on the south side of Chicago, to a very different life.  (Barack Obama's daughter, maybe? Just Kidding.)  In my postpartum emotionally unstable condition, I thought a lot about the disparity between those two babies, and why one would be born into one family, and the other born into the other, and what God could possibly be up to. 

In any case, those of us who are privileged with abundant means have a huge responsibility to society.  I've always thought that, but to think of abundant means as an actual liability for getting into heaven--well, that's a whole other level.

Stay tuned for an update on Cub Scout popcorn sales and other earth-shattering topics...