Other Side of Grumpy
21 April 2008 - 17 ניסן 5768 by Huw
A friend of mine laments relying on his clergy job for money to survive. I’d love to be in his position (even after all the horror stories he’s told me - and those that I’ve heard from others).
As I start to settle in to Buffalo - finding a permanent job, a place to live, a parish home (etc) I’m aware of how it *feels* this time. I’m aware of every choice I make giving up freedom - the freedom to do nothing, the freedom to do something else, etc. Had a long talk last night that included the line “yes, but we don’t own a home yet” and I realised that, unlike most of my friends, I’ve never ever once been more than 20K in debt - let alone 50K or 100K or more.
I wonder how much freedom loss that feels like.
I realise this goes back to my question about the car. I am, more and more, certain that a lot of folks are walking around with suppressed or sublimated fears for their amassed possessions. But I agree with the comment that indicated it was the attachment to them that caused the problem.
Give a listen to Lama Surya Das talk about American Materialism in the context of Buddhism. The first thing a Buddhist must do is renounce the world. But for most Americans, wanting religion without all the bother, most of us are happy with just learning how to sit silently for a while - and continue buying our cars and houses.
The first thing a Buddhist must do is renounce the world, so also with Christians. But most of us are happy to write off our ownership of “Stuff” as “just what you need to get along”… Most of us - owning multiple sets of clothes and shoes, too much petroleum for one planet and enough debt for an entire nation are unaware of how much all of this weighs on us.
And how much our souls cry out just to drop everything and walk away from it all.
Yes. This hits home with me right now. It’s precisely our STUFF that has caused so much trouble in our lives of late. And, the DEBT that we are in in order to “own” such stuff. Stuff that I would GLADLY give away. Except, that I can’t. Because I’m paying for it. And if I feel this way about credit card debt lower than the national average, and one of the cheapest houses of anyone I know, and two of the cheapest cars on the road today, I can only imagine what it’s like to be REALLY bad off.
God, help us find a way out of this mess we’ve put ourselves in.