What's Wrong With the World: Greed

I usually try to keep my Monday fare light as Mondays are hard enough without actually having to think. This post by Fr. Dwight Longenecker at Standing on My Head deserves to be an exception to that.

We in the West like to think we have achieved greatness. Technologically we have some wonders that is for certain, but something is going terribly wrong with us. Some of the great thinkers of Modern Times have been sounding the claxon while we scrabble along, too busy to notice. This post sums it up amazingly...

London Riots 

Riots have broken out in London again. Last night and tonight organized gangs are rampaging through parts of the city burning and looting. Who's to blame?

Everybody's to blame. That's who. In the present economic climate many people are suffering with the loss of jobs, the loss of savings and the loss of their homes and security. Why is that? Because of greed at every level of society--greed amongst the middle classes, but also greed amongst the lower classes the upper classes.

Greed amongst a lazy, dependent underclass of people who won't work and feel entitled to more and more and more free handouts. Greed amongst the 'nice' middle class people who invest their money is shady get rich quick schemes. Greed amongst 'nice' rich people who devise the schemes, take usury to vile and obscene extremes and rake in the cash as fast as they can. Greed amongst money lenders and property speculators and stock market 'geniuses'. Greed amongst those who will use the financial crises that come along every ten years to use their already huge wealth to buy up everything they can at a cheap price--robbing everyone they can of the true value.

A society worm eaten with greed. Greed where every store tries to offer their goods at the cheapest possible prices and every housewife and shopper covets a 'bargain' so much and cheerfully degrades their lives for yet another cheap trinket purchased not because he needs it, but because it's cheap. Greed where manufacturers cut corners and offer nasty, poor quality goods with a veneer of 'quality'. Greed where consumers buy such junk. Greed woven into our children's worldview. Greed where everybody is grabbing whatever they can however they can.

The problem with a society fueled by greed is that lurking beneath the sin of greed is always violence. Violence because I can only have all the goodies I want at the expense of someone else. If I have it you can't have it. I will have my cheap consumer goods, but just don't tell me about the child labor, the sweatshops, the slave labor level of wages and the rape of the environment in order to get me all my cheap goodies. All of this is a form of violence, and the riots in London are simply an outward expression of the reality of our Western society--a society that is thoroughly materialistic and therefore atheistic.

Pope John Paul II said there were two materialistic atheistic world systems and that both would eventually collapse in on themselves. The first was communism. The second was unrestrained capitalism. The first is built on power. The second is built on greed.

Do you see the burning shops and police cars in the streets of London? Do you see the gangs wearing hoods and masks rampaging through the streets bashing into banks, burning stores and looting shopping malls? It is a prophetic image. It shows us who we are, and we had better take a good, long, hard look.

The news shows rioting gangs of lawless youths burning and pillaging and taking whatever they want and no one can stop them. But I see behind their ugly faces, their frightening masks and their hoods and weapons a whole society of people who do the very same thing they do, but with business suits instead of hoodies, masks of polite smiles and good manners instead of balaclavas, and the weapons of lawsuits and legislation and corporate lawyers and contracts to force their way on the world.

What's wrong with the world? G.K.Chesterton answered the question: "I am." For I too am greedy. Greedy with my time. Greedy with my talents. Greedy with my money. Greedy with my life, and if this is true of me it is true of every other person and the only answer to this desperate human condition is....

...true conversion of life.

Link to original article....

End of Summer Stress

...has made us rethink the spelling of August. The hubby and I had been blowing off steam by calling it Awful August to describe the stresses of the impending move's financing, shifting deadlines, and temporary homelessness as one house has to move out of the way for the next one while we humans have to also somehow stay put (tent? I still don't know!) to monitor all three cranky, pregnant and prone to milk fever goats (who are, as of today, officially overdue by the way) while fitting in a baptism of our newly adopted daughter with the accompanying party, along with meetings for me every stinking weekend of the month while my husband will be on retreat next week and totally out on a business trip (we may or may not join him) at the end of the month on top of the regular stresses of everyday life. Some things are slipping.

Luckily none of those slippery things have been our moods. My husband and I have managed to be particularly patient with one another--both carefully checking our mood at the door when the other one has that look of incipient tantrum. We have managed to remember that tantrums are remarkable smaller and quicker when countered with humor and patience. That Look and a rude sounding, "I'm handling it!" has been the worst offense of the day. Getting That Tone during a phone call was the worst of yesterday's. So far, so good.

So good in fact, we've decided it's not Awful August but Awesome. As in shut your mouth, there is no human way possible to handle all this so politely. None. You just have to know me to know that. This current good behavior and lack of serious pouting is all God's doing. He's got me firmly in hand and I'm not fighting it (much) mainly because early on in this month a friend knocked my inner control freak flat with a question, "Does the wind blow without your permission?"

I actually had to think about that one before I realized that it does. And thank God. One less thing I have to make decisions over is fine by me.

We're calling it August again. I've just decided to spell it Awegust. Yes, it sounds exactly the same. Like Anne Shirley's Ann with an e, it just sounds better knowing we're spelling it that way.

I'd love to end it there, with that nice hopeful ending and patting myself on the back about my good behavior so far because I haven't even made it a week yet.

The month has 31 days. It's the 6th. God, help me.

7 Quick takes

1 - It's been a long, hard, grueling summer, but this morning I saw a dim glimmering of hope. A winter constellation is fully risen on the horizon at 5:45. It's still summer, it's still hot, but the end is in sight when Orion makes it's appearance. It will rise earlier and earlier and the temps will get cooler and cooler. I promise.

2 - You know you are in a bad way when you celebrate the "down-tos." Our air conditioning is extremely limited due to reasons too expensive to fix in the limited time we are spending in this temporary dwelling. We have it completely shut off in the "adult section" of the house so that the kids do not have to sweat through the night. Last night I found myself celebrating when it got "down to" 86 degrees in my bedroom before I went to bed. It's been running at 92 degrees at bedtime all week.

3 - I am happy to report I am solidly "down to" a size large! Now that I am down to the point where I usually start dieting, I can actually feel a sense of accomplishment when I lose any more weight instead of the sense of panic and self castigation I've been feeling. Not that the extra 7 pounds was entirely my fault--it was a medical issue taken care of by medication--but logic wasn't working out for me in the emotional response to the situation. I'm just celebrating a benchmark and glad I feel like celebrating!

4 - Brace yourself for a complete change in tone. I got the bit in my mouth again about gendercide and the idiots we can be in regards to human sexuality. I'll just warn my sister and anyone else off numbers 5 through 7 right now. Don't break your heart by reading further. You already know how awful we can be...

5 - I just read an article about infanticide in Mali. The implied solution, according to the article, who quotes Unicef, is increased birth control and abortion. Let's not address the rapes and coercion that are the underlying cause of all of this. We will, instead, make money off of them by providing more of a market for distributing a Class One Carcinogen. Let's just make sure these women aren't burdening us all with killing the child after it's born. We don't like that. The rapes? Meh. They are only women after all.

6- Further in the "only women" category is the rarity that we are becoming in parts of the world, thanks to the enlightened among us.There are now 30 million more males than females in China due to the gendercide that is the inevitable result of the One Child Policy--now the Two Child Policy. In India, they are beginning to see male births surpassing females as well. What a brave new world we have here. Abortion is good for women! Just tell that to the sex slaves being brought in to service the Chinese troops. I'm sure most of them are there willingly, aren't you?

Oh, yes, Mr. Environmentalist, your newfangled and totally unrelated idea of using the government to control birthrates is simply excellent. There will be no ramifications for anyone! It will all work out just fine. Shut your eyes now, click your heels, and wish all these useless eaters away!

7 - If you haven't noticed, numbers 5 and 6 are related. They are, in fact, the same problem. It's impossible to mess with human sexuality without disastrous results.

 

Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler, a fellow Texan, for hosting

7 Quick Takes Friday 

over at Conversion Diary.com

A rose by any other name...

...or three reasons I love the rosary:

1. A rosary is 20 minutes of meditation on the life of Christ. Reciting it daily steeps you in the Gospel as you focus on the meditation for each decade. It keeps Him very much alive in your imagination. There is nothing better to fill your head with than the life of Christ--the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Incarnation...
   
   
2. 20 minutes of prayer a day is not too shabby. Of course, it has nothing on my friends in Africa who spend entire 24-hour days in prayer, but for a lazy, self-indulgent American it isn't bad. The discipline of taking the time to recite a rosary is only one of it's many charms.
   
   
3. God rewards the treasure seeker. I say one rosary each day for my husband and then sit back and watch as it bears fruit. You have to remember how weak and silly I am--how well God understands my smallness--that He allows me to catch tiny glimpses of His grace at work when I do what I ought to do. I am fully aware that I am petty and immature in my faith; He has to reward me instantaneously in order to keep my attention. I am no Mother Theresa that He will trust me with a dark night of the soul or any dryness in prayer. I pray for mostly selfish reasons and God holds my little hannie because I am not steady enough to walk on my own. I can't expound upon the work He is doing in my husband's soul without betraying the bonds of matrimony. I can only tell you I am so very well rewarded for my efforts I would be foolish to ever stop. 

On that note, let me conclude this too brief praise of a lovely Christian prayer tradition and take a moment to request a prayer from you. Would you be kind enough to pray for me that I persevere in prayer? I am only wise enough to know I am a foolish woman. I could so easily fall out of the habit of prayer, and I could use all the help I can get.


Click here for a link on how to pray the Rosary...

I keep trying...

...to clean up some old drafts I never finished so I can produce something readable this week, now that I'm back on-line and all, but I've not been very successful. I've been entertaining in-laws and adopting daughters instead.