We have seen the collapse of the investment banking industry as we know it and have watched as lawmakers have debated and postured and ultimately passed a $700 Billion bail out. Tom Wolfe wrote in the New York Times last week about a group of folk he called “the Masters of the Universe” (from the cartoon based on Mattel’s toys “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe). This is the name he gave to investment bankers who began in the 1980’s to make millions upon millions of dollars at investment banks. Three of those banks are now closed and one has been subsumed into another bank. I have not read the book, “Bonfire of the Vanities” in which Wolfe uses this name, but it suggests the amount of power and, perhaps, when you consider the title of the book, a kind of hubris and greed that toppled the very industry that made these folk their fortunes while raping innocent people.
We have heard candidates and politicians opine about the condition of Main Street over and against Wall Street. Yet, I wonder where the concern for Main Street was a few years back when some of us, and friends of ours, were being duped into mortgages that appealed to the best and the worst in us at the same time. I do not suppose anyone would seek to dispute the ethics of greed and “vaulting ambition” as root causes of this tragedy. What ethic must replace these so as to avoid such devastation in the future, particularly the devastation of families and individuals who fell for the mortgage tricks and whose retirement investments have radically lost value?
So, here we are, watching the papers with a curious mixture of excitement and dread. And yet, the challenges we face day to day are not chronicled in the papers that we read. The challenges we face are nearer, more pressing, immediate. Whatever the impact this banking collapse and resulting bailout will have on our lives is still in our future. But many of us are facing challenges in our present: financial difficulty, failing relationships, health concerns, loneliness, grief, sorrow, frustration emanating from our lives not being what we hoped and what we had envisioned, disappointments, dashed hopes and deferred dreams. We are not sitting around waiting to see how the collapse of the banking industry will affect us, our dance card is full already as we struggle right now to dance to the rhythm of our own lives.
Emergent, immediate and pressing needs are the stuff that holds our attention. Too often, these pressing needs obscure our sight of the beauty around us in which God has placed the answers we have been looking for. Too often, we are so consumed with what is wrong in our lives, what is wrong around us that we cannot see the sheer magnificence of what is around us: creation.
If we open our hearts, we can receive the sacrament of God each and every day through creation. A sacrament is the self-giving of God. And the first sacrament of God really is creation. Creation is the expression, the revelation of the majesty and the glory of God. Creation is God’s goodness erupted into this universe. And God is the Master of it. God has given us Himself in this marvelous creation of which we are a part. God’s Spirit is active in creation. The Holy Spirit is not the property of houses of worship. God’s spirit is in the wind. God’s spirit is in the water. God’s spirit is in the mountains. God’s Spirit is in a warm smile, a passionate embrace. God’s spirit is in us and in the love we have for one another. Facets of the mystery of God are revealed to us in God’s creation. Those who are connected to God’s creation, and not at war with it, get intimations, hints, clues and outright direct messages from God about life and how to live it.
Consider the Moken people, who call themselves sea gypsies of the Andaman Sea. The Moken live in the exact area where the tsunami hit Thailand in 2004 and yet there are no known causualties among the Moken. “It's their intimacy with the sea that saved the Moken. They’re born on the sea, live on the sea, die on the sea. They know its moods and motions better than any marine biologist… It wasn't only the sea that was acting strangely. It was the animals, too. On the mainland, elephants started stampeding toward higher ground. Off Thailand’s coast, divers noticed dozens of dolphins swimming for deeper water. And on these islands, the cicadas, which are usually so loud, suddenly went silent” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558.shtml).
Somehow, we must learn to quiet ourselves to hear what silences speak to us. Insights from God’s creation do not come to us in frenetic activity but in the calmness of our rest in Him, leaning on Him, our being with Him, our loving Him, our trusting Him, our relying on Him. These revelations come in our nearness to God, our communion with God and God’s creation. In our communion with God come the revelations vital to our lives.
Moving through the day with frowning fixed gaze and grip on your lip is not the life God has planned for us. Our countenance, our face should reflect the peace God has poured into us as we have practiced the discipline of resting in Him. Frowning fixed gazes do not allow for beholding the beauty of nature. When we do not make rose smelling and tree hugging and star gazing a part of our day we have missed revelations of Godself to us. Creation is an act of God’s giving of Godself to us. It is sacramental. We must neither ignore nor abuse creation. Nor should we suppose ourselves to live on some high spiritual plane. This world, this marvelous creation is not to be escaped, even though there are parts of it that are broken. God made it. This world is to be redeemed and we must participate in its redemption. Participate by beholding the beauty of the earth as it reveals God’s glory to us.
I’d love to hear from you!
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