Every year or two, I listen to the collected speeches/sermons of Martin Luther King. I remember one illustration he used. If you’re by a river and a drowning man goes by, you jump in and save him. If another drowning man goes by, you jump in and save him too. However, when the third drowning man goes by, you ought to go up river and find out who’s throwing drowning men into the river.
The spirituality of many of us is drowning. It’s drowning under hurry, distraction, stress, and anxiety. We know that bettering the earth is an important part of our spirituality… but when? We’re tired! We’re stretched thin!
We know the importance of the ancient spiritual practices to our soul’s well-being; meditation, examen of consciousness, spiritual reading, and so forth… but when? We’re exhausted by day’s end.
Many stress-reduction, time-saving strategies are merely rescuing individuals from the river. Rarely do we think as clearly as the lecture below, about what’s causing our stress. There is a huge vacuum cleaner sucking up our bandwidth. We lay the blame at the feet of many factors; unbridled consumerism, greed, workaholism, and so forth, but they may not be the main culprits.
In this lecture at UC Berkley in 2007 (before the economic collapse), Elizabeth Warren talks about her experience as a bankruptcy lawyer and law professor at Harvard. She has carefully researched U.S. government data about how we Americans earn and spend, and uses that data to help us see what is happening to us… and more pointedly, what is happening to our children.
It’s a 57 minute lecture, but it’s worth your time (you can go to 4:45 to skip the introduction).
Forewarned is forearmed. This lecture helps us see where our time, energy, and money are actually going. Once we know that, it can help us think about the kinds of things we must do to help one another stay out of the river!
Have a listen.
Elizabeth Warren….I know I’ve heard that name before. She’s also running for Ted Kennedy’s old seat as US Senator for Massachusetts. She is amazing.
Elizabeth Warren….I know I’ve heard that name before. She’s also running for Ted Kennedy’s old seat as US Senator for Massachusetts. She is amazing.
The alcoholism, greed etc…. symptoms, not causes..
what i appreciated about her lecture was the understanding it gives us for what is happening.
it is helpful for me to realize that over the last 30 years, the 2-parent home has added one salary, but spent that whole salary on health insurance, mortgage, a 2nd car, and childcare.
now, i may not be able or willing to do anything about that, but informed is armed. it was easy to just imagine we were experiencing the stress on our time and energy simply because we were buying ipads. not so.
spirituality needs some of that time and energy.
caring for the community needs some of that time and energy.
spiritual practices need some of it.
time to look at the blue sky… and heal… and restore…
all of these really important human things need some of that time and energy.
as we look at the housing boom and subsequent bust over the last 30 years, maybe we don’t need such big houses… maybe we stop buying, and the prices drop.
as we look at the health insurance boom (my family pays 1.5 times our mortgage in insurance – and we’re healthy!), maybe that informs how much pressure we put on our society to fix it.
as we see that 2nd auto and childcare are where that salary went, we are equipped to solve the problem that IS, in fact, the problem.
i appreciate the lecturer framing the problem for me. it helps me think about what the problem is costing me… costing people i love, and it helps me think about how i’ll go about fighting the problem.
d.