Living on half of what we used to
we're aware we now give money away at a dramatically reduced rate. Most notably, we no longer pledge substantial financial support to a church congregation. But each month we and the other members of our small community circle try to give an agreed-upon amount to a fund we keep against future possibilities, whether disastrous or enticing. Not an interest-bearing account, just some cash kept in a safe place.

We began the fund more than a year ago. One of our number now needs the money very badly and the circle takes joy in its ability to help. No repayment, no judgment, no strings. The money will accrue again. And there may be other times that the support we can offer one another will beneficially include money, though money is the least of it. Our weekly time together, spent holding one another's stories as we each reach for the deepest possible personal integrity and spiritual understanding, has been shifting our sense of where our security and abundance lie.

We often pay lip service
to such lilies-of-the-field matters in church settings, but for me the bone-deep knowledge that all will be well has come since Anne and I left conventional parish life. Few congregations, I know, may be able to sustain the sort of soul-searching conversation that has nurtured the sense of solidarity which is increasingly setting the members of our circle free, but in these halcyon economic times there seems a crying need.

The topic of "stewardship" comes up in our churches
of course, but timed largely in relationship to the annual pledge drive to support the church budget. The talk is superficially about using our personal resources of time, talent and money for the glory of God, or out of gratefulness for all that God has given us--with the biblical tithe a convenient flat-tax standard of how to put a dollar value on the church's and/or charity's share. One recent diocesan stewardship column even went so far as to counsel that we allow God's love to go [financially] "unrequited" at our moral peril.

Such claims, I'm bound to believe, must be the result of cultural conditioning. Consumerism takes as axiomatic that the good life always has a price tag--or should. In this regard I think of the credit card company which is a prime employer in three towns near us here in Maine. Local boosters are pleased by the company's expanding presence. As one editorial enthused following the recent opening of a new call center in Rockland, "These are [300] well-paying jobs with benefits, and it is a non-polluting industry. Not to mention that [the company] is generous with its money within the community."

Driving by the chief executive's sprawling residence
on the outskirts of Camden, a complex which now has a spectacular ocean view (thanks to the clear-cutting of trees in defiance of shoreline zoning laws, the financial penalties calculated as part of the job's cost), one gets the clear impression that business is good. And it will probably remain so as long as expanding numbers of customers cannot pay off their credit balances at the end of each billing period. Considering the stratagems employed to encourage such spending, I find myself wondering if the definition of "non-polluting" isn't sometimes too narrowly applied. But the company awards numerous educational grants to area schools and funds a variety of public improvements, so no one, as it were, "goes there."

We each calculate virtue by a different standard
but it seems that in the church, at least, we ought to be able to find a way to shift the focus. After all, the kernel of intention contained within the topic of stewardship is remarkably radical--to truly consider, together, the spreadsheets of our lives from the perspective of God's economy, both in personal and community/environmental terms. How we make our money is at least as significant as how we spend the income. The ultimate accountability, of course, is between the individual and God. But the communal conversation, if risked, seems the critical first step in unmasking the powers' grip on our lives.

Julie A Wortman <julie@thewitness.org> is a publisher and co-editor of The Witness.

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