Monday, April 20, 2020
“There your heart will be also”. Hearts in a pandemic.
These verses came to mind today as I considered my plans for this week: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth...but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’
Thinking about what what each of us treasures...
The health and well-being of others?
Increased profits?
Financial status?
Compassion?
Generosity?
Self-interest?
Empowering those who struggle?
Keeping what we get for ourselves?
Each person receiving only what we think they “deserve”?
Getting what we want for the cheapest price, content to pay little to the workers who provide it?
Personal comfort or diversion?
Care for the poor and disabled?
Our business?
Our ability to care for those we love?
Escape from all difficulty?
Pleasure?
Thinking, listening and watching.
Thinking about what our politicians show that they value as they respond to the the competing voices in our society, all of those voices loud in their responses to the current pandemic...I think their responses shine some illuminations upon what they each value...what they “treasure” both personally and professionally.
Listening to one of the painters I hired last week telling his buddy that he plans to spend his economic stimulus check on pot and beer...
Watching the protesters demanding a reopening of the economy...
Some because they want a haircut.
Some because they are unable to earn enough money to pay rent and buy food.
I did not see anyone protesting on behalf of someone else in trouble. There may have been some, but all the ones I saw were self-interest...some responding to serious personal needs, others to frivolous ones.
I suspect that most of those who might have protested on behalf of others were too busy working to help those others.
What do these protests and demands and responses say about us as a society? About how we care or do not care for each other’s health and well being? How we pay our workers? How we do or do not teach provident living? How we teach caring for the poor? How we did or did not value compassion and act upon it prior to this. How we do or do not value life other than our own? What we teach about the purpose of and wise use of what we have earned or received, or how well we understand that? How well anyone does or does not care about any of the above.
We are where we are, in the midst of this conflict about policies and laws in response to this pandemic, not just because of a virus or “the economy”, but also because of our moral choices as a people and a society.
Our hearts have been, and are, tellingly, set upon our treasures.
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1 comment:
There's a lot of really good stuff here. I was surprised that I was most taken by one of the painters wanting to spend his stimulus money on pot and beer. To each his own when given money to do with what they will, but the stimulus funds were an interesting topic of conversation for me and Jake on what we have tried to make a daily walk during the pandemic. We were talking about how the student loan debt in the United States is less than the economic stimulus package was worth. And how helpful it would have been for so many who don't normally spend much money at all to have their student loan debt forgiven vs. a quick injection of money that isn't much money at all. In the grand scheme of things, we owe very little, but monthly it takes quite a chunk from the combined salary of two folks in the education field... in Oklahoma. We discussed the fact that, long term, student loan forgiveness could have gone so far to stimulate the economy because our generation and the generation after us is spending so little because we're collectively paying so much in student loan debt. Our household still isn't certain if we will receive a stimulus check (we owe taxes because of the life of a gigging musician....extra hilarity in all of this), but I'm over here chuckling at what we could do if our student loan debt would have been forgiven versus what it will be like for your painter to enjoy a finite amount of pot and beer.
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