my maiden voyage

With fear and trepidation, I launch into terra incognita, this brave new world of blogging. As a computer semi-illiterate, I am flying by the proverbial seat of my pants, but Ican't resist the opportunity. There is so much today in this chaotic world inspiring commentary, and I cannot resist adding my fuel to the fire.

A good friend has a wonderful blogspot that inspired me (grumpy-old-dog@blogspot.com). He tells it like it is with rip-roaring ribaldry but philosophically right on the mark most of the time.

One of his commentaries a few weeks ago about the world economy got me going, and I wrote the following to him and a few friends. It'll be my first blog:

TO GRUMPY AND OTHER GOOD FRIENDS


I have a good friend, a former business associate who recently retired and, now that he has the time and inclination, has developed his own blogspot and writes some wonderful, if frequently ribald, philosophic observations. The state of the world must have been too much with him of late, and a recent offering was dark, to say the least, concerning the state of our economy and future prospects. So, Grumpy, let me add a few comments regarding that line of thought for you and other good friends.

We are all besieged these last few months with ever-increasing dire news of the domestic and world economy, of the terror-filled wars and other confrontations---it’s all pretty bad, let’s face it. Since I have always been a member of “the-glass- half-filled-not-half-empty-school-of-thought”, a philosophy which has been sorely tested by recent events, I try to spy a light ahead in the distance.

Our interim Episcopal priest, John Corbiere, in a recent sermon, following the Gospel reading from St. Mark describing Jesus curing the lepers, made the apt connection that our modern form of leprosy is greed, a malady all of us have suffered from in recent years, which has been a major cause of many of our problems of today.

We Americans---and a lot of Europeans and Asians, as well, I might add---have become so caught up in our creature comforts, our own insulated lives and our pure selfishness that we started worshipping the wrong gods. Thomas Carlyle used to refer to this kind of materialism as “Mammon”, so you might say we’ve been devout followers of Mammon while professing that we Americans live in a democratic society and worship the Christian GOD, or the Jewish YAHWEH or Islamic ALLAH or fill in the religion of your choice. In short, we have screwed up---big time.

The morning after the big party has arrived, and most of us have one big hangover, and all we can feel is the big pain right now. But it has started us thinking---and that certainly is a novelty. We are questioning a lot of what we believed in the past and seeking a new direction for the future. Whether you voted for him or not, the election of Barack Obama is, at least to me, a manifestation of that yearning after a different direction, a searching for a new course of action. Out with the old values, in with the new.

Do we really need that new Hummer, or that grand marble palazzo with eight bedrooms and bathrooms, or the Kiton ready-made suit costing $7000 (soon to be offered by Saks, I read in the “N.Y. Times”)? Couldn’t we learn to recycle even more, to try to economize and save a little money, to share more of what we have with those who don’t have? I note in the paper that Americans used to save about 9% in the eighties, down to 5% in the nineties and now it’s maybe 1% for the few lucky ones.

I think we’re starting a new revolution, a quiet one, but one building momentum in which the credo will be, “Less is More”. Put your money and your faith in the good things, the lasting values like love, generosity and sharing and expend your talent and your treasure where it builds these values.

Yes, I think that light is dim at the moment, Grumpy, but it’s there---if we go out and really look for it.

FLESHPOT