Perhaps it comes from talking to Peter. He is committed to a poverty that occasions growth. Instead of being without, it allows him to contact what is, touching God and reaching into the depth of himself. Maybe it is that this year I earned less than I thought I was worth, and less than I needed. Whatever the reason, I'd been wondering about money.
Money and value are, of course, distinct entities but money for most is a necessity. It can obscure more essential necessities, and may become addictive so that "need" ceases to relate to survival and becomes instead a function of "want." Still, when we remove the layers of mammon, the dollar remains a medium by which we secure well-being and provide against our pain.
I realize money, when it is an end in itself, when it plays center stage, is not good. It is a thing, and should it become more vital than people it has lost the proportionality that ought to be maintained. Such glorification, the deification of dollars, is not a form of worship most people knowingly adopt. Instead it is a more gradual approach, one that we see at the end rather than as it occurs. It is being caught in the acquisition, maintenance or enhancement of useless things and in values whereby possessions become clutching and ownership more important than any reason for having.
That, however, is not my concern. Instead, it is a realization that making a living gets in the way of living, that essentials are essential and have to be paid for. Protestations I could make as a priest do not apply so well when there is no congregation to pay for my care.
What I believed about excess wealth or poverty being good for no one is still true. I still think all have a right to work, to support themselves and to contribute to those in need; and believe there are nations, institutions and individuals whose use of money to gain, consolidate and wield power is evil. I feel caught between these beliefs and fear I may get caught in a cycle wherein I would let go of some values or compromise some belief. I suppose too I resent investing time in earning when it is better spent with family or friends, in study or wonder at what I may now not have time to see. But to spend our time, we need money with which first to buy it.
To call for reorganization of society that would allow time to learn and work, time for being together in earning and in prayer, time too in which we could discuss what is around us, our hopes and our dreams; such a call is too simple a response. It would raise the question beyond my own need to reply. Though it might be accurate, it would say nothing to me about myself at this moment.
I have seen the ignorance and suffering poverty brings, the way it steals from one's dignity. It offers little I would ask my children to share. Still, I want them to know it is there, a reality to be touched rather than read about. I want them to understand that people who are without have a right to achieve what others take for granted. I would like them to feel a unity with those who are without, who may have no means to gain what should be within reach. I want them to not only see but feel a need to undo what harm poverty has caused, and to do so out of solidarity rather than guilt.
It is knowledge I would not have them gain by experience. Poverty, unless freely chosen, is not good. There is no virtue in being hungry or living in decay because there is no alternative. Nor is endurance a good choice simply because no other is available.
I am wandering from what I asked. Maybe because I have no answer. Asking the meaning of money is not to ask about extremes of wealth or poverty. Neither is my situation. To be caught up in either is to answer a peripheral question. While disposition of the earth's wealth is a concern, it is too global, and still I find it hard to focus on me. To say I must be wary of wealth's entrapment is fair warning, but one I do not need. To tell myself to maintain clear perspective in discerning our need - recognizing a distinction between what is needed and what is decorative - is a reasonable injunction, but unnecessary. I am involved with supporting life, not elevating it, and I fear that while I would rather avoid dealing with the issue of money it is there, an unwelcome complication of a far from simple life.
It is an annoyance, an intrusion. It is, I suppose, what began when God told Adam to begin paying rent on Eden. Money, paying for things, earning what is required is a component of being. Not liking it will not make it go away. Peter's answer is maybe best, at least for him. Like St. Francis, he is trying to seize life's core and seeing money is not a part of it. It has made him free and made closer his union with God. His answer, however, is not my own. What is, I am not sure.
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