Desire

My mother, my father, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my teachers, my Sunday school teachers all said the same thing. Work hard, get a good job that pays lots of money. Then they said different things to do with it, but the message was always the same; make a lot of money.

They inculcated my brain with the desire to gain stature in a material world that was build on money. Money would give me power. So, my desire had to be to amass a lot of money. For what? Desire? As I think about it, desire is the most powerful force in the world; nothing is more powerful in the human mind when it comes to longing. Because longing is our innate desire for want. It is our need to satisfy our urge for whatever feeds our ego. And nothing, absolutely nothing, is more powerful than our ego. And our ego needs to be constantly fed.

One thing that bothers me as I think about these times is that as I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, and then in college, all of this was teaching me to turn away from God. My Bible reading teaches me to remain receptive to the word of God; it always has. The word of God tells me that I cannot live racing to amass as many material possessions as I can. How many times do I read the instructions to sell all we have and follow God?

Our world is bifurcated!

Our world is a great river forever flowing; divided by a massive mountain, one branch flows downhill leading to great wealth, greed, and lonely castles. It’s a struggle every step of the way. One small misstep and you fall all the way up to the top of the mountain again.

The other branch flows uphill; at first glance it seems to be impossible, but with a very little practice (meditation, prayer) it becomes easier as we go along. It leads straight to brotherhood. it leads straight to community. It leads straight to Love. It leads straight to God. This is my desire.