I have one of my daughters read my posts before I publish them and she has a valid complaint which is that my posts are not very in-depth. And I agree. I know I could be much more thorough if this was a podcast but I don't have the resources for that. I could talk for hours on end about Orthodoxy and this topic in particular, but I don't know if any one really cares to listen. To remediate this problem, I will try to put more meat into my posts from here on out.
So back to money.
It is no great revelation that money can be ruinous. There was a time when I thought winning the Powerball would be the single greatest thing to happen to me. Now, with half a century of life experience under my belt, I know that winning an enormous amount of money would send me straight to hell. How do I know that? Because I notice a change in myself when I have a decent amount of money in my hands. It's really bizarre. I become carefree and arrogant and I have to struggle to be vigilant with my behavior. Maybe that's not you, but it is definitely me. Yeah we could kid ourselves and say that we would give it all away or some other rationalization, but the hard truth is, when you have excessive amounts of money, you have no need for Christ.
With money, supposedly, you can buy your way out of suffering. Or buy things that will ease the suffering. And it can be as simple as a buck for a candy bar or as extravagant as a vacation home on a private island. Doesn't matter, you feel the power with both. And I don't think I'm too far off when I hear people vehemently demanding the redistribution of wealth that it isn't so much about the cash as it is about the power and control that comes with it. The desire to control the outcomes in our lives is all tied back to money. Maybe when I'm all done with this series I'll loop back around to suffering and control. Fun stuff.
Now back to our story...
My father grew up the son of a poor immigrant father. My grandfather did not speak English very well and had low-level jobs to keep the family afloat. As most kids would, my father struggled with this. It's not easy to be poor and ethnic in America and not fit into that WASP stereotype. And without Christ, it is a constant life of suffering, anger and malcontent. My dad's MO, whether it was a conscious effort or not, was to get out of it.
Although both of his parents were Orthodox Christians, from what I can gather, it doesn't appear that Orthodoxy was at the heart of their home. They went to services and festivals and I'm pretty sure that my dad went to Sunday school, but I never heard my father talk about God. So when my dad married my mom and ventured out into the corporate world in the late 60's, he was not guided by God but rather the desire to escape the poverty and social subjugation of his upbringing. In my formative years so much of what my parents talked and argued about was money. They went through wild fluctuations of having an abundance and traveling the world to a complete low of almost losing the house. So it comes as no surprise that my father raised me to be a business woman. My entire upbringing was focused on that endpoint.
Now, in no way do I want to make my father seem to be the bad guy here. I adore my father and I miss his love and humor every single day. He was a good person, loved us dearly and was our biggest cheerleader in life. Thankfully he did come back to the Church in the last several years of his life, so while I pray for his peaceful rest every day, I have peace in my heart for him. That's another post in itself too.
Now for my mother.
My sweet suffering mother was brought up in simplicity of a pious Orthodox Christian household. My grandfather was a carpenter and my grandmother, a housewife with an 8th grade education. Their faith was pure. I once walked into my grandma's room while she was praying and I felt like I had stepped into a holy scene. It took my breath away. My grandfather would roam the house singing spiritual songs and never ever raised his voice in anger. They both supported their parish with every talent God gave them. I am undeservedly blessed to have them as my grandparents.
My mother had no formal education beyond high school other than a certification as a medical secretary. And although she was raised in this piety of her parents, and had years of Orthodox catechism in Sunday school (I still have her books!), this simplicity did not translate into American culture and was not passed down to us. My mother was thrown from a quiet existence where it wasn't that important to "know" your faith because it was actually lived to an absolutely insane situation in the suburbs of NYC where this simplicity is viewed as ignorance and avarice is viewed as enlightenment. So, my mother had to adapt to Rome and do as the Romans do. There is no room for Orthodox Christianity and money to peacefully co-exist and given our environment, money won. My siblings and I were raised as citizens of America's Rome. My parents did take us to church, occasionally to Sunday school and we did spend wonderful summers at an Orthodox Christian sleep-away camp. However, the day to day life, which should have been imbued with Christ, was not. And as a result, unfortunate things were produced in me.
The story of me...the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment