Community: I've talked a good game, but...

Back in October, I participated in Blog Action Day by posting on the 2008 theme, poverty. I felt pretty good about the post and about the response it generated (I made good on my promise) and then, sad to say, I pretty much forgot all about it.

A recent essay on The Witches' Voice yanked my chain and shamed me back into awareness. Jeffrey Pierce's, "The Magick of Giving" is an engagingly written, passionate wake-up call to examine our me-more-mine culture.

I tried in vain last night to write a clever review of Jeffrey's essay and restate his already well-stated points.The fits and starts convinced me that I was trying to reinvent a perfectly fine wheel. Better I should just point you toward the essay and toward the author's website, Old Ways, and let you feel first-hand the impact of the stark truths he presents and the reminder of our accountability to our community I felt when I read this admonishment:

Being Pagan isn't simply about working magick or casting a Circle. It's more than taking a magickal name or building an occult library to further our own growth and knowledge. We follow the phases of the moon and the journey of the sun around the Wheel of the Year, we attune ourselves to the cycles of Nature, but we lack any sense of community. Yes, we have Pagan friends - but that meets our needs, not the needs of those who are struggling simply to survive.

Community isn't simply about developing friendships, but putting the whole ahead of the individual. We staunchly argue that it's not how things should be, that we deserve to pursue our individual goals and have earned the material rewards we heap upon ourselves. And yet the ancestral village, tribe, or clan of our spiritual ancestors that we look to for inspiration on our path put their neighbors and their community ahead of their own personal gain.

Not pulling any punches, Malidoma Patrice Somé, an African Shaman, writes in his book, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community, "The only place where abundance is warranted is in nature. A person who wastes is a person who insults the gods. In light of the waste encountered in the modern world, one wonders if anyone knows that there is a world outside of this abundance where people are aware of priorities other than materialism."

Go read the essay, then visit Old Ways...and then let's talk about what we can do.

Money, Meet Mouth

In honor of Blog Action Day and in the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, I've got a proposition for you. I'll donate $1 to a local food bank (one where I know personally the people running it and the important work they do) for every person who comments on this blog today. Bring it...I've got my checkbook ready. Make me smile!

I am so rich - are you?

Good morning! I don't have a lot of time to write this morning. It's 6:47 am and I'm running behind, trying to get ready for work. You know the drill...get up in the morning, bathe, dress, find all your stuff, grab some breakfast, commute for 45 minutes to an hour, work at least eight hours, maybe through lunch, commute back, look at all the stuff you didn't do before you left that morning, push it aside, start dinner... Yeah, you know the drill.

Wow! I am SO rich!

There are so many people who don't have a reason to set a clock in the morning, no job to go to...or maybe they have a job that's mind-numbingly dull or back-breaking hard...or one where no one appreciates them...or that doesn't pay them enough. There are parents who work sick and who can't afford to buy medicine...children who go to school hungry...people without health insurance who just don't go to the doctor because there's no way they can afford to pay for it. And there are people for whom all of this is a foreign language because they can't even imagine a world where everyone's work isn't back breaking and where the best you can hope for is enough to eat today...maybe.

Yes, I am rich...so rich I can't count it all. And I feel like a schmuck when I think of all the times I complain about something I don't have. Because let's face it...I don't need anything I don't already have. I'm clothed, sheltered, fed, employed, medicated as needed, and loved. Wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, I tell you, and grateful beyond words.

I registered my blog with Blog Action Day and the topic is poverty. I know poverty intimately; I've been there...not so much financial poverty (although I've seen my share of days with less-than-abundant resources), but poverty of the spirit, the kind that keeps you poor, destitute, and broken no matter how much money you have. And I know that, as odd as it may seem, one of the best ways to break the cycle of spiritual poverty is to act rich...to give away what you think you don't have. Tired? No energy? Do something for someone. No money? Give some away...even a nickle in someone's expired parking meter. Running low on food? Invite a friend to share your sandwich at lunch. For those of us who have so much - and that's just about everyone reading this blog - we have opportunities every day to enrich the lives of others while feeding our own sense of wealth, of gratitude, of enough.

I'm going to hustle my butt up from here and go to work now. We're having a food drive at work and I'm going to take some canned goods to work with me. As I pack each can into the box, I'll add a little blessing. "May you be blessed with riches beyond your wildest dreams."

Just like me.