Less Stuff = More Happiness

This advent has been a time of much soul-searching in our household.  Between the two of us we have been looking at what “life is all about”.  Between us we have notched up a collective 16 years of university education during our married life and now we have recently [insert artistic license] become adults in a world that has moulded and shaped us into the people that we are.  As I come towards the end of a curacy we may for the first time in our adult lives move to a place that we will be able to settle down in and call home.  We may be able to leave behind the transient life we have known together since we were 18 years old and find a place that we will live in together for an extended period of time.  The 8 dwellings we have lived in during our married life, often for little more than a year at a time will become a thing of the past.

And it is with this in mind that we realise we have become a product of the national educational system of our country of birth, England.  We went to university in the late 1990′s when our country’s policy was to teach all of our young people to live in debt.  The perceived wisdom from government was that we could all buy ourselves some happiness and economic growth.  TV ads were predominantly for credit that was freely available and highly desirable.  Those years of university education were predominantly paid for using a variety of state sponsored credit programmes.

This system has been designed to make us all desire more and more things in our lives to make us happy.  We still live in a world that tells us we can buy happiness on interest free credit.  We have been reevaluation where we stand in all of this….

Silent Night

I spotted this guy outside Covent Garden begging/busking.  He’s found a traffic cone and he is playing all of the Christmas Classics on it.  He was very good.

Of course this photo doesn’t exist because we don’t have any poor people in the UK.

The Advent Calendar Conspiracy – Day 2

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My Chains Fell Off

“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?”

That is just a little excerpt from next Sunday’s reading, a taster if you will.  How often do we look for examples of justice and mercy to illustrate the Christian faith?  Today one dropped in my lap when someone shared it with me.  There is an article in today’s Guardian explaining that Richard Branson has started to encourage Virgin to employ recently released offenders and those who are approaching release as a way of giving people that second chance.

 ”Everybody deserves a second chance,” … “One of the prisoners I met in Melbourne told me he’d been released with no money. He had to find his own way to the city. He was thrown back out into this world with no help whatsoever. The end result was that he was back inside in a very short time. For people coming out of prison it’s a vicious circle. If they can’t get a job, the only thing they can do is reoffend. From society’s point of view that can be very painful.”

 

That Christmas Advert

OK, perhaps not that Christmas Advert…

Over the last two years society has increasingly looked at the state of the nation’s finances on both a macro and a micro level.  We are starting to see a relationship between the prosperity of the country and the way in which people treat the money in their pockets.  People are examining the causes of our current financial state and finding that people were spending money they didn’t have on things that they perceived that they needed because external pressure was applied to them.  The systems increasingly indoctrinated people into using credit to buy trinkets and gadgets to prove their worth to the world around them or the value of their love to another.

I regularly listen to the radio throughout the day whilst I am working and the above advert is played regularly.  Its catchy format lends it to audio as well as video by capitalizing on the old song by Terry Scott, “My Bruvva”.  Yesterday on the blog I tried to articulate something about the way in which Christmas could still inspire us to change the world.  With this in mind it is with sadness that I am confronted with the old world order every twenty minutes throughout the day.  Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a child induced guilt trip over an X-Box, 0% finance and crippling debts for… my lovely, lovely mother.

Now that’s the real meaning of Christmas :-/

Three and a Half Letters (I Need a Job)

The church is in a process of focussing its attention more closely on issues of wealth and poverty.  People are standing on the steps of the Cathedral and asking the question “what would Jesus do”.  This is the new song from Chickenfoot’s second album.  Sammy Hagar reads three and a half letters that were sent to his charitable foundation asking for help.  It has become the soundtrack of my life for the last two weeks.

I’m 37 years old
Married to my childhood sweetheart
Two beautiful girls, two and a half and four
Worked nine years at the plant where my father worked
And his father before him
I have a B.A. but laid off seven months ago
It’s been hard tough so many others
But I still believe
Can you help, brother?
Can you help?

I need a job
I need a job
I’m willing to work
But I need a job

I stand in the street
With a sign in my hand
But I need the work
I need a job, yeah

I just returned from Afghanistan
Spent four years in the military service
I’m 24, strong and I can’t find work in my hometown
I’m married with one beautiful son
Seven months old today
Never had a chance to buy a home
Can’t afford the apartment we’ve been living in
Moving in with Debbie’s parents, whose home is now in foreclosure
Can you help?

I need a job
I need a job
I’m willing to work
But I need a job

I stand in the street
With a sign in my hand
I’m willing to work
But I need a job

I’m sorry this letter is hand-written but I don’t have a computer
I don’t have access to one
I’m 51 years old
I lost my wife to breast cancer three years ago
Lost my job of 26 years one year later
I’m homeless with no one to turn to
I’ve been through a lot, bother
I heard you like to help people
Well, I need help

I need a job
I need a job
I’m willing to work
But I need a job

I stand in the street
With a sign in my hand
I’m willing to work
But I need a job

Got nothin’ left
Lost it all
Can I get back to zero
Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero
I need a job

Yeah, I need a job
I need a job

And the last letter said:
I’m nine years old and homeless.
F**k!

#OccupyInequality

The situation at St Paul’s cathedral in the UK has brought the issue of financial ethics to the forefront of The Church’s thinking.  If I’m honest, I didn’t know anyone in the church for whom it wasn’t already.  Global finance is a topic that is too big for one person to fix by themselves and I am a bear of little brain but I will continue to engage with the issues as they arise.  One of my friends posted some of their difficulties with the protest on Facebook.

I think my issue with the protests is that, in the UK, we have free healthcare, education, social security and endless affordable distractions and comforts.

If a banker can make a million by skimming off a thousandth of a percent off the business – is that really a bigger sin than one of us choosing to buy cheap imported goods without asking about worker welfare?

A dozen men cream off a tiny proportion off the bottom of a balance sheet vs a million britons promoting child labour in the third world and putting a thousand local breadwinners on the dole by shutting the mills and factories?

Apologies to him for posting it here but he has made me think!  All afternoon!  My gut reaction was to say – well… yes.

Then I started to think about all of these issues and the global situation.  I believe resolutely that my lifestyle should not be at the expense of someone living in another country.  I do not want goods available on the high street at the expense of the poorest in society!  However, I think that reading the protester’s cause as about the “bankers” misrepresents them.  Their website sums up their position with no mention of bankers at all. 

Our global system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust, driven by profit in the interest of the few.

The protesters are bringing attention to the global financial system and the way in which it operates.  This is the system that allows a big corporation to produce goods using child labour and sell them on the high street to an unsuspecting public.  This is where the bottom of the balance sheet it.  This is the place where the cream is found.

Please watch the TED talk above about inequality.  The economy in the UK works relatively to other economies.  However, it also works relatively between the people within it.  #OccupyInequality

The Environment – Global Warming

I don’t know if you’re looking for resources for a harvest festival service.  Unfortunately mine was a couple of weeks ago.  In this clip David Mitchell says something incredibly obvious.  It is almost so obvious it doesn’t need saying.  Never the less he has said it anyway.  Good for him!

Love and Judgement

I spotted this on a door I just passed.

Biblical Marriage

Thanks to @dave42w who linked to this with a simple “we need the new testament”.