A Money Autobiography — Have You Written Yours?

If you’ve never written a money autobiography, you’re missing a strong experience of better self-understanding. I’ve written several over the years. Each helped me look at my relationship with money and its deity powers over our world. Me included. Reading aloud my autobiography to a small group and inviting conversation (not critique) adds even more value. It’s part of getting freer from the economic clutches of More.

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The Unholy Family of Christmas (Part 1)

Artists depict the holy family of Christmas on everything from cards to pieces hung in galleries. One pose that has may variations shows Joseph standing with a staff and looking over Mary’s shoulder. Both of them are focused on their newborn lying in a manger. The scene is iconic and conveys a holy hush.

Mothers and fathers everywhere are photographed similarly holding their newborn in adoration and quiet amazement at this new life now in their lives. Though these poses also hold a sense of the sacred, only Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are called “the holy family.”

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Around the JEM World in Thirty Days—Learning More about Living the Sustainable Economic Model Called Jubilee

The 30-Day Immersion into the world of Jubilee Economics seems to be a winner. Instead of getting buried in the blog, we decided to make a page out of it so it would be readily available. So if you’re bold, drop in and spend a month to get to know all about Jubilee Economics—the organization and the alternative model we stand for.

The Magnetism of Myra House

Nestled up at the outer edge of the suburban tracts of Claremont, CA, right at the base of Mt. Baldy, a 10,000 foot hill that’s part of the San Gabriel Mountains in the back yard of Myra House, there is a place that quite excellently models what JEM is about. Yet funnily enough, Lee had never heard of it. It took maybe a couple years before he and I finally made the trek up to Claremont. Now that we do the podcasts and are looking for things to cover, we finally took the plunge (helped along by a lecture we thought would be interesting). Owned and created and re-created incrementally by a Korean couple, Sung and Myra Sohn, the property is a living laboratory for alternative living with a distinct spiritual awareness that has a magnetic charm, mainly because as you get to know the folks behind the house and grounds, you can’t help but see that they have both tenacity and grace to thank for all this.

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Metanoia Story: Anastasia Brewster

I have the immense privilege to participate in a weekly small group with four dear women I met through my local church. We all happen to be raising small children, live in urban San Diego, and desire to make lifestyle choices that reflect our identity as children of God. This Spring we decided to be guided by the Mennonite Central Committee’s “Basic Trek: Venture into a world of enough”, a 28-day reflection guide on living not with less, but with enough for everyone.

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Metanoia Story: Ed Lucas

If, in retrospect, a person’s first thirty years aren’t deemed a waste, they must then be the best teacher. It was about that long that I lived under the influence of the wrong stuff. The appeal for life-as-I-knew-it was great, with A) all the lures of bliss through consumption, and B) the promise that technology was ever on the verge of saving us from whatever problems we either have been plagued with for eons, or those just discovered we had (some of which were results of item A). The household my father provided was stable in the ways he intended, and he often reminded me of how little upheaval and instability there was in our lives. It was quite a conservative and sheltered setting where the world was “out there” and we were to be glad that it did not intrude on our lives “in here.” No one ever really taught me to consider whether my daily life had anything to do with the plight of others.

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