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.

Click to read more ...

The Unholy Family of Christmas (Part 2)

Have you ever heard the Christmas story told in a way that included a woman named Tamar? Perhaps no one has. But that’ s how Matthew tells the story of the birth of Jesus. We have to ask, “Why?” Well, by 80 or 90 CE, when Matthew was writing his gospel, it was six decades after Jesus’ life. Matthew was part of the Jesus movement, his life having been transformed by the divine consciousness Jesus embodied. Furthermore, he saw how the Christ consciousness of Jesus was transforming the world views of all who sought to embrace it. Instead of being shaped by empire-think and control, the more people got into Christ consciousness the more their world views became shaped by caring, cooperation, and interdependence.

Click to read more ...

Better than a Bailout

At first glance, maybe it doesn’t seem like male initiation belongs on a site about alternative economics. Thinking back to a time when I knew nothing of initiation and had not yet completed my rites in the Arizona desert a few months ago, I might have only thought of initiation as something that college frat boys or gangs do to prove a candidate’s worthiness. Images of hazing and abuse came to mind. And of course, those rites can be dangerous and deadly. Not so with the Mens’ Rites of Passage (MROP) put on by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. I felt a pull toward that program and let it speak to me for nearly a year before I found myself taking part. But interestingly, my time in the orbit of JEM helped pave the way.

Click to read more ...

Less is More

In the time after September 11, 2001, I was beginning to understand myself as part of a larger world. Rather than go to sleep the next day, I was beginning an awakening. At the age of 27, nearly 28 then, I was on time with having my worldview radically revised.

Click to read more ...

Guilt-free at Jubilee

Okay, we didn’t research every darned page before we picked a server/host company for this site. We were duly impressed with the feature set and ease of use that our new host, Squarespace, offers. They do hosting a bit differently. But today I was looking around their company pages and it seems they are, at least according to the literature, in line with some of the aims of our organization. It seems our website is wind powered. Nice. You can see by that last link that they are giving it a noble try at being green.

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

Metanoia Story: Karen Holmgren

I grew up at a time and in a place where there were woods and a swamp to explore right behind our house. Some of my fondest and most vivid childhood memories are of the times spent looking for snakes, turtles, and salamanders, falling in the pond while trying to catch a frog, picking bouquets of violets for my mother, collecting red and gold leaves for an art project, or just sitting on top of the Big Rock contemplating life. As an adult I retained that basic love for Nature, but it was hardly in my awareness most of the time.

Click to read more ...