21st Century Gleening
I think anyone with a Western Worldview could finish the following maxim, “Finders Keepers…”
I have always been a guy that gets his money’s worth. I used to eat at buffets because I made sure I ate more than I paid for, and then I entered my mid thirties and that practice caught up with me requiring a lot of exercise. I always look for the best price on the best stuff. If I can pay a dollar less I’ll buy it from an e-tailer I have never done business with. I have been known to lick candy bar wrappers, and yogurt containers, and I have stuck my hand in a urinal to save change. (You just judged me didn’t you.) I’ve seldom left a penny on the ground for another to find and certainly never money in value over a nickel.
I have left little in my life for the gleaners. I have never seen money on the ground and thought, “I don’t need that. I’ll let someone else find it.”
While the culture is different from the agricultural days of Leviticus I wonder what I could leave behind for the less fortunate, and who are the less fortunate for whom I am supposed to provide. I work for a company and my check is direct deposited. I don’t produce anything, but maybe I should.
Maybe I should find a way to produce something so I can leave some behind.
The question is what and for whom?
Or maybe the answer to that question is that I can start to live my life by a new maxim, “Finders Leavers, Losers Gleaners.”
9 “‘When you gather in the harvest of your land, you must not completely harvest the corner of your field, and you must not gather up the gleanings of your harvest.
10 You must not pick your vineyard bare, and you must not gather up the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You must leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19)
Connections
One of the most appealing thoughts in Eastern Religion that is often lost on the Western Christian is the connection we have with all of reality. With our personal relationship with God that involves us owning our own Bible and having personal quiet times, prayer times, and study times and with the variety and convenience of churches we can go where we want when we want to worship how we want and so much of this religion that we practice is about us, individually. In an effort to fight against the heretical idea of pantheism we allow monotheism to become defined in our own lives as “God is disconnected and so are we.”
We very seldom think in terms like, “I must read scripture and contemplate its meaning so that my wife might have a good day, or so that my co-workers might be able to do their job better, or so the person I smile at as they wait for their bus might think that someone cares.”
One of the reasons I love the movie Crash is that it reveals the reality that we do nothing in isolation, but everything we think and do has consequences for someone else. In this short talk we discover the connection between plastic and the poor. How should these facts impact you as you make your next consumption choice?