Solvency of a Higher Order

My coworker, Lisa, mentioned receiving from an old friend one of those yearly Christmas updates wherein the mother catalogs her children's many accomplishments, successes, and victories.

This conversation triggered a memory of a maternal familial contemporary who emailed us a Christmas update about her large brood of fiscal overachievers. Privately, I drafted a facetious response as if written by my mother about her own brood. It was never completed, but the seeds of it set me on course for writing the following 2011 update:

My, how the year has flown! It seems only yesterday we were shallow, fleshly, disinterested people staggering deludedly toward financial security. Today, we can proudly claim that completely opposite those earlier vain strivings, we are now utterly and Utopianly dependent on the kindness of others. Strangers are next.

We have stayed evangelistically committed to this journey of near poverty, though being tempted to leave all and return to our former lives of stunning (yet unfulfilling) prosperity. We have resisted, viewing lack and need to be a more advanced level of spirituality. So advanced that Calcuttans would envy it. But we don't like to brag. We really don't.

Happily, the art of worrying over our uncertain future, apparently, intends to enrich us to our dying day. And sleeping less has freed up more hours for releasing those healing tears that eluded us when we lived among modern conveniences and/or basic necessities.

Our physical bodies are also being toned and revived. So toned and so revived that I was able to successfully wrestle from the customer behind me the dime that dropped from my purse and rolled under the checkout counter at Kroger.

As if things couldn't get any better, reduced health benefits have taught us to suffer quietly with physical ailments that would have formerly sent us limping needlessly to the doctor. (As I learned after the paramedics pried me from under the checkout counter at Kroger.) And the rich, online world of home remedies has introduced us to almost monastic-type sufferings with no end. We've grown so accustomed, we now actually self-inflict in order to speed up our personal growth.

We've also embraced the catharsis of Constant Bickering and Blame. A simple daily exercise that keeps our home an open forum for opinions and productive critiques of how we are each spending what little money our experiment with simpler living brings in. Family dinner hour is the best opportunity for these discussions, we've discovered, since the police have opposed them being conducted in the wee hours, or in the front yard.

As for our mountainous debt, we feel that the ability to shovel out would negatively transform us into those carefree, frivolous sorts with credit scores over 85. "But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, having nothing." James 4:1 (Or something like that.)

I've considered writing a self-help book possibly entitled Finding Change Within Your Soul When There's None Under the Couch Cushions. Pray for this endeavor as we plan to donate all proceeds to a needy couple we know.

As our year of choosing the blessings of deprivation winds to a close, we can only hope our lofty new spiritual position will not keep us from deigning to enter the humbler homes of our lesser friends and family.

Especially if there's dinner involved.

Merry Christmas to all!