Coping spiritually with tough economic times

The world's financial markets have taken a beating, and the word recession is on many lips, often in hushed tones, as if to speak it aloud would be to make it so! What might a spiritual perspective on tough economic times look like?

 

Our Scriptures are filled with visits from angels (literally, messengers) who preface their messages with the words, "Fear not!" Conventional wisdom has it that the markets are based on only two emotions, fear and greed. Perhaps that is part of the problem.

 

What might our society look like if we were not afraid at this time? I don't mean to suggest naïveté or ignorance, but rather a reframing. For example, in a coaching session recently, one of my clients suggested that everyone who has given birth knows that contractions hurt, but the result is joy, beauty and love.

 

So too, she suggested, economic contractions hurt, but perhaps we are collectively giving birth to a new economic time. Perhaps we are to recognize the fear, and balance it with wonder, curiosity and adventure.

 

Specifically, one of the things I learned when I was laid off in the recession of the early 90's was that the organization for which I worked, really did not care about me as a person. If I was going to thrive in a fear based economy, I could not trust that my employer would always be there, and that left it up to me, and my wonder, my curiosity, my own sense of adventure to keep learning, to keep trying new things, fearlessly. That change in frame has helped me and continues to do so.

 

We are created in the image of God. We are homo sapiens, not homo economicus, in the words of theologians and economists Herman Daly and John Cobb. We are far more than consumers; we are friends, lovers, spouses, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers.

 

We are loved simply because we exist, and not because we wear the right shoes, or drive the right car. Yes, there are people who are losing their jobs, and their livelihoods, as I have done in the past. As much as it hurt, I eventually realized that I was much more than my job. This is not the end of the world; it is simply the end of an economic cycle.

 

We are the Body of Christ. We are in this together. Individually we cannot survive, but as a community we will. There is an Hassidic story that says that if all of us were to make our troubles into a coat, and then hang our 'trouble coats' on hooks in a row on the wall, we would all go to take our own coats back! During these tougher times the poor, the destitute and the hungry will still be with us. How we feed them, dress them, comfort them, will mark this time, and our communities.

 

The birth of the Christ child gives us hope, and hope counters what Aquinas called the most dangerous sin, despair. The challenges of tougher economic times are daunting, but, how we live into this time becomes key. Experiencing and expressing gratitude is one very effective path to hope.