Photo of ancient stone gate, Trimiklini, Cyprus, March 11, 2009. Bonnie Saul Wilks.
I sometimes think I go to church to hear what I don’t want to hear. After all what would be the use of hearing reinforcements of my rock-hard opinions?
That happened Sunday when the Gospel was Mark 10:17-31, elaborated on in the sermon.
Probably few of my readers will know this reference. I’ve struggled with it from childhood: after a man tells Jesus that he’s kept all the commandments and so should be assured of eternal life, Jesus rebukes him, saying, “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
I understood very well why the man “was shocked, and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
I, too, have many possessions and no intention of selling even one of them and giving the money to the poor.
Fortunately, in his sermon the minister gave me a way out, implying that it’s all right to keep all my possessions as long as I don’t put my faith in them—and I don’t.
A comfortable solution to an uncomfortable dilemma.
Years ago when some women were inheriting or making money in substantial sums—and this had seldom happened before—I met a woman who was, literally, giving it all away, depending on a teacher’s salary to pay her bills.
While I admired her courage, I knew I would never do that. I was, on one hand, too fond of my way of living and on the other hand too afraid of economic fragility. When I was briefly threatened with being disinherited during the sale of the Bingham family businesses, I thought I could get by on a teacher’s salary—but with only a Bachelor’s Degree in English, I would first have to find a way to pay for graduate school…
It didn’t happen. The trusts my grandfather set up before my birth prevented the disinheriting of any of his heirs.
I’m still living with Jesus’ announcement: “A rich man can no more enter the Kingdom of Heaven than a camel can go through the eye of a needle.” He probably never imagined a woman in such a painful position but I know I’m there.
A lot of words have been spilled to explain this strange analogy: the eye of the needle was an ancient gate in Jerusalem, for example, but no explanation can make this a comfortable assertion.
I know several woman who have more money than they need to survive, usually inherited, since working women make even less today than they did ten years ago, now only 81 cents to the dollar men make in equivalent professions. Inherited money carries its own freight of guilt, for who deserves to have money handed down? Although it’s never mentioned, the imbedded nature of trusts set up sometimes generations ago is one of the factors that produces great economic injustice.
I’m speculating that these women inheritors are probably giving away a substantial proportion of our “ill-gotten gains”—as I have always done—but I have a feeling we still wouldn’t fit through the eye of the needle.
This may be of no concern to the many who don’t believe anything they’ve ever read in prayer book or Bible and the even greater number who’ve never been exposed to those teachings.
Even so, I suspect that there is a moral uneasiness, an itching that afflicts those of us who are born, as the saying goes, with a silver spoon in our mouths—and the silver spoon at times may taste as though it’s full of poison.
To be or become aware of this moral uneasiness, this itching, is essential, and to talk and write about it, although many women inheritors may be intent on hiding our economic good fortune. Men seem less ambivalent.
To speak of our good fortune as inheritors may be frightening; will it bring down a torrent of demands, not only from the many (too many!) small not-for-profits struggling to survive as they attempt to fill the gaps in our welfare that state and federal governments have vacated but also the demands of friends who are not as lucky as we are. We may even fear being ostracized because of our unwarranted good fortune.
It’s worth the risk.
Saying no is a habit all women must strenuously cultivate, whether it’s saying no to unwanted sexual attention or to the panhandler on the street—although I keep a twenty-dollar bill in my car to hand out to one of these unfortunate ones.
And, always, we need to practice gratitude for the enormous power we’re being handed along with the money—the power of exercising our judgment.
The moral questions in your post remind me of Frank Baum’s attempted solution. He was receiving large royalties from sales of many “Oz” books and decided to give money to friends when they came to him for such. This practice led to four bankruptcies. The bankruptcies left many creditors high and dry, so one has to wonder about the net morality of his doings.
After Leo Tolstoy gave away the bulk of his personal assets and went out on the street in November weather to live rough, he perished in just that month. To me, retaining survival assets is akin to putting on your own oxygen mask first during a loss of air pressure on an airplane, preferring yourself even to the possible detriment of your children seated next to you. Most scholars today think Tolstoy did in fact provide huge asset holdings for his family, his being possibly the richest family in Russia at an earlier point in time.
My retaining survival assets may be consistent with Milton’s axiom that they also serve who stand and wait.
J. Krishnamurti disbanded the Order of the Star of the East because, among other reasons, he could no longer morally support requesting followers to make donations.
Keep polishing that silver spoon, Sallie.