The American Dream

We began our Forum Class this year with the topic of "The American Dream."

Each of us shared what The American Dream means to each of us. It was quite surprising how different  many of our views were and how different generations had different meanings. Overall there were some themes:

• Prosperity
• Upward mobility
• Hard work leads success
• Individualism
• Acquiring wealth

We were asked to consider the following queries:

1. What is The American Dream?
2. Is it alive?
3. I wonder....

Some points from our discussion of these queries:

• What responsibly to God's people have to promote systems that provide?
• We need to have conversation
• There is a breakdown between others, self, and God (i.e. breakdown in relationships)
• Shift the tide, change the economic paradigm
• What is the alternative to the systematic track of The American Dram?
• What are our dreams for each other?

In our second week, we focused the discussion on taking a Kingdom view and using scripture to understand The American Dream in light of what God wants. We all had a lively and productive conversation, each person able to build on what the last person shared. The scripture we discussed the most was Psalm 67.

NIV

¹ May God be gracious to us and bless us
    and make his face shine on us—^[b]
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
    your salvation among all nations.

³ May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.
⁴ May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
    for you rule the peoples with equity
    and guide the nations of the earth.
⁵ May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.

⁶ The land yields its harvest;
    God, our God, blesses us.
⁷ May God bless us still,
    so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.

MSG
^1-7 God, mark us with grace
    and blessing! Smile!
The whole country will see how you work,
    all the godless nations see how you save.
God! Let people thank and enjoy you.
    Let all people thank and enjoy you.
Let all far-flung people become happy
    and shout their happiness because
You judge them fair and square,
    you tend the far-flung peoples.
God! Let people thank and enjoy you.
    Let all people thank and enjoy you.
Earth, display your exuberance!
    You mark us with blessing, O God, our God.
You mark us with blessing, O God.
    Earth’s four corners—honor him!


We concluded week 2 with the following plan for discussion in week 3:

• Meditate on Psalm 67 throughout the week.
• Reclaim some of the words and ideas associated with The American Dream ("prosper" could be like "flourish").
• Vision your own Kingdom dream, starting with your household and moving out to your neighborhood and close friends, the church, Silverton, and beyond.
• Consider visioning for today. Instead of always dreaming toward something that is always a dream, consider the tangible and the present.

We will share our meditations and visions in week 3 and begin to move toward the practical and possible experiments for the group to consider.

Wrap Up Discussion - Year One

We wrapped up our first year working through various topics together. Here are the notes:

First Year Topics

• Neighbors
• Technology
• Race
• Peace
• Economy
• Guns

Possible Future Topics

• Use of Scripture: Old vs New
• (promises, privileges, community, assumptions)
• Language in scripture (i.e. figurative language)
• Certainty vs Mystery (relationship to personality type)
• Dying and dying well
• Simplicity
• Food/Health & church/community
• Human sexuality
• Abortion/Family Planning

Successes:

• Connections
• Mindfulness
• “Conversion”
• Topical Overlaps
• “God saturation”
• Organic Nature
• Time constraints: focus
• Agreements list
• Respectful listening
• Disagreements
• Not needing to be right

Cautions:

• Certainty vs Mystery: Perspectives
• “tough” topics
• Remembering our agreements
• Absolutes?

Struggles:

• Time Constraints (9:30-10:20)
• Communication with larger church
• Facilitation vs leadership

 Books Mentioned This Morning:

• Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster
• Body Politics, Yoder

Wealth Inequity in America

Here is a video for discussion. We mentioned some of these numbers on Sunday.

We also discussed the "economy of enough" and redistribution in God's economy.

Next week we will discuss Jubilee.

Economics Week Two: Sabbath & Jubilee Economics in Early Israel

 1. Sabbath

·       Sabbath (Hebrew, shabat)

o  First encountered in Genesis 2:2-3.

o  Not just “an absence of work” – a day of rest and delight.

·       Next encountered in Exodus 16

o  God’s people are wandering in the desert.

o  Israel can’t imagine a life outside the imperial economy that had enslaved them (16:3)

QUESTION: 1 Peter says that followers of Jesus are a holy nation, a peculiar people who belong to God. And yet sometimes it can be hard for us to imagine life outside the imperial American economy. Why do you think that is? QUESTION: We read in Genesis 47:22 that Pharaoh took everyone’s land except the land belonging to the priests. It’s a reminder that the economic, political, and military powers often look to religion to confer blessings and legitimacy. Is that relevant to us today? If so, what would it look like for us to withdraw support from the parts of our system we find contrary to the laws of God’s household?

2. God teaches Israel three important lessons about God’s economy in the desert

·       The lesson of enough. (16:16-18)

QUESTION: How do we evaluate when we’ve reached “enough”? For example: How much money do we need in the bank? When are our homes nice enough? How full do our closets need to be? QUESTION: What does “enough” look like for Silverton Friends Church?

·       The lesson of redistribution. (16:19-20)

o  Wealth and power in Egypt were defined by surplus accumulation. (Genesis 47)

o  Though we’ll talk about this in a future week, it’s worth remembering that the first organized structure created by the new church in the book of Acts (Ch. 2 and 4) was a system of redistribution that ended economic need among followers of The Way.

·       The lesson of Sabbath faith and Sabbath discipline. (16:22-30)

o  God promises seven days of food for six days of work.

o  Sabbath isn’t some quaint Jewish custom.

·       It’s given before the Ten Commandments

·       It provides the basic rhythm of Israel’s public life for the people (Lev. 23)

·       If people didn’t practice Sabbath they would die (Ex. 31:12-17)

·       The people were instructed to keep a jarful of manna in front of the Covenant (Ex. 16:32)

3. Sabbath Year and Jubilee

·       Sabbath Year – every seventh year

o  “You shall let the land rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat.” (Exodus 23: 10-11)

o  Debt release (Deuteronomy 15)

·       Jubilee Year (“Sabbath’s Sabbath”) - every 49^th/50^th year (Leviticus 25)

o  Upend structures of accumulation and social domination by:

§       Releasing each community member from debt (25:35-42)

§       Returning land to its original owners (25:13, 25-28)

§       Freeing slaves (25:47-55)

§       Reminding Israel that the land belongs to God (25:23) and that they are an exodus people who must never return to a system of slavery (25:42)

§       Messiah’s Jubilee! – The inaugural address of the Jubilee Kingdom (Isaiah 61 and Luke 4:14-20)

QUESTION: What do Sabbath and Jubilee remind us about the economy of “enough”? What are some other ways the economic aspects of Sabbath and Jubilee can be reimagined for today? QUESTION: In Genesis, Joseph was clearly set aside by God to save the lives of many thousands of people who were going to be hit hard by the famine. But the economic centralization he initiated also put in place the economic preconditions for Israel’s future slavery. This is a reminder that “economic miracles” (Meeks) have unintended consequences. Could this be one rationale behind the Jubilee…to systematically dismantle even the unintended consequences of economic miracles? QUESTION: In Leviticus 19 and 25, we also see laws like gleaning that allow the poor to have access to a field’s produce. For those of us who aren’t farmers, are there other ways we can practice gleaning in more metaphorical ways?

Opportunities for Action

·       Practice enough: Complete a gratitude and contentment survey.

·       Practice redistribution: Make a radical change in how you spend our money for seven days (for example, limiting your food budget, giving up coffee or eating out). Collect the money you save and donate it to local or global poverty relief.

·       Practice Sabbath: Take a true Sabbath day of rest and delight.

·       Other possible practices?

Next Week – Possible Topics

·       More on Sabbath and Jubilee

·       Biblical Economics in the Writings of the Prophets

·       Jesus and the Economy of Love

·       The Economy of Love in the Early Church

·       God’s Superabundant Economy

God's Economy - Week 1: Economics

SUMMARY AND PRACTICES

Yesterday in Forum class we began our series on Economics. Our word for “economy” comes from the Greek word oikonomia, meaning the “law or management of the household.” (That means the phrase “home economics” is redundant!) As Christians, we are members of God’s household. Over the next couple months we are going to explore what the laws of God’s household are. We are going to explore God’s economy.

We started our study yesterday by taking a moment to remind ourselves of the abundant fruitfulness of God’s creation. Walter Brueggemann has called creation a liturgy of God’s abundance. We celebrated that abundance by reading from Psalm 104, a poem many scholars believe is a kind of poetic commentary on the biblical creation story.

Then we began discussing how the economies of the world – in particular, capitalism and communism—have at their foundation “the myth of scarcity.” We looked closely at the second half of the story of Jacob, Joseph, and Joseph’s brothers in the book of Genesis. We saw how, after the people of Israel had settled in Egypt under Joseph’s care, a severe famine came on the land. We saw how over the course of three years all the people of Egypt, their livestock, and their land became part-and-parcel of Pharaoh’s monopoly. Even in the midst of the famine, the people of Israel flourished as a community of abundance—but they were now under the control of the Egyptian imperial economy, and by the first chapter of Exodus, under the rule of a new Pharaoh, they were forced to build store cities for the empire’s wealth, forced to make bricks, forced to work in the fields, ruthlessly enslaved, and were the victims of genocide. As Christians, we can and should relate to the people of Israel. But 21^st century America bears a striking resemblance to ancient imperial Egypt. How do we, as Jesus followers, live in that tension?

We got a brief glimpse of the “Sabbath economics”—the economics of enough—that God would teach God’s people during their 40 years of wandering in the desert, but we will have to pick up that discussion some other time. Next week, perhaps.

We were also reminded how important, and how personal discussions are about economics, money, and debt. These are topics we are often afraid or embarrassed to discuss. There were some tears, some confessions, and some visions of a community characterized by radical generosity and care.

This week we began adding opportunities for praxis to our time together. Here are the three practices we settled on. If you do one or more of these practices this week, and feel comfortable sharing, we’d love to hear about your experience next week in class.

1. What are the things you are anxious about when you wake up, the concerns that you think about as you lay in bed staring at the ceiling? Each morning this week, prayerfully offer those concerns up to God.
2. Every day this week, write down three or four things you are grateful for. No repeats!
3. This week, pick one item in your house, your garage, or your table, and try to trace back its story. For example, how did your cup of coffee get to you? Where was the coffee grown? Who grew, picked, and dried it? What are their working conditions? Is the coffee fair trade and, if so, what difference can that make? How was the coffee likely shipped? Was it roasted locally? Where did you buy it? And on and on. We are all plugged in to a global economy, so my breakfast ties me to people in Africa (coffee), Latin America (banana), the Midwest (wheat bread), and New England (butter). Our stuff has a story…and the story has faces.

My Inner Turmoil on Peace

We talked about peace not merely being the absence of conflict, but rather conflict resolved.

As I think about some of the inner conflicts I have and those I hope to help resolve in my local community and even further reaching throughout my country, I think of Martin Luther King Jr.'s work and sermons. He calls me to action every time.

John posted this over the weekend and this quote has been ringing in my mind for a few days:

“This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists,” King says. “Our planet teeters on the brink of atomic annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless calvaries; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”

John goes on to comment that King's book:

Strength to Love is both practical and evangelical. King was not a theorist. Developing a framework for understanding nonviolence is only helpful if it leads to nonviolent living. Abstract notions about justice are useless (if not dangerous) if they don’t lead to its pursuit. These sermons are messages from a shepherd to his flock. King took seriously the demands of the Gospel on the soul and society, which is to say he took Jesus at his word when Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” And, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”

Peace won't come passively. We must work for peace and it may require a significant sacrifice of me. I want to be surrounded by others who will walk arm-in-arm for peace.

Peace Month: Conflict Resolution

Our group will be following along with the NWYM Peace Month theme, Conflict Resolution.

During Sunday mornings we will recap on some of the daily readings and discuss the weeks subtopic.

• January 6: Internal Conflicts
• January 13: Conflicts within the Family
• January 20: Conflicts between Groups
• January 27: National, International & Global Conflict Resolution

You can visit the NWYM website to download materials for this month's topic.