03/14/15

A Message About Money
Charles Montgomery / March 8, 2015 / Ecclesiastes 5


💸

I hate money. This past week I made Travis mad which is something I don't think I've done in years. After sitting down with him and talking I feel like shit.

Right now money has me so worried and so stressed that it is actually affecting my relationships and life. Ever since I quit the law firm I vowed never to let money control my decisions and my life but here I am finding money controlling me.

I don't make enough to show my friends love, to take Bea out on dates, to save for retirement, to take trips, to buy the things I want, and to pay the bills.

I've been trying to tell myself if I just save a little more then I will be able to relax the budget but the money comes in so slow and leaves so fast.

I've tried so hard to be a generous person to everyone that now I find myself having to recoop from that generous time and in the rebuilding I am hurting everyone it feels like.

I feel so selfish. I feel greedy and cheap.

Those are all things I never want to feel. I hate it.

I think if I'm honest with myself I hate money so much because I deep down love it. Or at least I love the security that it attempts to offer.

I think in all of us the things we hate the most in other people are the things we struggle with most deeply.

and our greatest strengths are our biggest faults to those around us.

I want to be generous and so giving. It drives me crazy when I see people who clutch tightly to their wealth. But that is exactly what I am doing.

I am really good at budgeting and saving money being thrifty and living a minimalist lifestyle.
But my friends probably view me as cheap.

How do we keep our gifts clean, Oh God?

How do we see the strengths in our character that you have given us and keep them from getting out of hand?

Money isn't a bad thing. It is meant to be enjoyed, but saving too much or spending too much is not healthy.

I know I probably sound so unhealthy when I tell myself I just need to get to a certain number in my bank account then I will be more generous. But I do believe that and I think I need to walk this out. I am close to that number and once I am there I will budget accordingly.

I will never miss a friends birthday. I will never be cheap again. I want those I love to see me as a generous man. I want those I love to feel my love towards them expressed in many ways.

Not just through buying them things but also in spending time together and being able to go with them where ever they want to go. Or be able to unlock life and be a friend so they never have to be alone.

Money is such a powerful thing. It has ruled the hearts of so many humans throughout time. As much as I want to say I am free from money and I hate money and I don't want an economy I want us all to live our passions and give out of those passions and express love to strangers. That isn't the way the world works. That doesn't mean I'm not still going to live the life I want the world to live. But it does mean understanding that not everyone sees with the same lens as I do and I need to love them through a language they speak. And if that means material gifts at times then so be it. I need to have money so that I can show them the love that I have for them in a way that they will understand.

I never want my friends to know me as a liar, or a tight fisted gift giver.

I want to express outwardly the way I feel inwardly towards the people in my life whom I love.
They mean more to me than money so why not turn my money into gifts and show them that love?

I'm about to board a plane to Egypt In about 5 hours. I'm pretty excited about the situation.

💸

Wolfmother - Vagabond

03/07/15

It's very easy, when talking about creation, to conceive of God's part in it as simply getting the ball rolling - as if he were a kind of divine billiard cue, after whose action inexorable laws took over and excused him from further involvement with the balls. But that won't work. This world is fundamentally unnecessary. Nothing has to be. It needs a creator not only for its beginning but for every moment of it's being.
-Robert Farrar Capon, Let Me Tell You Why, The Third Peacock, in the Romance of the Word: One Man's Love Affair with Theology.

Earliest Known Fossil Remains Of Early Human Ancestor Found In Ethiopia


No, Astrobiology Has Not Made the Case for God

Was my jaw formed by time?
Lots and lots and lots of time?
Can enough time turn one single cell into the man who is writing this now?
Can time do that?

I am pulled apart.
My heart says clearly God's love formed this reality
My brain says these scientists must be so smart that I should trust when they say time did it.

I am pulled apart.

If God created this reality then our priorities are love and forgiveness
If time created this reality then our priorities are surviving and prolonging death

If time created us then there is no right and wrong.
Hitler's idea holds as much water as Jesus'
Abortion doesn't have to stop at the womb.
We as a race can abort anyone at anytime.
In fact we could save time by aborting anyone who gets in the way of progress.
Why waste time and money on the weak?

I don't know Brian came down stairs now so I'm distracted and I can't finish these thoughts.

99 Red Balloons - Sleeping At last

03/04/15

The fall of 2006 I had decided to stay at home and attend the local community college. It was entirely my parents plan for me and I hated the idea honestly.

That fall I watched life long friends move away from me. I watched a town of 7,000 people go from feeling like my personal living room to a ghost town.

It hurt.

I was alone.

Slowly after my first semester of college I discovered some other friends who stuck around. We created a community but it was nothing like high school. After that year Travis moved to Columbus. I met and grew close to Dain at the community college. After that second year Travis invited us to join him in Columbus.

There I experience what I had been starving for. For the past two years it finally felt like high school again. Friends around me all the time. Roommates.

After college I moved out to Powell because Dain had moved out there and Travis had headed back home.

Dain got an itch to move to Arizona and took it. But in that moment Brian decided to move to Columbus for school. I couldn't believe I would have the chance to live with one of those life long friends again.

After two years with Brian Travis wanted to join us.

Clintonville.

It was like a dream come true for me. Friends I had spent a life time growing with. Together again.

Last week we got the news that Brian got a job opportunity in Cincinnati.
He wants to take it.

My heart broke.

Ever since 2006 I feel like my friends have always chose
money
career
opportunity
over relationships
over friendship
over community

Here we are living together with more and more friends joining our group. Decades of friendship.

It hurts to see Brian pick opportunity over community.

What do we value in this culture?

People say things like:
You can't pass up an opportunity like that
You'll make new friends
You can still visit

Is that the kind of world we live in?
Where people will move all across the country for a job but wouldn't stick around for a friend?
Where people view friends as replaceable and easily made in any location?

We always dreamed about that neighborhood.

Travis
Brian
Adam
Alan
Jake
Jordon
Dain
Matt
Jared
Downing

each of us with our own house and family the block parties and the memories.

Am I the only one who believed that tale?
Am I the only one who would fight for that?
One by one I've watched my friends pursue other things
The Beach
A controlling wife
A great career

I know it isn't normal for friends to live in a neighborhood together but why not? Is that a good reason for us to quit on it?

This is our life.
We only get one.
How do we want to live it?
What is important to us?

Money?
Weather?
Landscapes?

Our culture is so backwards.
We shove our elders into nursing homes so they don't slow us down
We drop off our children to strangers so we can pursue careers
We leave our friends if the right opportunity arises

I hate this.
I just want to be with my friends.
I want to laugh and make them laugh.
I want to cry with them.
I want to know them.
I want to tell stories about years and years of friendship.
I want to see them at their weddings.
I want to hug them at the hospital when their children are born.
I want to be with them.
I want to do life with them.

Not through facebook
Not through skype
Not on long weekends and holidays

That stuff is a joke, its pathetic.
I want life and I want it to the fullest.

Happiness is only real when shared.
I want to share with the ones I know and they know me. I want to share with those I love. I want our love to grow deeper and deeper. I want to grow fat and bald together. I want to watch our children play sports against each other. I want to babysit our grandchildren together.

I am so sad.
Life is so much more than money, jobs, economies, schedules, budgets,

I want to bring in the harvest with them.
I want to be in the kitchen together, creating, laughing
I want to be at the table breaking bread and sharing beers.

I love my friends so deeply. They are all I have and all I want to have in this life. I want to love them well.

Its hard when they do not have the same priorities as I do. It's hard when we have different world views. But I guess when we said those things I believed them. I want them.

The Avett Brothers - Complainte D'Un Matelot Mourant