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A Journey with Wealth ~ by Rose Feerick

Some context

For much of my adult life, I have been engaging with money as a spiritual practice. When I graduated from college, I made a decision to live simply and to work for social justice. At the same time, I received a gift of love from my parents that came in the form of a financial portfolio. The paradox of that moment sent me on a spiritual search to reconcile my reality as a person of wealth with my faith in Jesus Christ and my desire for social justice.

Ten years later, I became connected to Harvest Time–Wisdom & Money’s predecessor. Initially, I was invited in as a participant in a retreat for Christians who wanted to explore the intersection of wealth and faith. Later, I was asked to work for Harvest Time as a retreat facilitator and spiritual companion for others.

During the twenty five years that I have been involved with Harvest Time and now Wisdom & Money, I have witnessed grace moving through my own life as well as through the lives of others. I have learned that engaging with wealth as a spiritual practice can be a doorway to a transformative journey. At this moment, I want to offer my observations about the spiritual movements of that journey. My hope in offering a framework for the movement that happens when we engage with wealth in this way is to support and encourage others called to this journey. What follows is not meant to be a step by step program or road map. I prefer to imagine these as movements in an ongoing dance with God and money. Those who say yes to that invitation open their hearts and portfolios to a deepened experience of the flow grace.

As a young child, I learned in church that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (Mk 10:25). At that time, I failed to hear what Jesus says later in that story, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.”(Mk10:27) Thanks to friends at Wisdom & Money and Harvest Time, I now know that both are true. Though the journey with wealth and faith can be challenging, it is indeed possible for rich people to participate in the kingdom of God in powerful and even miraculous ways. I offer the following in appreciation of the courage, faith, hope and love of my friends whose lives bear witness to this fact.

Extravagant mystical love

“Arise, Beloved and Come.” (Song of Songs 2:10)“Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made of genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus…” (John 12:3)

The journey with wealth begins with an experience of extravagant, mystical love. This is the fundamental truth of who God is, who we are, and the energy of the universe. Being human is an invitation to align with that love – or maybe it’s just a matter of becoming conscious that this is the reality we live in all the time.

Those of us who have been given/earned wealth can work with money as our spiritual practice – as some choose to work with the body or the breath as a practice. Some of us, in fact, experience ourselves as called to do so. Money is a particularly effective spiritual practice place as it is a symbol of our interconnectedness and it is the place where so much of our personal and cultural fear gets acted out.

Some helpful spiritual practices to begin with are honoring Sabbath and prayer. Both of these allow time and space where we can simply let God love us and where we can experience the delight of being alive. In addition, it is helpful to participate in an authentic spiritual community that is working with matters of wealth and faith. Engaging our creativity and playfulness can also balance the more linear deliberations that typically dominate our engagement with money and bring forth the wisdom of our imagination.

Some helpful money practices to begin the journey are extravagant giving and receiving. The point here is to poke holes in the fear mindset in order to open to an experience of the love of God and the way it is constantly moving to/through us.

Love in the mess

You do not have to be good.” Mary Oliver

When real love is present, our brokenness will surface. Though a bit disconcerting, this really is good news. Our places of fear, clinging, grasping, panic are the very places in need of love and transformation – and yet they are the places that many are trained to deny or hide. Their coming out of denial is a blessing, as it gives us the opportunity to get real and to learn how to offer “unconditional friendship” to ourselves. For those of us who have been formed in the culture of wealth, where maintaining an appearance (physical, professional, spiritual, intellectual, etc.) of being “together” matters a lot, this will be unsettling and very counterintuitive. The trick here is not to resist our humanity but to give it voice in love – the way the psalms give voice to the full range of human experience as prayer.

Some spiritual disciplines that are helpful are participating in a community which loves us “in the mess,” practicing self-love, confession, and forgiveness. Sometimes the best we can do is to resist the urge to walk away and to keep coming back. Some money experiments can be particularly helpful at this moment. For instance, sharing the full reality of our money stories is a good way to “get real” and to allow what is lingering in the shadows of our relationship with money to surface. We may also try communal experiments as a wonderful way to surface and become more conscious of our assumptions, grasping, fears, etc..

Cultural addiction


“For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.” (Romans 7:15)

As we become increasingly comfortable with welcoming our full selves, we discover that what we deplore “out there” in the culture is in us. We might discover, for instance, that we are addicted to work, shopping, control, doing, helping, food, or power. We might come face to face with our racism, classism, sexism or lack of desire to let the world’s pain in. We may discover the ways in which we have been projecting our shadow onto everyone else. This is a wonderfully fertile spiritual moment – the place where a deeper conversion can happen. But it is not comfortable.

Some helpful disciplines here are confession, play, Cultural Addiction meetings, and the Welcoming Prayer. In our money practice, we may take steps to detach from the addictive aspects of the financial system in which we find ourselves.

We might choose to live within a budget, for instance, as a way of accepting limits. Or we might engage in communal experiments or giving from our principal in order to loosen our attachment to relying on personal wealth for security. Or we might begin to shift our investments to community banks, microcredit lending institutions, or other investment vehicles that are consistent with our values.

This may also be a moment where we become aware of models of giving that unintentionally reinforce power dynamics and dependency and attempt to shift to ones that support partnership and social justice.

Detox

“The mighty will be thrown from their thrones… and the rich will be sent away empty.”
(Luke 1:52-53)

“The heart must be empty of all other things because God will possess the heart alone.”
~Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence of God

In American culture, we are often trained to equate success with ascent. For those of us who are wealthy, the spiritual journey will inevitably involve some kind of descent as we surrender to God and allow God to reprogram our value system/assumptions /energetic bodies. Our job in this moment is not to fight that descent, but to let it happen.

Some disciplines that are helpful here are welcoming hard emotions and offering fierce compassion to ourselves. Detox is hard. This may also be a moment where we may seek the support of therapists and/or turn to communal wisdom for decision making, as we may be very confused in our process of trying to learn different ways of acting.

Some money disciplines that are helpful here may include spending money to care for ourselves (i.e. for massage, therapy, healthy food etc.) and receiving money from others who are supporting our efforts to learn how to allow money to move through our lives in ways that are not about fear, power or addiction but love.

…Stay tuned for part 3, to come!