Lottery Fever's Life Lessons

Lottery Fever’s Life Lessons

Written by the Panhandling Philosopher

 

 

            Last week, people who had seldom played the lottery heard the news of a staggering jackpot in excess of $500 million dollars. By Sunday it was near $900 million dollars. No one won the jackpot, so the pot is growing this week. By the time of the drawing it is expected to be around $1.3 billion dollars. As I have watched Lottery fever, and confession to be made, bought a ticket I have mulled over the phenomenon of lottery fever and have decided there are some lessons to be learned as we think over the lottery.

            We could fix on whether a lottery is actually a good practice. It is a way for governments to bypass the legislative process of raising revenues from fairly and equitably distributed taxation to spend on the shared public sector investments that we possess as a people in common. Most states involved in the Powerball lottery earmark the funds towards education. But then legislators adjust the state budgets so that school budgets are treated as taken care of by the lottery. In the end, many states do not solve their financial shortfalls through the lottery schemes, and the lottery becomes a sort of tax on the poor who spend more in the hopes of becoming rich quick than the rest of us. That would be worth an entire essay to consider. But let us look at some other lessons the lottery and the accompanying lottery fever can teach us.

            One of the first lessons that came to mind as I have watched and played along in lottery fever is how for a moment we think of the possibilities of things we would do if questions of money and jobs no longer determined our course of everyday action. People imagined winning the lottery and traveling. A lot of people imagine changing careers to something they would like to do rather than feel they have to do. Steve Martin joked that if he won the lottery he would use it to underwrite his banjo career. Quite a few people thought if they won the lottery they would contribute a large sum of money to good causes. I think the “what would I do if I won” dreams are themselves important lessons to be considered as we experience lottery fever. For some of us, the lottery has allowed us to think about dreams and aspirations within ourselves that we have learned to simply say “no, I have to be practical, there are bills to pay.” Does that perhaps tell us we aren’t facing life in perhaps the most positive way?

            Most of us will never win the Powerball lottery. Life goes on. For most of us, we realize that life hasn’t been too bad. We usually get the bills paid. We don’t always like getting up to go to work, but we are grateful for our jobs. We enjoy most of the people at our jobs much of the time. Most of us imagine life could be a lot worse. But these dreams and aspirations and desires – have we paid too little attention to them? Sometimes yes. But here is the point. The lottery opened our souls to dreams that some of us have buried beneath the necessities of earning a living. We have never taken that special trip anywhere. We haven’t pursued a hobby or an alternative vocation we have imagined ourselves doing. We’ve felt that if we could we’d love to make a difference by giving more money to a charity or a cause. But what can we do if we can only afford $5 on a tight budget? We take our dreams and file them away until they have no real place in our lives or how we prioritize our lives. Then the lottery jackpot reaches $1 billion dollars and we begin thinking of what we would do if we won. Perhaps our greater need is to think of what we will do with these dreams if we don’t win.

            The lottery teaches us that small contributions add up when they get focused. How much does a Powerball lottery ticket cost? It costs two dollars per chance. Do you understand what that means? It means that millions of people contributing $2 per chance created a fund worth more than a billion dollars. Do you see the implications of that for your desire to contribute to the good of your community? We imagine we can’t make a difference if all we can give is $5. Yet $2 contributions added up in the lottery until some person or group of persons will split a $ 1 billion jackpot. Think how people of a poor neighborhood could transform the look of their neighborhood with small contributions going towards shared neighborhood beautification. Think of how groups of us could make changes in the world by focusing our $2 and $5 contributions to a good cause. The lottery teaches us that small contributions can add up.

            It isn’t just about money. A financial adviser once said, “I am asked all the time by people how I should invest my money to take care of my future?” He then said – “I am never asked how I should invest my take so as to be better prepared to take care of my future.” Money and time is what we invest into life to make of it what we will. The lottery in a strange way tells us that every minute and every dollar matters. It matters for the person who wins, and it especially matters for the rest of us who don’t win.

            Think about one thing in life you want to spend time and perhaps money on to pursue a dream, especially those dreams of contributing to the good of your community or those in need. Feel free to share your ideas and dreams with the rest of us reading this blog. I will try to follow up on some thoughts that have been percolating in my soul.

Happy Birthday Vivienne Gucwa

Happy Birthday to Vivienne Gucwa

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Often times, on January 4, I present a remembrance blog of my father, Amos McDonald, who was born on January 4, 2015 and passed away on June 19, 1989. I owe so much to him. He was a farmer and welder, who had an eighth grade education and taught me about life with the stories of a self-made sage. He was less successful teaching those around him when he was working. He was impatient when he worked. I never learned to weld and didn’t much want to farm when I grew up. But in the evening, when his work tools were put up and he was watching television, if a son wanted his attention the television became a distant sound in the far distances of the other side of the room. If he were giving advice he wanted his son to learn he would tell a story. I suppose I got the desire to write and to blog because I grew up wanting to tell stories that others would want to hear. So a father who seldom committed any thoughts to paper helped a son want to write. That is something I have long wanted to do, but until I started blogging I kept writings to myself mostly or pestered people who were really too busy to give much attention to my papers. Brevity was not my gift and I am working on that. So I guess I could not create a January 4 blog without saying words about my father.

            I discovered recently, or was reminded recently that January 4 is also the birthday of one of my favorite photographers, Vivienne Gucwa. In early December 2014 I visited New York City for the first time in my life. It began as a scary journey for someone who had grown up on a farm and was taught to be distrustful of cities. I was going alone and staying at a bed n’ breakfast minus the breakfast in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City a few blocks west of Times Square. It was about the time I went to New York City that I discovered the online presence of Vivienne Gucwa, who had a book of photographs of her hometown of New York City, called NY through the Lens. I didn’t get the book in my hands until after my visit to New York City but what I discovered about the author on line had me sold on the book before it arrived.

            I am going to share one photo taken by Vivienne Gucwa that was online, to whet your appetite for more. I went in the winter hoping to see snow but there was no snow. Still it was a magical visit because the first restaurant I visited, a charming server seemed as interested in figuring out where her customer was from and all of a sudden the big city was more of a place where people lived who had dreams just like everybody else. Within three days I realized I had seen some sights of New York City but moreover I had visited neighborhoods like Chelsea and Clinton and Hell’s Kitchen. Then Vivienne Gucwa’s book arrived and I saw a hometown girl’s photographs and written descriptions which were expressed in poetry and prose that read as if they were another way of framing a photograph of images in one’s mind. I had stood near the spot where this Central Park scene had been taken. I had wished there was snow on the ground, but there was none. But I saw the scene in snow through Vivienne’s book –

Her work is so much more - so look at her link here

I mean it – look here

 

            The book and the link I gave can lead you to the work of a wonderful artist who brings you into a world of someone who looks at the world with wonder, with it is in seeing scenes in the home town of New York City she loves, or in other cities and places that she feels blessed to be able to travel to in connection with her work as a photographer. Her story is unique and wonderfully inspiring. She was living on her own, going to school, living on student loans, and piling up stress. She bought an inexpensive point and shoot camera and to relieve stress began to take walks along streets capturing scenes with her camera that didn’t work properly in all its functions. She began putting her photographs on the internet. Now she is a photographer sponsored by Sony with a best-selling book of photographs. She is also the descendant of immigrants who came to New York City having suffered and came when the city was a place of hope and she often sees history in the bricks of the neighborhoods she captures with her lens. Those of us who follow her on Twitter or like her Facebook page feel as if we are being given a very special tour of life through her words and photographs. She is one of the artists, photographers, writers, whose perspective on the world has deeply touched my soul. I won’t forget that her birthday is on January 4, because my Dad’s was also. I have felt deeply blessed reading from her blogs, looking at life through her photographs, reading the beautiful words she uses to describe what she sees. I am sure I speak for many others who on her birthday wish to thank her and somehow express to her what her work has meant to all of us.

            Happy birthday Vivienne Gucwa – you have been an inspiration for so many of us even though most of us have never had an opportunity to meet you. But in your work you have given yourself to us and so we simply want this day for you to have a most happy birthday.

Burying our Priest

Burying our Priest

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I dreaded today for several days. It has been a difficult Christmas season. We are Anglicans, so our priests are usually married. Father Jack was married, and had a large family. His oldest son David had died only a few weeks ago. Our priest, rector, a father both to family and to parish had fallen ill around thanksgiving but seemed to be gradually recovering. He had come home and was recuperating, weak but hopefully improving. The parish had rejoiced to see him, although in weakened condition. On Christmas Day, the news that caught our attention was that daughter Heather had suffered a dog bite, while walking her dogs. Then on December 26, Father Bradberry had to be taken once more into the hospital. He was put on medication and his heart gave out.

            I have been a member of four churches in my life. Each church and ministry had different strengths. Father Bradberry’s strength was his love and compassion for the people he served in the ministry. He was quick to sacrifice his own well-being for the people to whom he ministered. He kept his theology simple. Regarding the big questions he once told a Bishop, “I am a parish priest and if I am going to err, I want it to be on the side of the Scriptures.” His Sunday morning focus was to point his flock to the centrality of the Eucharist. He believed that God especially met with his people in giving them the body and blood of Christ in the bread and the cup. As an Anglican he understood the communion to involve a real partaking of Christ’s body and blood “in a heavenly and spiritual manner”, but he wouldn’t be pinned down on exactly what that meant except that God truly gave His Son to us when in the midst of worship, we partook of the bread and the cup. I believe that one thing that members of our church felt was that we had a minister who loved and cared for the people of his church.

There are times when I talk too much and other times when I don’t know what to say. In seeing the Bradberry family members grieving today, I felt my inability to be able to say anything. I did a lousy job of sharing grief, but perhaps part of this was because I was grieving. His family is a living testimony of both the grace of God and the blessing of godly parents. A grandson, I think perhaps twelve or thirteen, moved us as he spoke briefly of his love for his grandfather and how he learned so much from him of God’s love, of loving God’s creation, and loving God’s church, because these were the loves he learned from his “papa”.

            Over the years, my understanding of Christianity has become focused in the incarnation; of God entering into humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, so that we could be united to Christ’s humanity and be given access to God through the Deity of Christ. In my thoughts this morning, I thought of how even in baptism we die and are buried in Christ that we might be raised with him in the final day.

            As I thought more about this, I realized how part of the meaning of the communion our Father Jack so loved, was to realize that what happens to one person in Christ happens to all of us. We are of one body and one blood. I had felt like in burying Father Jack I was burying a part of myself. The Eucharist tells us there is truth in this. As we age we realize more and more that another’s death cuts at us, as if we die from the many deaths we experience. We are as Christians a people baptized into Christ’s life, death, burial, and resurrection. We are not alone, but are one in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. So as we committed our priest’s remains to the ground we being with him in Christ buried a part of ourselves. In the morning we shall worship, according to Hebrews 12 in communion with the city above, where the spirits of just men made perfect praise God. We will sing the doxology asking that heavenly host to sing above even as we invite all creatures here below to sing praises to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We are a broken people who have buried parts of ourselves with every burial of every human being we ever loved. But we are also a people who are one in Christ, both in burying and in being resurrected. One friend passing on condolences to me wished for me healing and hope. We are as Christians a people who are dying, being broken, buried, and yet in hope being brought towards healing for we have been baptized into Christ’s death that we might be raised in his resurrection.

            I believe in Christ a part of me was buried in Father Jack’s burial. We are dying, experiencing death, one death at a time for we are one body in Christ Jesus. We are dying, we are broken, we are being buried, but we are one people in Christ moving towards healing, hope, and resurrection in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

One-word 2016

One-Word 2016

“Organize”

Written by Dan McDonald,

The Panhandling Philosopher

 

 

            I am an old bachelor. Those of us who have remained single most of our lives seldom live balanced lives. Most people learn balance living with other people, partly because they are compelled to do some things simply because others expect it of them. People living alone set up their own time schedules, habits, and ways of doing things without the interference of others. It may sound ideal for a moment, but mostly it means that those of us living alone miss out on the beneficial friction of iron sharpening iron that occurs in close relationships. Bachelors generally will fall into imbalances that might have been minimized by living with other people.

            For me one of the ways my bachelor life is imbalanced is that I am utterly disorganized. Record-keeping, house-keeping, use of time, getting to bed at a decent time, pretty much everything gets put off to the whim of my next decision. Writing is something I like to do. But it is also a tempting escape to which I flee rather than doing the things I should do. So in 2016 I am adopting a one-word theme for my New Year’s resolution. If I follow my New Year’s theme I will probably be writing less often in 2016 than in 2015. I will still write but hopefully shorter pieces and determined more within the parameters of something I should be doing because it is using my time well rather than something I am doing just to escape what I should be doing.

            My goal is to review on a monthly basis one aspect of becoming organized and working on making that a habit for the next month. I have read somewhere that new habits take around three weeks to become part of life. If that is true by taking one part of organization a month I should be able to give myself one month on each part to include into my life. Will plans work out in practice as they were hoped for in theory? Perhaps they won’t. But will practices of life ever change if no plan is ever adopted to change the practices that have become disabling habits. I am pretty certain if no plan is adopted to change the way my life is organized, I will remain disorganized. So the best I can do is to create a plan and seek the Lord’s help in implementing it.

            As tax season nears it seems like one of my first needs will be to attack two birds with one stone. That may seem futile but the two go together. I have receipts that lay wherever I put them in a cluttered house. I have a cluttered house that is an embarrassment to me. So I begin there. I will begin to clean up and organize my home, room by room, and in the process work on my record-keeping. I began today discovering if there were still kitchen counters underneath the things I left on them. They are still there. I thought they would be, but that was just faith in the unseen. One day’s work, a couple of hours is a beginning. But isn’t that the way for whatever improvements we imagine making in a year? The plan is only as good as the day by day implementation. The pitch is only as good as the follow through. The architect’s plans are only as good as the construction company’s workmanship. The most visionary of dreams only become reality through labor.

            This one-word theme “organize” is the closest thing for me to a 2016 New Year’s resolution. I seldom get responses to my blogs, so it would be amazing if you were to share some of your approaches to making changes in life, New Year’s resolutions, and the like. Do you prefer a number of resolutions? I find the one-word theme hopeful to pursue. We will see how it works. To you, I offer my best wishes and prayer on your desires to improve a facet of life in this newest year.

            In the words of Walter Cronkite, the former CBS news anchor with the authoritative sounding voice, I close off saying, “And that’s the way it is, today” the 1^st of January, 2016.