Opening to the Spirit
Today’s Word: Value
can be destroyed, but the intangible memories we share, the family bonds that comfort us, those are things that truly matter. What about you, our readers? Who or what in your life is of most value?
2) Thoreau says in Walden that the price of a thing is what we’re willing to exchange for it in real life energy. But all that I value most is truly priceless.
A favourite story tells about a family around the dinner table discussing whether or not they are poor. In Byrd Baylor’s “The Table Where Rich People Sit,” two children confront their parents about being poor, wishing they were more concerned about improving their lifestyle. With a small house near the desert is humble, an “old rattletrap” truck, the parents like living off the grid, and are willing to trade the usual trappings of success for freedom and a simple lifestyle in nature.
The children complain that the very table they sit at for this family meeting was handmade from a neighbour’s leftover lumber. Challenged to consider trading jobs in town for the work they love outdoors under an open sky, the parents insist that they are really rich and explain their unique method of bookkeeping.
How much, they ask, would you trade in dollars for a sky full of birds? The sunset over the arroyo or the sound of clear rushing water? The view of the mountain that changes colours ten times a day, or these varieties of blooming cactus. And our closest neighbours, the animals both wild and domestic. After they’ve inventoried all the beauty that surrounds them, the family turns to estimating the worth of each other. At which point it’s clear that money is not the measure of true value.
We live in a time when the value of everything is up for questioning. Clean air, safe clear water, and the freedom to move from one place on Earth to another — who decides what value do we assign to beauty and basic human goodness? Any new improved accounting system is up to us to design.
3) If we look to the world around us to know our value we will probably be in trouble. We are valued for our looks, our health, or what we can do. Quite literally, our jobs pay us what society has decided is the value of our time. We don’t need to look very far to see how distorted this is. Child care providers are paid little while people with much easier and much less important work are paid more. Celebrity is rewarded and humility is punished.
If the world does not see your value, if you live with a disability, or if you are poor, alone, elderly, or “different,” your life can be filled with isolation. If the world does see your value you might be in even more trouble. Sometimes we can equate what we have that the world values with who we are. Maybe we are beautiful or smart; maybe we have skills that many people appreciate. The danger here is that we might feel like we need to be these things in order to have value. What happens, then, when you lose your looks, or your mind, or when you age in ways that you lose your skills?
It is much better to place our foundation somewhere more firmly. God values each one of us, regardless of our appearance or abilities. God values each one of us, from birth to the grave, and then beyond. We are all God’s beloved children, with no favourites and no need to earn God’s love. Your value comes from just being. There is nothing to earn. God knows you and loves you just as you are.
One word, three voices (still summer, with at least one of us away)~ now it’s your turn: How do you determine what is of ultimate value?
Rev. Mead Baldwin pastors the Hatley, — Waterville and North Hatley United Churches; Rev. Lynn Dillabough is now Rector of St. Paul’s in Brockville Ont. She continues to write for this column as a dedicated colleague with the Eastern Townships clergy writing team; Rev. Lee Ann Hogle ministers to the Ayer’s Cliff, Magog and Georgeville United Churches; Rev. Carole Martignacco pastors Uuestrie — the Unitarian Universalists in North Hatley.