Safe in Faith

I got up super early this morning and was at the grocery store by seven.  I wanted to beat the milling, impatient crowd made up of people panting to spend other people’s money that they received today or the rest of the folks who felt they needed to stock up now that the world is returning to “normal” after the holiday mess.  At the store where I can make my money stretch the farthest, the aisles grow ever smaller as the management tries to stuff more and more merchandise within the walls, so they can rake the money out of more and more pockets.  I managed to stay out of the stores the entire month of December except for one grocery trip.  I’m pretty stubborn about not being part of the grease that makes the cogs of commercialism turn in December.  

At any rate, I did a pretty good job getting there before the madding crowd.  I had most aisles to myself except for the stockers and the floor cleaning people.  I booked through, trying to get finished and to the bank when it opened at eight.  The finances are squeaky thin, and I am just praying the deposit got through before the debits.  I keep telling myself we shouldn’t have taken that vacation, and then I get angry.  We haven’t taken a vacation like that in 15 years.  It was time.  We’ll build back up.  If dh can find work.  Or I can start selling some stuff.  Arg.

We continue on the downhill slip that started a good five or six years ago.  It doesn’t matter anymore if you work hard.  There was a time when working hard and caring for your family rewarded you with a good meal on your table and a friendly family doctor if you needed one. Now you’re just rewarded with more taxes and more reasons for the money to fly out of your wallet to fund this or that and then be left with the fearful knowledge that one good illness or accident will completely wipe out everything you’ve ever built.  Slowly but surely every service industry out there is being turned aside from the goal of benefiting people to the goal of robbing them of their money. Who ever really thought that an economic system based on greed would succeed perpetually?  

Perusing the meat the meat department didn’t do much to turn the tide for optimism.  I was scanning for the red “Special Today” stickers that put cheap cuts in my price range and when I found a few I decided to see what the normal price per pound was, and I almost choked.  We are edging ever closer to a time when a select few will live the Marie Antoinette life and the rest of us will be wondering what cake tasted like.  I really don’t know how people afford to eat meat.  We couldn’t if it weren’t for R’s hunting.

It is crystal clear, in my eyes anyway, that this world edges closer and closer to the worst time in mankind’s history; it is falling apart everywhere.  Seams stretched to the limit are breaking—finances, morality, employment, the family unit, housing, taking care of the garbage we generate, the list is endless—and there is nothing left to put any faith in.   No human anyway.  I come to the same conclusion every time I think it through—believing that one imperfect and impotent man over another (or even one collection of men over another group) could  make a significant difference is sheer lunacy given the mountainous issues facing humanity as a whole.  The system is broken at the root and people aren’t going to be able to put it right.

There’s no point in polishing the brass on the Titanic.  Find a lifeboat while you can.  I have no rational choice but to cling to my political neutrality and put my faith where the track record is stellar.