Jesus said to his disciples, the “Community of God… is an inexhaustible treasure… where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”
Jesus’ Community of God is a Peoples Movement with a three-fold inexhaustible treasure: we relate in communion, are essentially loving, and practice creative healing power. Unfortunately, we can be diverted from our inexhaustible treasure. We can be diverted toward quite exhaustible ornaments. So it is we fill our households with gadgets, our bellies with take out, and our minds with trivialities. We feel the exhaustion as we ride a merry-go-round of the latest trinkets, movies, and fads every day, and Black Fridays, Cyber Mondays, and pseudo Christmases every year, and are set up to go round and round again the next. Our bodies do not feel our vitality. Our hearts are not in touch with our treasure. We feel unwell, and so we are. We are unbalanced with anxiety and, worse, depression. The National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) asserts that as a nation, the U.S. has approximately 41 million people suffering from an anxiety disorder and 17 million suffering from a major depressive episode. 10 million of us are on medication for these ills. The numbers keep increasing – of people afflicted, of doctor prescriptions, and of pharmaceutical production. Much of that increase is based on a long-held theory now being challenged. The theory was that decreased serotonin levels are responsible for depression. We have been told depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, specifically, of serotonin. However, the latest research review by scientists at University College of London, shows the evidence does not support the chemical imbalance theory. Scientists reviewed 17 major studies published over several decades. Evidence showed anti-depressants might increase serotonin in the brain but the review showed the studies never proved the absence of serotonin caused the depression. One disconcerting find is that drug trials showed little difference between giving patients placebos and giving them anti-depressants which have a generalized numbing effect. Critics of the chemical imbalance theory have always asserted it was a Big Pharma marketing campaign lacking any basis in science. The stronger scientific evidence is that stressful life events cause depression. Personal stress like the death of loved ones, illness or injury, domestic abuse, irregular sleep. Also, social stress like low wages, job loss, union busting, no health insurance, diminished nutrition, family worry and turmoil; and the additional social stress every African American knows in the form of bias, bigotry, and discrimination. We are made anxious and depressed and numbed by a sick society that is horribly imbalanced in favor of sickness. The generalized numbing effect of drugs is matched with the generalized numbing effect of consumerism and processed foods and violence presented in comic book form no matter its reality. All of it produces our entertame-ment. We can instead live from the vitality of our People’s Movement: from the dynamic that is communion, the energy that is love, and the creativity that is healing power. These are our inexhaustible treasures. Let us set our hearts upon them.
“(A)m I afraid of journeying any further with myself? Once this question had presented itself it would not be appeased, it had to be answered. Be careful what you set your heart upon… and then I was left with only myself to deal with. It was entirely up to me… The questions which one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others. One can only face in others what one can face in oneself. On this confrontation depends the measure of wisdom and compassion. This energy is all that one finds in the rubble of vanished civilizations, and the only hope for ours.” (Nobody Knows My Name – James Baldwin)
Prayer: Spirit, keep my heart on the treasure that is our common vitality.
Question: How do I nurture the inexhaustible treasure that I am.
August 07, 2022 Gospel Luke 12:32-42 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time