Jesus tells a parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers.” Then, “going out at five o’clock,” he hired more. At the end of the day, he “gave them their pay.” The ones who started late “received the usual daily wage,” equal to the ones who started earlier. The earlier ones objected and “grumbled,” “(Y)ou have made them equal to us.” The grumblers are told, “My friends, I am not cheating you… Take what is yours and go… Are you envious because I am generous?”
Those grumbling about generosity represent capitalists. Capitalists believe they can devalue people, using them as things for financial gain. Capitalists lie, claiming they need to do so in a financial system of scarcity; money is scarce, resources are scarce. But laborers are always plentiful since capitalists keep a pool of spare vulnerable workers, people who are underemployed and/or unemployed. They are forced to work for unlivable wages resulting in a life of scarcity. The underpaid pool of labor enables the capitalist to live in abundance while forcing upon society a system of scarcity. The parable’s laborers who are hired later are the underpaid vulnerable workers throughout history. The man hiring them and paying them full wages in the parable is not a capitalist. He is a generous man sharing the resources of a generous creation. A current proponent of converting from capitalism’s scarcity to creation’s natural generosity is David Korten. Korten is a former U.S. Air Force Captain and professor at the Harvard School of Business who has been undergoing a conversion from capitalism to generosity. Many of Korten’s former colleagues grumble about him generously sharing his knowledge and skills about capitalism’s planned scarcity in order to help convert the U.S. away from it and toward an economics of generosity. In part, the grumblers object to Korten’s support for a Green New Deal which is struggling to become U.S. policy. It will be one of many stalled projects if the GOP is successful in shutting down the government. It contains elements of converting society from scarcity to generosity. For example, The Green New Deal guarantees work with family-sustaining wages, universal health care and retirement security, and provides people affordable housing, access to clean water and air, healthy and affordable food, as well as training and quality education. A pathway to providing such quality of life is by caring for nature’s clean renewable energy resources. Renewable energy is able to convert the U.S. to clean manufacturing, the repair and upgrade of U.S. infrastructure, including public works and buildings, and an overhaul of the transportation system which will help eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Objectors include members of the GOP intent on using non-renewable fossil fuels, mining, and timber while keeping creation’s natural renewing energy scarce. Under the GOP, scarce as well will be a people’s health plan, living wages, and thus the people’s energy. Capitalist destroyers of energy, nature’s and the people’s, can be converted, physically and spiritually to generosity. Korten recommends both in his writings, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (2007), Spiritual Awakening, a New Economy, and the End of Empire (2009), Change The Story, Change the Future (2015), He recommends that same conversion in his magazine, YES! We can live in loving communion with an abundant and generous creation forever sharing its renewable energy with us. In this time of crisis we can let nature reenergize us when we are plundered unto scarcity. We can design our lives so that our being in touch enlivens us to be a generous renewing creation. Doing so can remind us that we are nature. We are a joyful, abundant, renewable energy whose generosity is needed by our world.
“We are presently engaged in a struggle between corporate (control) and people power. The latter is less visible, but is growing as people withdraw their life energy from the corporate suicide economy and redirect it to creating the building blocks of a living Earth economy from the bottom up. They are advancing sustainable community agriculture and renewable energy,… holistic health and wellness, creative participatory arts and culture. The greater their success, the greater our opportunities to engage and meet our needs through the emerging living Earth economy.” (David Korten )
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, energize us for generosity.
Question: How would I describe my energy, especially for others?
September 24, 2023 Gospel Matthew 20:1-16 Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time