Your country wants you to spend

It is almost four-o-clock in the afternoon and the sun is already setting in a clear blue sky. Here in Brighid's Isles we have already had the first snow of winter and the dark and the cold cover the land. Winter is such a beautiful time for introspection, for entering the heart with the Goddesses and letting them gently open us to all that is good and beautiful and true.

Meanwhile the news media are buzzing with government initiatives to help us spend our way out of a recession. It seems that our country wants us to shop and our government is willing to lend us our own money to do so for a whole year before they claw it all back in more taxation. 

Goddess help us all! We spend all this money and have nothing to show for it. Buy a new car and it loses half its value the moment it is driven off the garage forecourt. Buy the latest electronic wonder and we are only happy until a new model is introduced eight months later. Buy a printer and it is cheaper to buy a new one than replace the ink; so the old one goes into the landfill. We repair nothing because we are told it is so environmentally friendly to recycle the old and buy new. But worse of all we have forgotten how to share what we have.

There is an old story - given a divine mandate - about a harsh and cruel man who goes off on a journey entrusting three of his servants with differing sums of money according to their ability to work the monetary system. It is a story that tells us how the weak always go to the wall and how violence is always inflicted upon the weak by the strong. One of the servants is so terrified of his master that worry and stress take over his life. The other servants do nothing to help because they are too busy making money for their master. When the harsh and cruel man returns he shows absolutely no compassion to the servant. He makes no attempt to help him. The servant is simply condemned. And this is held up as a model to follow. Indeed it has become the model that is followed.

Since I started writing this it has become entirely dark and the stars have appeared in the night sky. To be alive under a starlit sky is a wonderful gift. Creation shares its beauty with all. I have eyes to see, I have a roof over my head and food on the table so I am rich. I have others to love and I feel loved and cherished so I have riches beyond avarice. 

If we can appreciate the beauty and wonder and magic that is all around us then the Goddesses have touched us. If we have learnt to share and be content with enough we have found Goddess wisdom. Sometimes less is in truth much more.