N.I.M.B.Y.

It's election season. Commercials. Mailers. Competing signs, facts and statistics. While all politics are supposedly local, the basic political landscape is fairly universal. Here in Marin County, California one of the main issues in next week's primary race for County Supervisor is a project called Marinwood Village. In essence, the project would transform a blighted shopping center into a mixed-use development of retail space and residential units, with almost all of the residential units being set aside for affordable housing.

While the history of the project is long and complicated, I think opposition to it can be summed up with an acronym: N.I.M.B.Y. "Not in my backyard." I live in a liberal-leaning county where progressive politics is the norm...until taking a progressive stand costs us something.

"Yes, let's have affordable housing, but not near my house."

"Yes, let's make it easier for middle to lower income workers to get to their jobs, but don't inconvenience me with any more traffic." (61% of those working in my county don't live here, in large part because housing is so pricey.)

"Yes, I believe our community should be integrated with people of color, of different ethnicities and religions, of various socioeconomic backgrounds all living amongst each other, just do it on the other side of the highway."

"Yes, let's ensure that every child has equal access to quality public education, just make sure my child's education is more equal than others."

Community, equality, justice, fairness, and compassion are all cherished values until those values might ask something of us:

• 30 seconds added to our commute on Mondays and Tuesdays
• Sacrificing that new state of the art auditorium for our school so that a less-privileged child can master Algebra and know the difference between a simile and a metaphor
• Facing our unconscious racism and classism

The plan's opponent say it will overcrowd schools, create traffic snarls, and result in any number of other dreaded outcomes. I assumed the plan was for over 1,000 residential units with 500 new children attending public schools and 700 new cars clogging our roads.  No, the plan is to build 82 units, 72 of which would be designated as affordable housing. That's it. All this hubbub is about 82 units.

To be fair, we all have our version of N.I.M.B.Y., ways in which we sacrifice our principles when they are not convenient or comfortable. For instance, I refuse to patronize Walmart and other corporations whose business practices I believe to be detrimental to our society and environment. Yet, my retirement account is invested in various mutual funds, which, in turn invest in several corporations whose values clash with mine. It seems virtually impossible to build a retirement fund and avoid entanglements with corporate malfeasance. How do I live my values in such a situation?

What's your version of this conflict? Where in your life do you find it hard to live your values? The work of the soul is to get clearer and clearer about our true values and find the courage to live them.

Any value worth holding will cost us something. If there is no cost or struggle, then these are not personal values but rather worshipped abstractions, meaningless babble, self-serving affectations. Will we pay the price to do something, no matter how small, that is in alignment with the values we extoll? (Perhaps divest in just one mutual fund whose values conflict with our own.)

Only when we look into the backyard of our own hearts can we get honest about the gap between our expressed values and our actions. And when we look there, what we are likely to find is fear. Fear that we won't get our "fair share". Fear of losing control. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Much of this fear spirals outward from a center of self-entitlement weaving tales of doom that are not grounded in reality.

If we lean into our fear-based darker impulses, we can find beneath those layers of protection a greater compassion, a spacious consciousness, a liberating connection with All That Is...Something greater than ourselves which enables us to be the people we want to be. Change, whether in a person or in a society, always begins in our own backyard. If not now, when? If not in my own backyard, then whose?

Trickle-Up Economics

As we await the winter rains here in Northern California, I've been paying attention to the early morning chorus of sprinkler systems in our neighborhood. Like a carefully choreographed game of "whack-a-mole", sprinkler heads peak above ground, disperse water and then return to their subterranean lair. Unfortunately, this type of system sends water up toward the ether where much of it evaporates rather sending water directly into the soil to soak the roots of flora with life-giving liquid. This inefficient top-down watering system is an apt metaphor for "Trickle-Down Economics", which has been the prevailing economic theory for the past thirty years. [Warning: This is not an economic treatise and thus should not be used in lieu of your normal sleep medication.]  The essence of Trickle-Down Economics is the belief that when the richest Americans have the lowest possible effect tax rates, much lower than that of the rest of the population, they, in turn, will create jobs that raise the economic status of everyone else.

It sounds reasonable. Unfortunately, it hasn't work as advertised.  Here are a few sobering statistics:

• If wages had kept up with increased productivity since the 1970's, then someone making $40,000 today would be making over $62,000. 
• Only Russia, Ukraine and Lebanon have worse income inequality than the U.S., and the likelihood of upward economic mobility in this country is about the same as in Pakistan (slightly worse than Singapore and slightly better than China).
• The wealthiest 400 Americans have as much wealth as 80 million families combined (62% of the population).
• Since 1980 American GDP has about doubled. While wages are stagnant (or even declining) when adjusted for inflation, the stock market has increased its value by over ten times with 93% of that wealth residing in the hands of the richest 20% of Americans.
• For more information and supporting data, check out www.inequality.is or Robert Reich's new documentary "Inequality for All".

Essentially what we have in this country is "Trickle-Up Economics". The rich get richer, and everyone else treads water or sinks. Over the past few decades, the wealthy few have become exorbitantly wealthy, while the rest of the country has seen wages stagnate or decline (when adjusted for inflation). The result is that millions of ordinary folks have less available income to buy stuff, and that demand for goods and services is what drives the economy and creates jobs. No matter how much he loves to be warm and cuddly, there are only so many Snuggies that Bill Gates is going to buy.

What's bizarre is that the rich would likely fare better in a more equitable economic system by having a smaller share of an ever-growing pie as opposed to a larger share of a stagnant or shrinking pie. As the middle class thrived, they would purchase goods and services from companies owned by the rich, thus not only increasing profits for the wealthy but also providing more capital to hire more workers for decent jobs rather than the McJobs typically created in this wimpy recovery. I'm not advocating communism but rather a somewhat higher tax rate on the rich so that the budget is not balanced on the backs of the squeezed/shrinking middle class and the poor so that they (we), in turn, can heat up the economy.

What's perhaps most startling about Trickle-Down Economics is its unholy alliance with organized Christianity. Despite the clear solidarity of Jesus with the poor (Luke 4:16-19, Luke 6:20-21, Matthew 25:34-36, Luke 14:12-14, Luke 12:16-21, Matthew 19:24, etc.), not to mention passages in the Hebrew scriptures lambasting the wealthy establishment for its treatment of the poor (Psalm 109:16, Proverbs 14:31, Proverbs 28:3 and innumerable examples among the prophets such as Ezekiel 22:26-29), in many Christian circles, God has morphed into a monocle-with-top-hat capitalist who advocates for a totally unregulated free market, no matter how that impacts the most vulnerable.

Former President Jimmy Carter recently weighed in on this unseemly mangling of sacred scripture to support a trickle-up economic system, when he said, "If you don't want your tax dollars to help the poor - then stop saying that you want a country based on Christian values, because you don't." Amen, Mr. President. Amen.

Musical Chairs

Last week I attended a gathering of faith leaders who are seeking creative ways to promote economic justice. We did one exercise in which ten people sat in ten chairs, each person representing 10% of the U.S. population. Then we shuffled seating according to wealth in our country. Half of the population (5 people), clung to one-tenth of one chair, while one person owned five chairs. My first reaction was repulsion and anger at the injustice. Then…to be honest…my feelings shifted to fear. My negative future fantasies began to kick in. I have enough today (a chair of my own), but the future is completely uncertain. Don’t I need another chair, just in case?  Suddenly, I understood the fearful drive to accumulate more and more.

We live in a culture of fear. Bombings. Explosions. Recession. Shootings. Scarcity. Gridlock. War. Financial Chaos…

Let’s be honest. Our country and the world are a mess. Let’s also be honest that this is nothing new. What is new is that we are instantly aware of any trauma,, as it happens, anywhere in the world.  This drumbeat of misery and anxiety surrounds us, inundates us, and overwhelms us. We become numb. We grasp for and cling to what little security we think we have, but no amount of money, guns, foreign wars, or demonizing of others yields lasting peace. In fact, our grasping and clinging generates more trauma and misery.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” “True love has no room for fear.” Those words from John the Apostle remind me that love is more than an emotion. It is a deeply-felt-knowing that I’m connected to you, to Nature, to the suffering and the poor, to Life Itself, to a Presence that flows through us all and yet is more than the sum of our parts.

When caught up in fear and grasping, however, it’s hard for me to access love. To make the shift I remember someone whose memory breaks my heart wide open. I’ll remember my childhood dog Skippy, who was my dearest friend. Focusing on Skippy never fails to move me into love, and the fear dissipates. Who opens you like that? Who is your guide back to compassion?

When I shift from fear back to love, my way of holding life changes. Numbness melts. Overwhelm eases. A hopeful, practical set of questions emerges:

• I can’t hold the pain of the whole world, but whose hand can I hold today?
• I can’t guarantee my future financial security, but what one person can I help with the abundance I have today?
• I can’t fix climate change and save all the endangered species on our planet, but what is one member of one non-human species I can care for today?
• I can’t resolve global political crises, but what one problem can I address with determined compassion in the community where I live?

This is what love does. Love feels the fear and acts anyway. Love takes responsibility for its own life while opening its heart to all life. Love moves from a myopic “me, myself and I”, to a panoramic “we, ourselves and us”. It even occasionally vacates its own seat so that someone else can sit for a while.