Marching toward Soylent Green and other such idyllic futures

It makes perfect sense. Right now, many things work together to cast a bleakness on the look of ordinary life. Maybe that is why as we walked through the exit doors of Walmart this morning, I reacted to your statement with genuine grief. The kind of grief you feel when a favorite pet dies; you know--the little creature who had the power to make even a dark day have its bright spot. For as we left, you pointed out a placard written in pure white lettering set on a non-confrontational blue background, and you commented on its content. "Oh, yeah. Did you hear? Walmart got rid of their layaway department."

I hugged my paltry bag full of things like hair color, contact lens cleaner and envelopes...those raw personal needs that take me to Walmart...and I felt myself deflate a little. You see, somewhere inside me, I've kept a ledger of the demise of things that I took for granted as free services afforded in our society over the years. Even in this capitalist country, there persisted an overlay of something softer than pure capitalism...but in the end, free layaway at Walmart seemed to stand alone, a last bastion of free service. But come December, no more layaway. I read somewhere that many of the big stores (I don't remember which ones specifically, but places like Sears, Target, etc.) now earn the bulk of their income off the credit card interest people pay for past purchases, while monies earned on current sales serve as secondary profits. I think it was Readers Digest that brought this to my attention, but the actual percentages were too depressing to commit to memory. I know they were enough to alarm the financial analysts who wrote the article.

So it feels like I take my children walking in the cemetery behind some old abandoned church, and I point to the tombstones, and we read them:

"This is the head stone of the one who pumped gas and checked your oil for free.
And this one, it is the doctor who made housecalls and understood that you might need to pay with a basket of eggs.
That whole hillside of graves over there...those are the housewives. They're the ones who did a myriad of jobs and could have garnered more respect for their work as care-givers, cooks, lawyers, nurses, psychologists, etc. by simply claiming each job title and attaching the words pro bono to the work, but they didn't think it necessary to draw attention to the obvious good of public service. They're probably spinning under there, appalled at the lack of weight and significance given to the label housewife in this present day."

And lifting out of my reverie, I hear you ponder as we cross the parking lot.
"I wonder what the kids will miss when they are grown? What's left for them to look back on as free services lost between their youth and their adulthood?" And I'm afraid to wonder that with you.

The libraries? The public schools? Or will it be less cultural, more in the nature of primal need. A plot of grass outside the door? Running water? Part and parcel from the Bill of Rights? Or will it be the whole shebang, those things our forefathers considered "self-evident?"

If the deepest quality of this life is tied to our willingness to embrace gratitude in all circumstances, then we must dig deep. Gratitude is all relative. I remember once we laughed because several in the family were in "dire" enough physical condition that we realized we were having to reach deep to find things with which to console ourselves, thoughts like, "At least we're not battling ebola or the black plague." We found our well of gratitude.

Now we're becoming aware of the same negative imbalance in our social, national, economic world. So we, ever the ones to look for that thing to appreciate, we step out and say like the Puritan who bowed his head over his bread and water: "All this and Christ, too." And somewhere, God in His infinite eternal book of accounts notes our recognition of this seemingly low ceiling and reminds us of other people in other times and places who felt equally powerless to keep a grasp on things. He reminds us that some times and places are given the power to show why hyper-control by even a benign authority runs amok. These are the ones given the assignment of living in the days when the veil of deception is lifted and good is revealed to be good, and bad to be bad. To play a part in that scenario carries a profound dignity, but also a great strain in the days of its occurring.

So above all else, we discover we can thank God for this infinite spiritual freedom, even as what seems to shackle our hands and feet rattles merrily away while we sing and encourage each other, unnoticed, seemingly passive and obviously frail in a dark dungeon...for now. (smile)