Mark 4:19

but the cares of life, and the glamour of wealth, and cravings for many other things come in and completely choke the message, so that it gives no return.


the fecundity of creation
pleasuring eye and tongue
a beautiful forever
constant in its tangibleness
weighs heavy around our neck

from baby-hood onward
practicing eye-hand coordination
we grab and grab again
to taste to test
to claim as mine

only to find desire’s akido
fluidly using our desire
as though it were its own
throwing us in a briar patch
we’d never seen before

so many pricks no where to go
invisible and mute
we are an albatross
hung around the neck
of a capitalist consumer culture


In a time of occupation, the fragility of life escalates. Danger is so present it ceases to be talked about as such and is simply a given.

A result is investing our desire for safety in ἀπάτη (apatē, “deceptive attraction”). This is a word we may need to return to as a reminder of the ancient Preacher’s word of “vanity”.

Without being able to name what is choking the life out of us we simply find a noose drawing tighter through the generations. Having placed our lot with generic capitalism and profit, we find the “invisible hand” of some hypothetical and implacable Market to actually be giving us “the finger”. Each time a form of “crony capitalism” reappears we are further weakened. As the resources behind an economy are again raped, plundered, and otherwise despoiled, communities are poisoned, wither, and die.

Just as a misuse of the land depletes resources and beauty, misuse of a whole economy eventually can’t provide for the “general welfare” of people and so there is nothing left for which to provide a “common defense”. The same goes for religions:

“I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion, the mind that was in Christ, has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore do I not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality; and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches.”                                   ~ John Wesley