"No Such Thing As Coincidences" -- by Carl Hooker

A couple of months ago I had coffee in St Louis with a man named Mike who is now a prayer partner and is also a fellow diocesan coordinator for EGR. We were discussing a spiritual path journey I wished to take and had been searching out for some time. In the process I discovered he and I shared our EGR involvement as well as he being a member in the order I was contemplating discerning. In that context, and obviously with much detail I am leaving out here, he said to me, "there are no such things as coincidences".

I am something of a news junkie. My Firefox browser 'home page' opens tabs for CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, Episcopal Life and of course the EGR Blog. I read these sites after I finish my morning ritual for the online economics classes I teach. I also read while eating my breakfast and lunch in my office, 5 days a week and a bit less but also on Saturday. I tend to ignore the Internet world on Sunday. I print the ones that fascinate me to pdf format and then file them away in my documents database on my Mac (DevonThink is the name, sorry no Windows version). Why do I save these things? It is not like I am ever going to read them all again. I do write an occasional paper, and now a regular blog piece, so maybe they will survive; it is not like digital space is as precious as the shelves for my books, and surely I am not killing trees to print them, this must be a good thing.

I imagine sometimes that in 10 or 12 years when one of my grandchildren has an assignment for school and I get hit up for some insight I will readily be able to pull Obama's speech on race from a week or so ago, or better yet link them up with the video. So when I come across a piece like this one from Reuters, I also pdf print it, file it and then think about it. Go ahead and read it, I will wait.....

So what am I to do with this new-found knowledge? 4% of Americans donate to political races apparently, to the tune of $1 billion so far for the presidential cycle. Several African countries have a lower GDP than $1 billion and maybe a portion of the political money could have been spent on a more noteworthy and humanitarian endeavor. Wow, that is a lot of guilt to carry around. I tell you what I am going to do about it, I am going to somehow rant about it, point out the injustice and get a little worked up.

So I do all that, formulate what I want to say, commit it to the screen in my Google Documents pages, save and close. Open it up later to proofread and realize..... I have not made any contributions to any of the candidates at this point, but neither have I sent any money to help work the MDG's this year. I feel a lot more guilt about the latter than the former, but I am taken down a few pegs. It has to be one of these common reasons I keep telling myself as I make a list:

• I just have not had time to write the check.

• Maybe I can blame it on the wide number of potential locations for the donation, I mean hello, there are tons of places I could send a check to that will put it to good use, so many to choose from, which one(s)?

• Maybe I can blame the economy, we are after all in a recession (I am an economist - trust me; if it walks like a recession and quacks like a recession, then it probably is a recession) =;>)

• I just do not have the resources right now.

So I spend all this time thinking first about the huge waste of money for one thing and not enough for the other, my head spins several times before I finally get quiet enough to hear God. You see I am putting my socks on the other morning and since that is such an automatic thing at my age my mind is clear and I hear in my mind, "rebate check". It takes me about 2 seconds to figure out the "voice" means I should do something with my upcoming rebate check. No more reason to put it off, no more excuses, done deal. And to think I started off by evaluating the article based on the abuses of politics and ended up seeing the proverbial three fingers that were pointing back at me. Don't you just hate it when that happens? You climb up on a great old soapbox, ready to preach the vileness and corruption of sin you see all around you and humility creeps in while you are putting on your socks. So I delete key what used to be on the screen and write this.

Afterthought.
My current understanding is that about $167 billion will be sent out in rebate checks, 0.7% is $1.2 billion, probably roughly equal to the amount that will have been spent on the campaigns by the time the rebate checks have all been dispersed. Mike was right, "there are no such things as coincidences".

Editor's Note: -- EGR is right there with you, Carl. Look this week for the launching of our Give It For Good Campaign ... a movement to take your economic stimulus check and choose compassion over consumption. There are different levels of commitment so everyone can participate -- even if you really need the check to put food on your table. Give It For Good is still gearing up, but you can see the "work in progress" home page and even take the Give It For Good pledge before the official launch date of April 2.

Choose compassion over consumption. Take your stimulus check and Give It For Good.

Carl Hooker is an economist employed in an academic healthcare system. He is an EGR diocese coordinator in the Diocese of Missouri and currently studies in the diocesan school for ministry.