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COYOTE ARCHIVE
Dick Prosapio aka, Coyote is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, ceremonialist, psycho-
therapist (ret.), author, leader of men's experiential workshops, & Co-founder of The Foundation for Common Sense. He lives with his wife and daughter in Stanley, NM
For more info about Dick Prosapio, visit his web-site:
Spirit/ Earth Path
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by
Dick Prosapio
Here we are, living in the richest nation the world has ever seen where holiday car commercials feature somebody getting a $40,000 SUV as a present and Christmas is most often portrayed on TV as taking place in some really BIG house in a very up-scale suburb somewhere (at least not everybody is white in these mansions any more) and everyone is getting some high tech somethingactually usually more than one. And yet, all the heart tugger stories we see about now concern themselves with very poor people getting some (very) little something, the moral of the tale being that the little things, the gifts of love, manifest the real Spirit of Christmas, with or without the historical religious roots.
Meanwhile, in real life, thousands of men, women and children, who are not the subjects of these sugarplum tales, are living on our streets, under bridges, in cardboard boxes, in shelters (if they're lucky) 365 days a year, and some of our country's corporate execs are carting off millions to their private island universes taken from companies that have gone bankrupt leaving workers and investors high and very dry..and these guys were fired! There's a real perversity about all of this.
Once a year we elevate the poor to heroic status by making a few of them the center pieces of seasonal morality plays. "There now." we seem to be saying, "It's all been taken care of by the Spirit of Good Will to All. Onward to the next holiday; Quick!"
Here's the thing about a lot of street people; some are out there simply because even two minimum wage jobs can't pay for an apartment for one let alone a family. Some have been "downsized" out of those very corporations the execs are fleeing from and simply can't find work. Some are alcoholics, some are strung out on other drugs. Some are mentally ill. Some are just out of luck. And every one of them, every man, woman, child one of them deserves better than the hard time they are getting handed by this society. We are operating as though this is the 1930's and times are hard. Ridiculous!
Right about now we begin to get the, "Please-help-this-needy-family-at-Christmas" letters. "$1.84 can provide a complete Christmas dinner." "$9.20 helps 5 people." it says on one letter I got. This is really pathetic. Once a year we're going to feed one or two individuals or maybe a family, and now we're off the hook and we can get about the business of shopping?
Recently a local mobile home business gave a family that had lost everything when their home burned down, a nice used mobile home. Talk about heart! And people from all around the area donated clothing, toys, furniture,.whatever this family needed, folks rallied to get for them. It was a wonderful thing to see and read about. But the problem is, that's just one family. And they only got that stuff because they were in the news. And the reason that they made the news was because this mother has eight kids and they lost everything. If she'd had just one or two kids, the story wouldn't have run. These days the losses have to be really big to get attention. Nobody "rallies" for any less.
Things really started to go down hill for the poor in this country when the fiscal conservatives got control. They tapped into that selfish, fearful streak in many of us that responded to the idea that the "dole", the handout, was a bad thing. "It contributes to the problem and doesn't solve anything." And, "It makes people dependent and lazy." they claimed, and they cited studies by their favorite social theorists to support those ideas.
What they knew was that we who were better off really wanted to forget about the inconvenience posed by the existence of the poor in our country and, with a little hocus pocus about "private charities" and fantasies about re-education "programs" taking care of the problem of conscience, we could easily be convinced to just ignore it. Never mind that, "brother's keeper" business. "They got themselves into the mess they're in and they can sure as hell get themselves out." they trumpeted. "What we need is tax relief for the middle class. That's where the problems (and the votes) are." they shouted.and still do.
And they won. Their point of view is what most people voted for.so they won. And all the poor lost.
No such hard line, boot strap philosophy for the corporate down and outers though. They get a few "tough" questions by a Congressional Committee and, "On your way you blackguard.and take your filthy millions with you." Yeah, that'll show 'em that we can be hard on shirkers.
Walt Whitman once said, "I say we had best look our times and our lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at presentwe live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout..the depravity of the business classes of our county is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater.money making is our magician's serpent, remaining today sole master of the field." He wrote that in about 1884. One hundred and eighteen years later would Whitman write any other way about today?
It's said every year at this time, over and over again, that we wish the spirit of giving that comes over us all at Christmas would last all year long. But it doesn't. It doesn't last long enough to effect the strangle hold that greed has on our tight wad policies toward the less fortunate and our grand give-aways to corporations. Fact is, it doesn't last much longer than it takes to get rid of the wrapping paper from the new DVD player opened on Christmas day.
My family and I are going to have a good Christmas this year. We have some pain over the loss of a wayward daughter, but we are healthy, we are making out OK financially.and we love one another.and we like Christmas. Mostly. And there's not a lot I, or we, can do about the poor and homeless on our own. Of course I'll send the letter writers what I can, probably ten bucks to help those five people, and whatever else we can spare here and there. Every Christmas we drop bundles of clothes and toys off at one shelter or another. I know it's too little for so many.
I pray everyday, and vote any time I can, for a change in the direction for our country. I know that Americans are a generous people by and large, but we have allowed, perhaps out of indifference or intellectual laziness, those who appeal to our dark fears and insecurities, to gain control of high public office from where they continue to sell the lie that we cannot afford to care. The fact is, we could create a more equitable society.one that really would care for its sick, its elderly, its poor, its lost souls not just once a year, but ALL year, every year. We would have to pay for it to be sure, but it's not as if we can't afford it. After all, in our refusal to see the damage our neglect is creating all around us, we are paying inside ourselves. For every life we are allowing to be lost to despair and hopelessness we become more hardened, more cynical, more desperate to be bought off by the merchants of see-no-evil. As a society all we wind up with is a prettily wrapped, emptiness.
Nothing is going to change in us, or for us, until a Merry Christmas is made real for everybody, not just those who can afford to be overly generous.to each other.
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