Fame and Fortune

No one in his or her right mind seeks fame these days. It is an extremely polar­ized world of social and polit­i­cal mass ego­cen­trism. The world is obsessed with the illu­sion of being “right” in areas that are pri­mar­ily mat­ters of sub­jec­tive pref­er­ence. Worse yet, all sides involved are shame-based (the cen­tral spir­i­tual prob­lem since Adam and Eve). To be noticed on a national level, for what­ever rea­son, auto­mat­i­cally means that you will step into the cur­rent dichoto­mous buzz saw. You will be hated by as many or more than admired.

Today, few things are truly a mat­ter of rea­son and rev­e­la­tion, they are mostly a mat­ter of which side can use the topic or per­son to out-shame the other into falling into lock­step in their ver­sion of Orwellian double-speak. Are you defined as one of these or one of those? There are only two options you know. No one is allowed to be unique or have an entirely cre­ative view of any­thing. Quick! Make up your mind. Which one are you — Phar­isee of Sad­ducee? You can only be one or the other.

Jesus had a unique take on fame and for­tune. He had both by seek­ing nei­ther. He had every­thing by hav­ing noth­ing and became famous by avoid­ing all of the avenues to fame (the point of his three temp­ta­tions). They tried to peg him as anti-government or anti-traditional reli­gion. In the end, they had to resort to doing what is com­mon today: lying about him and char­ac­ter assassination.

I recently told some­one that I had some­thing more pre­cious than fame or for­tune. I have anonymity. Of the six or so bil­lion peo­ple on the planet, only a rel­a­tive hand­ful rec­og­nize me — even fewer actu­ally know me. Thank God! The trip from pedestal to cross is a short one. Being cheered or booed are pretty much equal in my book. Both responses arise from a herd of unthink­ing peo­ple that have aban­doned their unique inner life rela­tion­ship to God. Instead, they look out­side of them­selves for a hero they can even­tu­ally turn into a scape­goat — for their amusement.

Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are the meek…Blessed are those liv­ing in some small town almost totally ignored. To be close to the earth is to be closer to the One that cre­ated it.