SACRED MONEY
The author was a small-town kid from Northwestern Ohio, born in Defiance Hospital, Defiance, Ohio, and raised in the town of Sherwood, population 500…27 miles South of Michigan, 15 miles East of Indiana, and 60 miles West of Toledo. Pursued the opportunity to go to Defiance High School…class size went from 13 to 130; and from there it was off to the United States Military Academy, eight years in the Army, including two years in Vietnam during the War, success in corporate America, five degrees, husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and enjoying retirement…golf, piano, reading, family, and writing, and grateful for every moment above ground on the right side of the grass. For a perfectionist, lots of good %&*$ to get stuff right in this is world. A corporate America, boss recommended, self-awareness process has continued for 50+ years and $85,000. Yet, still depressed. Simply absent deep, inner, Little John work.
Every day it is flabbergasting, and a catalyst for stress, depression, chaos, and A-fib. Only have become interested in politics for the last eight years; however, frequently have noted the drastic changes and transitions between growing up in that small town in 1940-1954 versus today’s global world, internet, cell phones, capitalism, and chaos.…simply changes from that early years focus on family and community to the military, corporations, “gangs,” as Dr. David C. Korten (When Corporations Rule the World) calls them, literally ruling the world to pursue, at all costs, sacred money and markets. Life as a kid was quite basic and simple: great brother, parents, grandparents, and cousins; safe home, love, basic needs, lots of play, work in the family owed hardware store, close friends, church on Sunday, and school.
However, depression has become the name of the game for a few years. I lay awake last evening wrestling with chaos…and thanks to the self-awareness work and a patient wife, Cindy, have a feeling a needed family and community niche has surfaced…the feeling is I need to kiss the sacred money and markets good-bye and evolve to higher ground. Let’s peek at the night of CHAOS…trying to put the pieces of the depression puzzle together…
Cindy and I had recently completed six months of energy psychology “digging deep” and relationship work, coupled with reading several energy psychology books; reading Dr. Rosenberg’s Speak Peace in a World of Conflict, Nancy Pelosi’s The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House, Dr. Korten’s When Corporations Rule the World, and Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation; wrestling with and helping with some family issues…transgender granddaughter, ASU student grandson, and a trip to Mexico with family; issues with new, progressive, tri-focal glasses; visit of granddaughter from Pennsylvania; an introduction to TED suggested by son Doug’s girlfriend, Amber; and had recently finished for son Doug Jeffery Mason’s Dad I Want to Hear Your Story: A Father’s Guided Journal to Share His Life & Love.
Sounds like a need to transcend and include others and “I messages,” as daughter Chris coaches. To handle this crisis Dr. Korten offers, “Cowboys in a Spaceship (42)…we must come to terms with a basic reality: we have passed over the historic threshold from an open frontier to a spaceship world…” (50)
While climbing out of bed this AM noted A-fib…tightness in the throat, upper back, and nape of the neck…and a need for meditation, Heart Mind Entrainment Music, and a chat with dear Cindy to sort the wheat from the chaff and open a new vision for a niche in today’s world…being grateful for a move to higher ground absent depression…ups and downs OK, depression not OK. Here we are…with Dr. Korten as mentor from a distance and with admiration…help folks move away from sacred money and marketing to family and community: book, !Good Parents! (vision complete, writing in process, target for Berret-Koehler Publishers, www.bkconnection.com); weekly BLOGs on web site www.johnedwindevore.com (1st BLOG 8-18-24); possible video with TED; local presentations as invited and offered; appropriate, invited, Speak Peace conversations (observations, feelings, needs, and requests) five days a week at LA Fitness; check out the New Economy Working Group, co-founded by Dr. Korten; practice Speak Peace conversations with Cindy; help transgender granddaughter, Ivy, and grandson, Haley, ASU student; and enjoy life, the new niche, and have fun with the family in Mexico.
