When I left the ministry in 2010, I knew I had some very hard work in store for me.
And that had to do with my attitude about money.
I recognized that I had very unhealthy, negative, and destructive thoughts and feelings about money, and that if I didn’t get healing from these, that I would continue to struggle and inflict suffering on myself and my family for years to come.
We were so bad financially when I left the ministry that we had to file for bankruptcy from years in the ministry with a bad attitude about money.
It was my fault. And I knew it.
So I started reading books, going to workshops, attending seminars, hiring coaches, and getting counselling.
Slowly, over the years, I eventually got to the place where I was relatively healed… almost. I still have a ways to go.
But a part of my spiritual journey in this area was I wrote a book about it, Money is Spiritual. In this book, I kind of exorcised my own demons.
It’s interesting, because some of the people I looked up to in their attitudes about money have mentioned the book. I appreciate that.
The title of the book means what it says. Money is spiritual. Because, in my opinion, either everything is or everything isn’t.
Dividing the world into sacred and secular, righteous and sinful, holy and unholy, is false. Like I wrote in my previous letter, the separateness is an illusion.
So, Nouwen was right! If I feel yucky around money, it’s because something is wrong. Something is wrong with my attitude.
Yes, critiquing consumerism and capitalism and cash and credit and all that stuff is a legitimate and prophetic enterprise. I’m talking about just operating in this world as we must.
And for me, all the healing work I put into my attitudes about money just got me out of the pit and up to ground zero so that I could function at what I would call a fairly normal, healthy way around money.
For some, deconstruction might mean redefining their attitudes about… I don’t know… politics, sex and gender, religion, sex, and all that.
For me, one of the main ones was money.
Couple my religious toxicity related to money with my artist mentality and, yikes, it was a tough one.
But I did it. I healed myself.
The division between sacred and secular when it comes to money vanished.
And this helped me learn how to live as an artist, a writer, an online community facilitator, and a speaker.
Do you struggle with a troublesome attitude about money?
