Business Benefits Accrued from Life in the Bush

Sometimes, we encounter an absolute culture block about our life in Alaska.  Usually it is because the person perceives ours as a life of such privation, analogous to a New Yorker who can’t imagine living in New Jersey, or a couple with children who can’t imagine a home without them.  Another culture block is from those who can’t envision working remotely.  However, as more and more people do the latter (I read that 1/3 of all IT professionals work remotely),  we encounter less resistance from workers than from retirees whose life experience required a commute to an office in order to be paid.

This blog entry describes time management/business benefits we gained from living in the Alaska bush that we never expected, largely from something very simple: intentionality.  Another entry describes non business gains (physical, psychological, and marital).

Money and Conflict: Spiritual Challenges and Gifts

One of my big pet peeves about churches is that the only time they seem to talk about money is when they want some!  It’s not that I begrudge their need.  Any organization that occupies a building has utility bills, insurance, maintenance.  Anyone who values that organization and its facility should contribute to those payments.

No, what bothers me is something else.   If Churches are supposed to help us wrestle with personal and social demons and sort out ethical dilemmas and inspire us to do good in the world, and if, surely, a central figures in many of these human dramas is the role of money – sometimes as the good guy and sometimes as the bad guy, then money seems a very worthy topic on a Sunday morning - not to ask for it  -but to help the congregants deal with it!  And yet, in the churches I have attended, I don’t believe I have ever heard such a sermon.  Have you? 

Instead, many religions proclaim negative images of money:  Buddha gave up princely wealth,  Gandhi gave up his job as an attorney.  Jesus has mixed messages about money.  So I endeavored to make something up!


I started with some research, as I always do.  I discovered that a number of churches and religious leaders do talk about money, and interestingly some of these are large and growing congregations, like Lakewood and the Unity congregation in Houston.  These are described by some people as “churches of abundance” and “ministries of prosperity.”  I’m sure I’m simplifying their messages, but they seem to be that God wants you to have a life of abundance, which includes financial prosperity.   Norman Vincent Peal wrote: Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system.”

Now I don’t feel particularly comfortable with these points of view, so my thoughts turned to what people actually do with their money.  Money doesn’t appear on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs alongside water, food, shelter, safety, but isn’t it really shorthand for all of them?  Money is a way to measure and secure so much water or so much food or shelter.  This transactional role of money is pretty clear cut. 

But it also occurred to me that if the number one reason cited for divorce is not love or sex but money, it must have other roles or meanings, too.  Earning, accumulating, sharing, spending, and saving money are freighted by symbolic meaning for people, and that meaning may differ for a husband and wife or a father and son or employees in different departments of the same business, or for political figures.

So here is my approach:  It seems to me that money means four different things to people, and each one has a spiritual challenge and a spiritual gift.  These four meanings are safety, power, opportunity, and  affection.  It can hold these meanings for different people, or to the same person in different circumstances. I hope that as I speak, you’ll consider what money means to you, and what challenges you face because of that and what gifts you gain.  Maybe you’ll come up with meanings altogether different than the ones I list.   

Because financial arguments often line up with safety on one side and the other three opposite it, I am going to talk longest about saving money as a safety strategy, and then more briefly about the other three.