Rage, information, a quiet mind, and the internet

 This is good advice.

For myself, what I do on the internet is not monetised. I don't want ads on this blog, and I only put videos on Youtube for specific access purposes — like when I uploaded readings of my book The Clear Light of Day, because it's now out of print, or like when we were running The Campfire Church on Facebook during Covid and I put the thinkabouts we shared up there. 

So I just have this blog and my Youtube channel to connect with you, as a way to find one another.

I believe in the power of the hidden life, and in grace/gift economy — having as little as possible to do with the whole world of money is attractive to me. 

Sometimes money is necessary. In my life it works like this: I write stories, to share what I believe and what I have learned, and hopefully to make the world a better place — my stories are my humble offering, my way of contributing to the human community for healing and hope and kindness. In order to get them into someone else's hands, to share them, they have to be made available, printed and shipped. I do that at a modest price and all the ones I have published are also on Kindle Unlimited as a way for readers to keep their costs down. That's the part of my life intersecting with money, and I use what I earn to buy wholesome food and natural medicines and second-hand clothing on eBay, and to pay my utilities bills and feed our cat that came to us when he was a stray, and help the members of my family who don't have enough. 

What I earn doesn't stretch to more than that. There are no cruises or restaurant meals or trips to the London theatres, no subscriptions or spa treatments or anything extra like that. I don't miss those things, because I always wanted to live simply. I am not a monastic, but I always wanted to live like a hermit halfway up a mountain, and pretty much I do. 

The only thing I don't have, and I wish I did, is more interaction with other people. I find that nowadays people usually want you to pay for everything. I like going to church, and the way to interact with people there is to attend whatever's happening — but it's always monetised. If the church runs a quiz, it'll be a fund-raiser, so you have to buy a ticket and then when you get there they want you to buy a raffle ticket as well. It didn't cost anything — the people who made the quiz are part of the church, and the prizes for the raffle are given — but it's to raise funds. As our priest said to us in the notices when he announced the quiz, "It costs money to run a church, you know."

But actually, I don't think it does. All it takes to be church is people and God. I would love to be part of a church that had no paid clergy and where the musicians were not paid, just part of the church, and we either met in someone's house or only paid to cover the rent of a public space for the time we used it. I think it would be very peaceful and pleasing to have a simple church. I would love to sell our house and instead buy a small country chapel that was for sale, and live in the back room but keep the main space for worship, so there was a big enough place for meeting but no rent and no paid clergy. I don't think that's likely to happen because my husband would be horrified by the idea. I think. I should ask him. And our house is very cheap, I don't think it would sell for enough money to buy a chapel, even a small one — but I'd like it to be true that it doesn't cost money to run a church. To do church like the Amish, where it's about a whole life, a whole community, all of every day; that's my idea of church.

I see my thoughts have moved on a bit from the video I originally wanted to show you, but it's all connected. I want it to be that our interactions with one another — yours and mine, everybody's — serve the common good, not secretly being a predator or a parasite taking advantage of other people. I don't want to be a number and a source of funds and food for an algorithm; I just want to be humanly free, faithful to God and part of what Earth is, and also a friend. I want to teach what I have learned and live in peace, and improve whatever comes into my hands.