Women, I’m agitated.

A g i t a t e d.

And my bottom line, which I’ll get to, is: It’s really, really, really important that we, as part of our definition of being self-possessed women, have our collective financial acts together.

What happened was this.

For lack of an iPad or magazines, I watched Dr. Phil on the flight down to Vancouver and my stomach has been quietly churning ever since. It featured a young woman, now 23, who had videotaped her father, a Judge, whipping her with a belt under the guise of “discipline” when she had been 16.

This was in 2004.
Not 1955, 1765 or 1800.
2004.
2004.

It was a barbaric, violent act against a woman to begin with, but two further aspects have me nearly choking down vomit.

1. The first was the mom, who later was clearly remorseful, but at the time, do you know what she said to her daughter? What she said was: Lie on your stomach and take it like a grown woman.

WTF?

WTF?

WTF TAKE IT LIKE A GROWN WOMAN? What’s that supposed to mean? What?

2. The second thing that sent me over the edge is that a sizeable portion of the online commenters not only thought it was ok, “kids these days need discipline”, but thought she was in the wrong for posting this and shaming her father. I know, I know, I know that online commenters tend to be the oddballs of society with time on their hands — or so we should hope, anyway, judging by the quality of most online comments. But still!

So in 2004 we have judges who think it’s ok to whip their teenage girls and mothers who think women should lie on their stomachs and take it, and a whole lot of folks who think that it’s justified to use height, weight, strength, belts against 16 year old girls. In North America.

I’m obviously not ok with it, and I’m hoping to hell you’re not ok with it either. Not at all ok with it. I hope society steps up, and with due process, seriously sanctions the father, the judge. I hope society overwhelmingly condemns this act.

But I doubt it will.

I doubt it will, because women are still not equal, or perceived as equal, or perceived as powerful. If we were, would a man dare to treat a woman like that?

Which brings us back to us women and money.

Being organized with your money isn’t about that great holiday. It’s not about feeling good about yourself. It’s sure not about buying Fluevogs (which is not to say I don’t!)

BEING ORGANIZED WITH MONEY IS ABOUT POWER, AND DON’T ANY OF US FORGET IT.

Our place in the world – such as it is, and after engaging in this episode I’m wondering if we’ve come that far after all – has been, and will be, hard-won. It’s been won by women courageously facing scorn and criticism and derision (not unlike that heaped on #occupy folks) who persevered in insisting women should vote, even at the cost of being brutalized in jail. It’s been won by women who wore themselves out being both moms and career women. It’s been won by women who endured harassment and quietly continued to do good work despite a hostile environment.

We’ve come this far. Let’s not fuck it up by complacency! And since money is power (witness who drives public policy), all I can say is that we women need to get very serious about our money, get serious about being savvy, and get serious about using our money to shape our society. Until we do, it will still be ok to whip young, vulnerable girls with impunity.

Forgive me in advance for how uncharacteristically direct I’m about to be below. Here goes:

1. If you’re not spending time to effectively manage your day-to-day money, your priorities are out of whack, and you’ll soon be out of the game if you’re not already.

2. If you think money is not important, or something you are too good for, you are kidding yourself. Money is a powerful energy and if you’re not in control of it, it’s probably in control of you.

3. If you think managing your money is about “creating the life you want”, your vision is too small.

Last, a confession. I’ve grown complacent myself. Over the past couple years, having significantly more than enough for my needs, I’ve been lax on my active management. Oh, I’ve set up auto-donations to causes, I seek out fair-trade/organic, a blend of truly worthy and feel-good, but I’ve lost sight of the Mammon aspect – that money is power. And I can wield it. And I’d damn well better.

And I will. Over the coming weeks, I’ll post (amongst others) what I am personally doing to make my own finances even more robust and, God willing, effect social change.

Photo Credit: European Parliament

Just sayin’.

This money coach loves these guys. And you will too. Not to mention you’ll love being a Saver.

I just put over 0.5 tonnes of pollution ( CO2) into the air we all share by flying from Yellowknife to Vancouver.

Until this morning, I forgot to deal with it!  Sorry, Planet and fellow humans!

One solution would be to stay put, but I don’t have it in me to pull that one off.

There is something I can do though, and so can everybody:  factor the price of cleaning that pollution up (why wouldn’t I?) into my trip costs.  How?  By purchasing carbon offset credits.  The money we pay goes to things like helping build alternative energy sources so that in time we can wean off of energy that harms the environment.

I just paid $30 to a carbon offset project, which is apparently about what I owed to clean up my part of the pollution.

It’s pretty cool.  The project I supported is in India, near a sugar (cane) farm.  Previously, the discarded canes just got burnt up or left to rot, releasing methane and CO2 into the air.  Now, the discarded canes get used to create energy, and also get converted into fertilizer.  Both of these have created additional business for the farmers, in addition to the environmental benefits.  Check out the vid below.

Would you like to counteract the pollution created by your travel?  (and why wouldn’t you?) It’s really easy. The David Suzuki Foundation and Pembina Institute did the homework for us and recommend which companies to use (see page 10).  I used Less.ca, the top-rated one.  Drop in your starting point and your destination, and it figures out roughly how much pollution your trip generates, and how much it will cost to counteract, then you purchase the credits online.

Photo Credit: Andrew Albuquerque

Gulp.

My hands tremble whenever I shell out over $300 at a time.  Today I swiped out $605.00 to our local sports shop.  If it wasn’t for the fantastic service by Acki, I don’t know that I could have done it.

No more cotton t-shirt, wool cardigan, Roots hoodie and feather vest for this winter runner hopeful!  Now that I know I’ll be in Yellowknife a couple more years+, I took an icy breath and bought the following to handle running in the coming -30C.

• Merino wool sports bra
• Base Layer (merino wool)
• Jacket (fleece lined windbreaker)
• Thermal running tights
• Salomon runners (gortex)

There are two problems though.

1. The jacket doesn’t have an inside pocket.  This means my iPhone (indispensable) will be in an outer pocket which will kill the battery in our -20C not to mention is more vulnerable if I fall.   Any suggestions for me on this?

2. The shoes, alas, I think must be returned.  The heel fits just a bit loosely and they slip up and down ever so slightly.  It’s ok for a brief bit but 30 minutes would turn into a real problem, I’m sure.  Or, when it’s cold, will I welcome the looseness for extra socks?

Photo Credit:  Teo

Word. The particular story and thoughts that follow derive from my faith tradition, ie., Christianity. I’m writing with my fellow Sojourners in mind, primarily. Those of other persuasions may also connect to the broad theme of the post (and I hope you do).

*****

The question was so loaded it was life-threatening and Jesus knew it.

“What do you say, Rabbi?”
“Is it lawful to pay this tax to Caesar?”

The offence of the tribute tax went deeper than just having to cough up money when you were already the oppressed. The currency in which the tax had to be paid inherently served as imperial propaganda before the age of advertising: Its imagery of Caesar made devastatingly clear who had the power and who was the vanquished. It was scorchingly and humiliatingly personal too, an item you held right in the very palm of your hand.

You have the coins and it means you are colluding and integrating with the Empire and the cult of emperor worship. You don’t have coins and you are outside the economic system and you probably don’t survive.

To be asked by the religious leaders “Is it lawful [by God as the Hebrews understood him] to pay the tribute tax?” is damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Answer “yes” and as a Jewish Rabbi you are now colluding with the Romans against God’s people. Answer “no” and the politicos in the crowd who helped frame up the question would legitimize killing you.

You know how Jesus answered the question. He first asked them to produce a coin (think of the implications of that), then asked the counter-question, “Whose image is on this coin?”. If you don’t know the rest of the story, it’s here.

What does this story say to us, two thousand years and a few cultures later?

Our coins, of course, are different. “In God we Trust,” some even read. Nonetheless coins, currency, money, are a construct of the empire (or world, if you prefer) in which we live. This empire does not crucify people or crush dissidents by leaving corpses rotting in our streets as a message to our families and communities or fund circus-spectacles featuring grotesque slaughters of men and beasts. But it is other. It is a construct. Unlike water, air, grain, milk, items all freely given to us as the necessities of life, money is a medium we humans created.

For some time now money hasn’t even been coin per se, nor even a representation of coin, but rather electronic blips and bytes representing ideas so complex and convoluted and separate from pretty much everything we know and understand that, frankly, we’ve pretty much lost track of it. It represents empire.

I argue this then. A healthy (holy?) stance towards money involves an internal distancing from it. I don’t mean negligence. I don’t mean rogue attempts to bypass currency with bits of silver or gold. Like it or not, we are as integrated with our empire as the Jews were in the Roman Empire. But let’s understand that money is no less a thing of “Caesar” now than back then.

Questions.

Are we consorting with the empire?

Photo Credit: HowardLake