If we break life down into its component parts, what are the essentials? Food, shelter, clothing, warmth, keeping clean? These are outward things and in order to provide these we need some kind of income source. When these essentials are in place, what then? We spend so many hours a week generating the necessay cash to keep ourselves afloat. That is a necessary evil. What is an unneccessary evil is the way that the whole of our life and energy becomes tied up with accumulation and things. Everything is downgraded and becomes a commodity.
Two other essentials in life are human contact and spiritual food. Some people do not have deep relationships with others and their spirituality seems to be reduced to opinions and a set of rules. Friendships simply for the joy they bring seem to carry little value to such folk, or perhaps they have a massive void inside which they are unable to articulate, indeed they may not even know it exists.
Many years ago I remember being in a meeting and Noel was speaking about a certain kind of person he said something like this "You know the kind of person I mean, they have never looked up into the night sky and wondered"
I believe everything is about relationships with God and with our fellow humans. In the midst of stress, suffering and tragedy, hard work, pleasure, war and peace it is relationships that provide meaning.
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