Junkyard Wisdom: Resisting the Whisper of Wealth in a World of Broken Parts
“I really love Roy. And I also really love my four dogs.”
There you have it. The essentials of Junkyard Wisdom reviewed.
Now I wouldn’t want to pretend that it has been easy to love. To love Roy, that is. The dogs have been a breeze in comparison. To get to the heart of the matter, it’s about, well, the Heart. And that can be a bloody struggle. I think if Mother Theresa were reviewing Junkyard Wisdom, hers would have been about the same length of mine, but perhaps a bit more eloquent: “It’s not about how much we give. It’s about how much heart we put into the giving.”
Roy, a very wealthy young man, asks: Is it OK to be wealthy? Or should I be poor? Is it OK to own a Spitfire? Or should I own nothing? Should I stay in the world’s top 10 hotels? Should I live in a shack? Blah blah blah blah. Oh, and, blah blah blahdiddy blah.
“Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk; Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk. Might like to eat caviar, might like to eat bread. You may be sleeping on the floor, or sleeping in a king-sized bed. But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody.” OK, so Bob Dylan’s review is a lot wordier than mine but then he won a Nobel prize and not me. And Theresa is officially a Saint.
Book of the month
Roy’s a pretty tough boy, and that could be because of his junkyard training. Which he talks about in the book. He can dish it out. He once told Mayor Bradley of Los Angeles in a public meeting that his head was stuck too far up the other end of his digestive track. Well, he used different words, but you get the gist of it. He’s said a lot of naughtier things but I won’t share them because I don’t want to distract from the potential sales of his book because everyone who is reading my review should buy a copy. And read it.
You see, what Roy has done with his book is to invite us to peek in on the journey of his heart. Having known Roy for too many decades, I would say his softer side is showing through. And it’s a lovely sight. He has done us the honour of walking us through the terrain of wealth’s isolation from the world’s ills, through the prestige and power of basically having it all, to struggling with what it actually means to follow Jesus, honestly, and be wealthy at the same time. Now, let’s get something straight: Jesus is massively wealthy. Hell, he owns the earth, and everything in it, and, apparently, a few billion solar systems in other universes as well. So, WWJD if he were a multi-millionaire? Would he give it all away? Well it does not look like that would be his choice. Instead, he would give up his life.
Now there’s the rub.
Giving away money is a particularly “interesting” option for the wealthy. But giving away our lives? It is the choke in the throat option for everybody. It’s the leveler of what it means to follow Jesus.
Roy asks a lot of questions about wealth in Junkyard Wisdom because has been able to make a boat load of money (while people like me still cannot figure out which end of the card goes into an ATM machine. Much less is there anything in that machine?) And Roy uses the Bible to claim that wealth development is a calling of God (the parable of the faithful servants). And he uses the Bible to claim that only Jesus can love the world because we are told “Do not love the world.” When I was Roy’s Resident Assistant at Westmont College, I KNEW he shouldn’t have skipped those Bible courses. Because now he is making silly statements about the Bible. No Roy, the parable was about being faithful to the One who gifts ALL of us with certain abilities. It’s a parable for every follower, no matter if we have one dime or a billion. And Do Not Love The World? It’s a call to not love the ways of this world that draw us away from the heart of Jesus. But even with your Lite Bible Degree you now sit on the Board of Trustees of Westmont College and I don’t even get mail for the school anymore. So you did something right.
Did I say Roy can dish it out? He can also take it on the chin. That’s one of the many gifts that he developed over time. He says as much in the book. He’s become a listener, he’s entered communal approaches to poverty alleviation, he’s put a corkscrew through his tongue at times when he was able to rather put a corkscrew through someone’s heart. And I admire that about Roy, because a really large number of people I know who are super wealthy don’t have ears. Rather, they have three mouths. We have an idiom in Afrikaans, which translated basically goes: “Whatever fills the heart, overflows out the mouth.” What that means is, if you really want to know what’s in Donald Trump’s heart regarding women, Mexicans and the disabled, just listen to what he consistently says. Your heart cannot disguise itself for too long.
Roy takes us through a journey of how he intentionally put his heart at risk. How we travelled into places of extreme poverty in Central America, Africa and Asia in order to learn, in order to ensure he would not be isolated from a universe that cannot force its way into his world. Why bother? Well, if you have a good heart, you bother. Roy has a good heart.
You see, whatever we wish to put into our hearts is the defining matter.
Ultimately, we are all the same. Money or not, power or not, prestige or not, mansion or not. We all have heart. Equally so. OK then, what do we do with that heart? Do we nurture it, invite it toward compassion, invite it to expand to ensure an abiding love for those Jesus called the Least of These? Do we take risks that move us away from the normal, the safe, the acceptable, the mundane, from isolation and insulation?
There’s no room for judgment in this heart work. There’s only an invitation to grow the heart. What an amazingly wonderful possibility for life. And in that journey we experience the mystery, the magic of Love, extending itself through shanty towns, war zones, board rooms, bedrooms, brothels, banks and beyond. Nothing is more fundamental than the heart. Nothing is more demanding, nothing is more common to all of God’s Children. Which is all of us.
So, yes, I really love Roy and I really love my four dogs. And I hope I love the tree frog, the ancient trees of the rainforest, the refugee, the alien and stranger, the widow, the orphan the elephant and the cockroach. Seriously. How big is my heart? Thanks Roy for showing me yours. I might reciprocate and let you have a peek at mine
Contact: Gordon has just launched a new rag called this infinite moment. If you want to connect with him, pop a note to him atgordon@live.co.za
