I'm seeing calls for creative thinking about our world. Popular Sci Fi writer Ursula Le Guin is asking other authors to imagine alternatives to capitalism that might work.

I think we are so deeply immersed in this way of living and thinking that it is next to impossible to imagine a different way. I recall asking a group of our students once to imagine a different way of making a car than by an assembly line. They couldn't do it. They could not even conceive of a time when things weren't made piece-meal, in a factory, in bulk, for mass production and consumption. The very notion that a thing could be made whole, by one expertly skilled person, as a unique thing, that would last possibly even for a lifetime, was utterly foreign.

This is not terribly surprising, as the idea of our current society is reinforced by all the power of consumerism and marketing, which reaches ably into our homes, our schools, our churches. It is almost the perfect storm of mass persuasion, and thus, control. Thomas Merton, writing in the 60's, said that in a society "organised for profit and for marketing...there's no real freedom. You're free to choose gimmicks, your brand of TV, your make of new car. But you're not free not to have a car."

Living alternatively is exhausting, because it requires constant vigilance against the fully deployed forces of the World.

Community is essential in this venture. Having relationships that are patterned not on commercial value but on the recognition of human dignity is one important weapon in our arsenal.

Another weapon is prayer. Abba Agathon said that prayer is "warfare to the last breath." I agree. Prayer is a totally non-commercial pursuit that is - or at least can be - outside the control of the powers around us. Prayer is stillness and silence and Other-directedness in a world of movement and noise and self-centeredness.

So before we start imaging new ways of living, maybe we ought to grab hold of an old practice of being, and let the depth of immersion into the life of God be the source of any creativity.