The Price Of A Sparrow

Sometimes I really love McDonald's! - and yes, yes I know it's bad for me and I'll have a coronary by the age of thirty, but let's leave that aside, shall we?

Anyway, it was a dark and rainy and cold evening and my brain was hurting from looking at microfiche all afternoon. When I got to the train station, I had nine minutes to catch my train. In that time, I went all the way to the other end of the station, went through the Golden Arches, got dinner, and went back to the train with four minutes to spare. Awesome! Now I'll get home an hour earlier and have more time to waste on addictive Facebook games (you know who you are).

I sometimes wonder, though, if McDonald's and its various spin-offs are hurting my soul. I mean, doesn't it seem like, more and more, we're cut off from the process and only see the final product? I'm not advocating that we rise up and overthrow our capitalist overlords, comrades, but isn't it a bit sad to be cut off from the holistic experience of the entirety of a thing only to know a part of it? I mean, in a way it's backwards from what Marx was on about, because we do see the end, but it's just as fragmentary, just as divorced and segmented.

I sometimes wonder if maybe we want things a little too quickly, and that we take for granted all the things that have to go on in the background. Take my cheeseburger, for example. Somewhere out there, a cow died. And someone had to invent the process for making processed cheese. Not to mention the pickle. Also cooking the think and putting on the ketchup. Someday, they tell us, one too many cows will fart in one two many fields, and the resulting greenhouse gases will tip the global warming process past the point of no return, and all our ecosystems will collapse. While I think we all have the right to eat delicious, nutritious cows, I think maybe we shouldn't take it for granted, that there's something behind a burger that takes five minutes to make and even less to eat.

We want things a little too quickly, a little too glibly. You get mad when the line is too long, when things don't happen instantly, when things just don't seem to be getting done the way they should be (you know: when people just aren't reading your mind, goddamit!). Maybe all this emphasis on fastness is hurting us - or me - in ways I can't even begin to imagine. Maybe we aren't taking the time that we should.

Or maybe I'm just pissy because I haven't written in this blog for so long and because it rained.

So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. (Mt 10:26-31 NIV)

I suppose what this means is that to proclaim the Gospel means loving and praising God with your whole life, and not forgetting that creation is His even though you get to use it. So maybe don't rush things so much, or feel like it all revolves around you, or forget all that goes into it and that it all has a purpose. [and now I win the award for Most Sloppy Biblical Exegesis EVER!!]

But everyone's got to eat. And sometimes I really love McDonald's.