Anxieties about money? Let me talk you down.
I just uploaded a short story from Nathaniel Hawthorne for my bedtime, short story podcast. In this podcast I am attempting to address the anxieties that many of us face as we lay down to sleep. Seems like certain anxieties simply wait around for us to get into bed before coming to visit us.
This short story provided an opportune time to address financial anxieties. Here is a transcript of the podcast for my blog readers to enjoy. If you actually want me to read it to you, you can go here. But fair warning – each episode is the equivalent of at least 6mg of melatonin! Listening may make you drowsy. Please do not drive or operate heavy machinery while listening.
Episode 7: The Great Carbunkle.
Welcome my nieces and nephews to another episode of Uncle Scott Reads Classic Short Stories at Bedtime. I hope you are nestled into a comfortable place in your bed, and that, right now, you’re feeling how your body loves being horizontal. You can feel the tiredness leaking from you into your bed and you can sense sleep wanting to come.
Take a moment just to enjoy the quiet, the place of rest and dormancy, where you are closing the chapter on today and you are not yet opening the chapter on tomorrow.
Things left undone are just undone. Things you anticipate, can wait as well.
I’d like to address any financial concerns you may be carrying with you. Things that you need, things that you want. I’m going to invite you to set those things aside, too.
What’s challenging is my friends from well-resourced background and my friends from poorly resourced backgrounds probably need to hear different things about money and finances.
For my friends and nieces and nephews who come from well-resourced backgrounds, you need an invitation to simplicity. There’s a beauty in simplicity; in being satisfied with basic needs and with a few luxury items.
And my friends from poorly resourced backgrounds, you probably need to hear something about sufficiency. Yearning for, pursuing, sufficiency – that your needs are met, along with, perhaps, a few items that delight your heart.
For both poorly resourced nieces and nephews, and well-resourced nieces and nephews, Jesus said something about looking for our daily bread. I think he probably got that from one of the Proverbs that says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches but only my daily bread.”
That’s a challenge. Do you think you’d be able to set aside some of those yearnings that feel beyond basic needs and beyond just a few simple items that delight your heart, and satisfy yourself with sufficiency or simplicity? That’d be a great quest.
The story tonight by Nathaniel Hawthorne called The Great Carbunkle is about a gem that is sought after by many, and yet may not be all that it’s gleaming and calling for those that are seeking it.
So, let’s set aside all those pursuits for possessions or wealth … at least for tonight … and lean into this story from the mid-1800s called The Great Carbuncle by Nathaniel Hawthorne, keeping in mind that it was written in the 1800s. And so, we’ll allow Nathaniel Hawthorne to write during that time, with the blindness’s and imperfections of that era, just as people who read the things that we write today will need to allow us our own blindness’s and imperfections.