Transactions

Transactions

We are currently in the process of refinancing our mortgage and found out that the previous title company didn’t do their job. Our belief of course was that an agreement was made and expectations were set and those expectations were supposed to be carried out in exchange for payment, a transaction. That didn’t happen. The transaction failed.

Our society is based on transactions. Whether involving money or not, we live in a constant state of give and take, expected input and output, and predictable responses to any given situation. All human relationships are like this it seems, even when it appears that nothing is being gained or given in an interaction, when one looks deeper there is always some sort of transaction.

I’ve thought a lot about transactions this week and I think one of the big problems with religion has been people placing the human practice of transactions onto the Divine. The whole simplistic notion that God expects certain “goodness” for admission to heaven and any deviation could land you in hell has probably driven more people from church than anyone could count. My guess is that people on some intuitive level know the Divine does not work like this. And if God is indeed a scorekeeper than quite frankly to hell with it! I wonder if organized religions’ insistence on transactional relationships with God has contributed to the “spiritual not religious” movement. Spirituality leans toward transcendent versus transactional and the appeal is clear.

However, it has been my understanding that the Divine does rely on transactions but not the kind that insists you circumcise all the males in your family. Rather, my experience has been an exchange of love and grace, or at least I would like to think of it as an exchange. My hope is that God benefits from my love and grace too. Perhaps God could care less what I or any other human does yet is somehow always ready to love with abandon.

Of course I am not sure of anything. I just hope God isn’t a crappy title company.