Is that all there is?

In the morning with the kids we usually read from a devotion book written by a guy from back home. My husband and I often get a chuckle from his familiar midwestern and ethnic perspective. Allow me to share a portion of that to make a point about my shopping trip yesterday.

He writes:

People think the Great Plains, where I live, are flat, but they aren 't. Actually, we've got rolling hills - lots of them, enough so that the quiet quilt of land undulates like the sea. In fact, the first white folks here thougfht of the prairies as an ocean of grass.

When they came, there were no trees. The highest point on the landscape, almost inevitably, became their churches. Seen from a distance, a tall church in the middle of a huddle of buildings would have looked as if the entire town were pointing to God. I like that.

Then along came business. Soon enough, the tallest buildings weren't churches but grain silos, big and usually white. They towered over the churches. In a way, you might say that what the people aimed at, or so it looked, was storing up grain. Business may have become the strongest institution of society.

Today however, the highest features on the horizon are communication towers. It's as if business isn't the heart of things anymore; media is.

He went on to talk about media, marketing and what captures our heart's desire.

This was perfectly played out for me yesterday when I dropped into an electronics store for a small part and realized I should be thinking ahead to Christmas and gift buying. Like any mom my motiviation is to find something that will delight my son or daughter and let them know how much they mean to me.

So I'm looking at all great new gadgets on the shelf and I realize that all the hype over these products centers around downloading songs, internet broadcasts, sports channels, movies and on and on. And I wonder - why in the world would I want to pay all this money to just alienate them further from real human to human interaction with the people who love them. I mean, really, is that all there is?

Wouldn't a new set of Rook cards really go much further in enriching the parent child relationship? No, you say, that's not gonna rack up points with them when their friends ask what they got for Christmas. Alas, I'm doomed to buy an i-present! Well, that just gets a big Bah humbug from me.

To top it off, it took me another 24 hours to catch up to this cultural phenomenon: As I walked out the door I noticed several young people with sleeping bags and grocery sacks piled up around them under the cover of the building. I'm thinking, my, I didn't realize this town had such a homeless problem. Then later on the other side of town, I see more young people, sleeping bags, even a lounge chair near the store entrance and you could tell they had spent the night. I'm wondering if it's time to get down to that soup kitchen and roll up our sleeves to help this epidemic of poor people.

Finally, today on the news I GET IT. The latest release of a very popular and limited (of course) electronic game goes on sale today. Some crazy young man paid his friend $200 to spend the night for him and hold his place in line. And another on the news actually broke into a fist fight and the police were called in - all over who could be the first one into the store. Homeless, indeed!!

Bah Bah Humbug - I need serious help with my Christmas spirit here.