OPENNESS

This is the one thing we desperately need the most, and the one thing we most resist. We need support. Some things in life are just too hard to do on your own. We need people to come along side of us and encourage us. Whether you are dieting, or exercising, or trying to change a bad habit in your life—we all need people in our lives to support us, encourage us, and to ask us some hard questions about whether we are really following through on our commitment to change. This is going to be hard when it comes to our finances.

• 82% of us have never discussed our income with another soul.

• 89% of us have never discussed our family budget with another person.

• 92% have never discussed what we have given to the church.

Get this: The people who are least likely in this country to talk about their personal financial matters are Christians.

People who rarely go to church—1 out of 4 of them admit that they have talked to their friends about how much money they make. Do you know how many Christians have done that? 1 out of every 8

Christians don’t talk about this. In fact, we don’t talk about a lot of stuff that really matters in our day to day lives: Sex, money, parenting, jobs. Let’s pop the top off our dirty little secrets and start holding each other accountable. Let’s start encouraging and edifying one another; life and money troubles are just too hard to go at it alone.

It is important in the spiritual life to keep an open mind, open to ideas, experiences, people, the world, and the Sacred. Openness is an ability to go with the flow, as Taoism puts it, without expecting predetermined outcomes. It means being receptive to new possibilities, without prejudging them. It is an ability to make yourself available to out-of-the-ordinary opportunities. Indeed, openness to the unknown, the exotic, and the bizarre is usually seen as the mark of a free spirit.

How available are you to others? How interested are you in people, especially those quite different from you? How flexible are you? Do you usually think you already know how things are going to come out? Are you willing to try something new? These are the questions to ask to assess your openness and to determine the benefits you might derive from this practice