{"id":25188,"date":"2026-03-19T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/messyjesusbusiness.com\/?p=25188"},"modified":"2026-05-05T09:22:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:22:52","slug":"alternative-economics-take-some-leave-some","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/2026\/03\/19\/alternative-economics-take-some-leave-some\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternative Economics: Take Some, Leave Some"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"
Photo by Naveen Ketterer<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cPeople always treatin\u2019 me like a trash can.\u201d This was a common chorus of a friend of mine, Crete, before his death a couple years ago. His life told the story of a kingdom of God that upended the dominant logic of the American dream \u2013 dressed in all its individualism and fragmentation, the stingy (and often violent) quest for the acquisition of wealth, and an elevation of civility that so often descends into pretense under layers of politeness. He lived quite a life here in Durham, NC, including decades sleeping wherever he could find a spot on local streets, public benches, or couches. Poverty marked his life, both the kind that was unjustly forced on him and the kind of his own choosing that opened him to freedom. His life was alarmingly generous, while his pockets remained utterly empty day after day. His life was a sign of God\u2019s self-offering love. Crete was an alternative-economics-in-person.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 2012 in Durham, NC and we had just moved in together to form a Catholic Worker hospitality house<\/a>: a handful of divinity students itching to follow in the footsteps of St. Francis, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, alongside three older guys who had lived on and off the streets of Durham for decades. One of these guys was Crete. We had a little chapel and a little Christ room – yearning to encounter Jesus in worship and welcome. Our lives were ordered around praying the daily office and fellowship with the poor. It was chaotic. It was disorderly. It was personalist communitarianism<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the first times I heard Crete\u2019s chorus was during that first week of living together. After a day of panhandling, Crete came home with a heavy dose of grumbling. \u201cPeople always treatin\u2019 me like a trash can\u2026they don\u2019t know who I am\u2026ain\u2019t no love around here\u2026\u201d While his mouth expressed the frustration of being ignored and overlooked the last many hours, his hands were reaching into his pockets. He cleared it all out \u2013 every penny \u2013 and tossed it all into our small bowl by the front door: \u201ctake some, leave some.\u201d I\u2019d guess there were seven or eight dollar bills and a handful of coins. Crete\u2019s open-handedness wasn\u2019t impacted by the sparse earnings of the day or the callousness of so many that walked right by him without a glance. He gave it all. Like the widow\u2019s gift in the gospels, it was an unrestrained offering \u2013 everything is God\u2019s, after all. My own clenched-fistedness in stark relief, I examined the sparse spare change I had tossed in the bowl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A personalist
is a go-giver,
not a go-getter.
He tries to give what he has,
and does not
try to get
what the other fellow has.
He tries to be good
by doing good
to the other fellow.
He is also altro-centered,
not self-centered.
He has a social doctrine
of the common good.\u00a0
-Peter Maurin, in his Easy Essays<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Friendship with Crete has shown me a glimpse of the underbelly of our culture of acquisition and excess, bringing me face to face with the effects of what Pope Francis calls throwaway culture in Laudato Si<\/em><\/a> – the logic that everything can be discarded, we can always procure something better, and some lives matter more than others. The poor (which includes our common home \u2013 the Earth) disproportionately suffer from this throwaway culture that \u201cquickly reduces things to rubbish.\u201d Any embodied alternative economics has to reckon with this pervasive logic and give witness to a renewed vision of care, encounter, and communion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crete\u2019s radical witness has provoked our family to live an alternative economics rooted in the gospel, meager as our ordinary, small steps are. Lifted from our family\u2019s financial rule of life, here are a few of our guiding principles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n