Heather King – Loaded: Money and the Spirituality of Enough
Heather King – author of Parched, Redeemed, Stripped, Stumble, Shirt of Flame, and Poor Baby – joins me on The Catholic Foodie Show today to talk about her latest book Loaded: Money and the Spirituality of Enough.
Whether rich or poor, most of walk through our days wounded in the area of money and finances. We fear money. We fear not having enough money. We fear what would happen if we had too much money. We fear what people would think of us if they knew how much money we make and what we spend our money on. The way that we see and use money intimately affects the people in our lives.
Most books about money are written to help you make more money. But what if more money isn’t the answer? What if the real source of our fear is our relationship with money? In Loaded: Money and the Spirituality of Enough, Heather King shares her own story of recovery around money. In doing so, she opens a door of opportunity for us… an opportunity to examine our own relationship with money and to open that relationship up to being healed by our loving God.
“So, as you’ve now assuredly figured out, unlike so many money books, mine is not about how to make more and consume more. It’s about how to detach from the idea that our identity could possibly lie in how much or how little money we make or have. It’s about discovering that money is a means of love and service. It’s about learning that the real economy is “As you give, so shall you receive.” We get to follow the deepest desires of our heart. The money will come. And we’ll want to share it.
“That hasn’t happened for me by praying a whole bunch of rosaries, holing up in my room, and hoping for the best. The solution for me and many people I know has involved clarity around numbers—how much we spend, how much we earn. It has been clarity around how we spend our time. And it’s been community—meaning friends, a realistic acceptance of the fact that we’re not going to change overnight, and laughs.”
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From the Book Description on Amazon.com
In a culture sickened by materialism, gluttony and greed of all kinds, the Gospel’s call to live simply and to share abundantly is more pressing than ever. For many of us, voluntary poverty is an ideal. But to be voluntarily poor—as opposed to the pendulum swings of overspending, underearning and pathological self-deprivation that can dictate our lives—we have to be rich first: in trust and love, if not in money.
In Loaded: Money and the Spirituality of Enough, lawyer-turned-writer Heather King shares her own recovery around money as well as the stories of others who have worked to reverse self-defeating patterns and move on to a healthy, mindful relationship with money. In an approach that’s very much informed by Jesus’s many words on the subject, she offers simple, proactive and transformative steps you can take to heed the Gospel’s call in your own life. The language of Loaded will be familiar to those in recovery for addictions of various kinds, and easily accessible to those who aren’t. Wherever you fall on the spectrum between freedom and bondage around money, these stories and tools will help. And the underlying principles—clarity, honesty, the confluence of will and grace—apply in every area of our lives.
Unlike so many money books, Loaded is not about how to make more and consume more. It’s about how to detach from the idea that our identity could possibly lie in how much or how little money we have.
It’s about discovering that money is a means of love and service. And it’s about following the deepest desires of your heart—and discovering that the real economy is, “As you give, so shall you receive.”
See more of Heather King’s work at ShirtofFlame.blogspot.com.