Still working to "finish a book per week" per my 2003 resolution. I think I'm still a book behind, but I'll pick it up somewhere along the way. Last night I finished Chris Seay's THE TAO OF ENRON. Good book. It's not a tell-all book, it doesn't point any unwarranted fingers at the debacle that was Enron. What I think it does best is point fingers back at us, the readers, and force us to question what kinds of lives we're living when integrity can take a backseat to individualism and greed, where lip-service is good enough and our inner beliefs and outer actions are dualistically paradox. Whew. The biggest challenge I felt was towards "the church" and the culture it's being brought up in the west - we need to be about simplicity, generosity, and true community that embraces each other, not just giving to receive and making ourselves feel good. What good is it if we give lots of money to charity and yet never really love and serve someone? Living within our means, with the rest of the planet and even future generations in mind as we make decisions that matter - workable ideas like this will go far in helping us become a "we" generation, rather than the existing "me" generation.

While it's often easy to pander, patronize and point fingers, I think Seay does a more than adequate job of sharing the reports, filling in the blanks, and still pulling relevant sermons from the circumstances of one of America's biggest financial collapses. That these men and women were "people of faith" is more condemning on the state of the American church than anything else.
- posted by Rick @ 15:47