Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff
Sermon by Steve Edington
April 3, 2005
As I flipped through the Boston Globe over my morning coffee this past Friday, just before settling into sermon writing mode for the day, I discovered that someone had beaten me to the punch on my sermon topic. Well, sort of. Right there it was on the front page of the "Weekend" section, a big article about a Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. It reported on Rev. Billy's stern warnings of a "Shopocalypse" with these words of his: "Our neighborhoods are being destroyed by transnational chain stores, children! We are drowning in a sea of identical details. Praise the god that is not a product, the god that swims in the part of the sky not yet covered with corporate logos. We face this urgent apocalypse where we're shopping ourselves to death, whether it's a $4.00 latte or a B-2 Bomber. Lift your hand from the product and back away." As Don Imus likes to say, "You can't make this up!"
Reverend Billy is actually a New York based actor, activist, and stand-up comic named Bill Talen. His get-up is clerical garb, complete with collar, and a blond, Elvis-like pompadour. He was in Boston over the past weekend, along with his thirty-member Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, for a gig at the Old South Meeting House. Well, I couldn't book Rev. Billy in here this morning so I guess you'll have to make do with me - and without the pompadour.
Mr. Talen, to stay with him for just another moment or two, may be pitching his shtick as entertainment - and I'm sure it is - but he's really quite serious about it all. His self-created "Church" is in fact housed and based in a real church in New York City, St. Mark's in the Bowery. St. Marks is a non-denominational church on New York's lower East Side. In addition to his scheduled performances Bill Talen and his troops like to engage in a little New York street guerilla theater now and then. One such activity involves invading a Starbucks, singing and dancing, while Rev. Billy leaps up on the counter to preach about the plight of Guatemalan coffee farmers or the destruction of New York neighborhoods by various chain store or restaurant establishments. He's even got a book out called What Should I Do If Rev. Billy is in My Store? The book title is taken from the title of an in-house Starbucks memo he somehow got his hands on. A CD of the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir is due for release later this month.
So while Bill Talen may be playing a preacher, he is clearly a man-on-a-mission, which he spoke of in anticipation of his Boston appearance: "I think progressive people have a faith. It's just that the saints in my church - Dorothy Day and Frederick Douglass - all spoke at the Old South Meeting House." I wasn't all that surprised to read, in the same article, that Mr. Talen, aka Rev. Billy, cites the Beat Generation writers as being among the major influences in his life. But I'm trying to lay off that whole topic for awhile, so we'll leave that be..
I'm one who keeps an ongoing lookout for straws in our cultural wind, not always knowing if there's an actual storm behind them or not. That's what I see in this road show - a straw. Whether anything is really blowing behind it is something time will tell. But I wonder, are we getting to the point where consumerism for its own sake, that has so saturated our landscape, is something we're both ready laugh at it as well as pay heed to some of its human consequences? Are the same societal qualms, and the same cultural uneasiness, that are providing Rev. Billy an audience also fueling the efforts to halt the construction of yet another Wal-Mart store, and outlet Mall in our area? As I say, time will tell.
I shy away, really, from sermons on excessive materialism for two reasons. One is because they have a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel quality about them. I mean, who's in favor of excessive materialism? The other reason is because of the slipperiness of the term "excessive". It generally refers to something you have that I don't. It's like the term "pork barrel spending" in the political world. The best definition of a pork barrel project that I can come up with is that it's any public works project that is being funded in any District except the one of the Congressman who is making the charge of pork barrel spending. But I have my reasons for raising the subject today which I hope will be demonstrated as we go along.
I'll begin on a note of honesty. I like my stuff - most of it anyway. I truly wish I did not need my lawnmower or my snow blower, but there they are. On a broader note, we should acknowledge that many of our possessions are really part and parcel of our identity. And that's not a bad thing in and of itself. Earlier in this service we heard about an area organization that offers short-term help to families who have lost their homes, or any place to live. They have asked for our assistance in their efforts. This could make for an odd juxtaposition; me doing a sermon on "too much stuff" after hearing about people who have lost some of the most important things they've had.
But there is a connection here: Not having a home, not having a house or an apartment to live in, is about more than lack of shelter - crucial as that is. Its also about a loss of dignity and identity. The same goes for certain of our possessions. I'm fortunate in that I've never been robbed, but in talking with persons who have been the conversation doesn't usually dwell too long on the actual items that were taken, and which in some instances can be replaced. Rather the conversation is primarily about a sense of personal violation on the part of those who have been robbed. There's often the sense that a piece of their self-hood has been damaged, in a way goes well beyond the objects stolen and whose loss may not even measurably affect the day to day doings of the person who's been burglarized.
What I'm saying with all this is that the distinction between who we are and what we own is not as hard and fast as one might think at first. I am a consumer of books, for example; and those books in turn, define - to some degree - who I am. So I believe it is quite possible, even necessary I would argue, for there to be a healthy relationship between oneself and one's possessions. This is similar to the relationship anthropologists point to between human beings and the tools we've created in the course of human evolution. (I'm pleased we've got a church here where evolution can be discussed in a rational and accepting way.) Our human ancestors created tools to help them perform certain tasks; and in turn the tools, many of them anyway, redefined how they understood themselves as human beings. That process goes on - think of how the invention of the telephone, the automobile, and the computer, to give just three examples, have redefined how we understand and relate to one another and to ourselves. So, as I say, many of the things we acquire have a way of redefining who we are; and that's OK to a point. The question, then, is at what point does this relationship become unhealthy?
My quick answer on the personal level that the relationship between one's self and one's possessions becomes unhealthy when acquisition becomes an end in itself - or an attempt to fill up a hole in oneself that no amount of stuff will ever fill up. Or, as a variation on this, it is when you allow yourself to become convinced that your life will be somehow diminished if you do not have such and such an object - whether you really need it, or even really care to have it, or not. That is the goal of most advertising, after all - to convince us that our lives will be less than complete unless we have whatever is being pushed.
One way to think about this would be to do an inventory or your stuff, and put it in one of three categories: 1) Which, among my possessions, do I need both for my personal survival and in order to realistically function, in all the ways I need to function, in the world in which I live and move at this point in my life? 2) Which among my possessions truly allows me to find pleasure, comfort, enjoyment, and meaning in living? I'm in favor of all four of these things, and certain of my material goods do indeed help me achieve them. 3) What all do I still have that doesn't really fit under category, or question, one or two, and why do I have it? You can work it out from there.
Just as we need certain of our possessions, we also need to shop. It would be more than foolish of me to try to convince you, or even myself, otherwise. I've got groceries I have to buy this afternoon if we're going to have our meals this week. I'll bet Rev. Billy even goes shopping, even as he warns us against the dangers of shopping ourselves to death. And if he is going to sell books and CDs he has to hope that somebody is going to shop to buy them. But I still think he's onto something. I think he's addressing an insidious kind of cultural imperative which holds that we're supposed to go shopping because, after all, those stores are out there. Shopping for what you need, or even want, is one thing. What, I will confess, baffles me is witnessing how it has become a secular ritual.
I continue to be struck, nearly four years later, by some advice the President gave the nation in the aftermath of the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I have to cut the man some slack, of course. He was facing the greatest challenge any United States President had faced since Franklin Roosevelt in the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attacks when it came to addressing a shocked and traumatized nation. In certain respects, in those first few days after 9/11, he did meet that challenge. But it is with more curiosity, really, than consternation that I wonder about Mr. Bush's piece of advice that the way we could demonstrate to the rest of the world that we're still OK, and the way we could show the terrorists that they hadn't gotten the better of us, was... to go shopping. In other words, we show our best and most resilient face to the world... by consuming.
All I can do is just raise the question here: Do we really want to present ourselves to the rest of the world as a nation that defines itself largely on the basis of what it consumes? To go that route is one sure way of moving toward a Fortress America wherein we are seen by much of the rest of the world, fairly or not, as protecting and defending ourselves primarily for the sake of our own indulgences.
This kind of consumption for its own sake is generating a serious internal problem as well. A quick caveat: Even though I never taken an economics course in my life I do understand that in a society like ours there has to be - again - a healthy relationship between the production and distribution of goods and services, on the one hand and the purchase of them on the other. What makes it a healthy process is when everyone involved in it gets a reasonably fair share of the wealth the process generates. Not an absolutely equal share - I'm sorry, Karl Marx, it's been tried and it didn't work - but a reasonably fair share.
I don't have a grand economic theory to offer here, and this wouldn't be the place for it anyway. I can just briefly allude to one of the more striking books I've read in recent years, and one I know I've referred to before, by Barbara Ehrenreich called Nickled and Dimed - On Not Getting by in America. Ms. Ehrenreich is a journalist, essayist, and social commentator. She spent the better part of a year taking low-paying, mostly minimum wage jobs in different locations around the country to see if it were possible, anywhere, to make a remotely decent living working at that level. Her chapter on being a Wal-Mart clerk is worth the price of the book itself. Her conclusion, as to the possibility of making any kind of a reasonable living in today's society on the strength of a menial job is, no you can't. If you think she's off base on that, all I can say is read the book and then see what you think.
Ms Ehrenreich's other conclusion, as it relates to the matter I'm addressing here, is that in order for this country to maintain a consuming class, at the level which we now have, we also perpetuate a permanent working-poor underclass that will never, in any realistic way, participate at the consuming level that most of us here enjoy. That's a pretty stark assessment, and one that is also pretty hard to refute. I do not have a grand solution to this situation, but I do know that over the long run such a situation does not make for a healthy, just, and well-functioning society.
Absent grand solutions all I can do for the next few remaining minutes here this morning is bring it back to the personal. Just about any kind of social change, after all, begins with individuals examining themselves and asking: Is this the way I really want to live, and is this really the kind of society and world in which I wish to live? So start with that. To help your thinking in that direction I call you attention, if you haven't seen it already, to an article in the latest issue of our denominational magazine, the UU World called "Modeling the Simple Life." Its about a woman named Carol Hoslt and an organization she's founded called Seeds of Simplicity. Ms. Holst is a former RE Director for the UU Church in Crescenta, California. There's a whole 'nother sermon in that article alone, but rather than deliver it I'm leaving copies of the article on the Information Table in the Dining Room for you to pick up during coffee hour. Since you will all be watching the Red Sox/Yankees game tonight you can read it between innings.
My second piece of advice is one I've lately been trying to give myself, as I think over some of the issues I've raised - in an admittedly brief and unfinished manner - this morning. It's those three simple words that used to be posted at railroad crossings: Stop, Look, and Listen. (And I will admit right up front that I find they're easier to follow when you're on the other end of the child rearing years.)
Stop. Stop long enough to meditate and reflect on the values, the human and spiritual values, you most want to exemplify with your life. Reflect upon how you wish to define yourself in relation to the world in which you live and move. It was this kind of reflection that brought the woman I just referred to, Carol Holst, to her simplicity commitment. She says, "The simplicity movement is about countering the spiraling complexities of our world in such a way that people can find balance and satisfaction and fulfillment in ways that have deeper meaning for them... It helps redefine who we are as a people."
Look. This follows on what was just said. Look at the ways in which you bring the values you hold most dear to your many ways of living. Are you pleased with it or not? It is hard, sometimes it is impossible, to avoid those "spiraling complexities of our world" to which Ms. Holst refers. But perhaps we can look at them closely enough to discern which of them are worthy of our energies and which ones are not. And we can at least look at the ways in which we are defined by our possessions and ask how comfortable on the one hand, or how uneasy on the other, we are by that.
Listen. The listening to which I refer here also involves a certain amount of shutting off. Shut off whatever noise it is that's saying you have to have this or do that in order to make your life complete. Somewhere, I am convinced, in the recesses of your own being is a voice that can tell you what will give you your completion as a human being if it can just be heard.
It was the poet ee cummings who once said, "to be yourself in a world that is doing its best, day and night, to ask you to be like everybody else - is to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight." A good part of fighting that battle is being able to listen past whatever voices are telling you who or what you have to be, or have to have - to the voice that is calling you to be your truest and your best self.
Stop. Look. Listen. It's a place to begin anyway. See where it takes you.
Stephen D. Edington
April 3, 2005
Copyright © 2005 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
