Wrestling with Materialism
by Rev. Colin Bossen, December 7, 2008
The winter holidays are upon us. For some this is a time of celebration. For others, it is a time dreaded throughout the year. Between now and January first we face a mad rush of celebration and consumerism. The season culminates with the crescendo of New Years and then, after the peak of the holiday season, our lives return to their regular routines.
The winter holidays span the world's religious traditions. Most celebrate the cycle and possibility of life. At the darkest time of year these celebrations remind us more light is just upon the horizon and that transformation for ourselves and our world is yet possible. Christmas celebrates the miracle of birth and suggests to us that, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, "Every child begins the world again." The solstice offers the hope that even in the depths of winter spring is coming. Chanukah teaches that for those who have faith there is almost always enough. Other holidays throughout the world lift up transformation at this time. Japanese Buddhist Bodhi day, for example, celebrates the Buddha's enlightenment and the possibility of enlightenment for us all. Despite their uplifting messages we can easily become wrapped up the holidays' more superficial aspects. It can be easy to forget that the season offers us a chance to reflect upon what is important in our lives.
During the holidays it can be easy to lose a sense of balance. At such times spiritual practice and religious community contain help us maintain it. They give us the structure we need to survive the chaos and the emotional sways of the holidays. At the same time they offer us the opportunity for reflection and, ultimately, spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth. If we place spiritual practice and religious community at the core of our lives then they will always be there for us, no matter what the season and our circumstances.
Religious community and spiritual practice provide us with both a place and a vehicle for asking important questions such as: What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of my life? Such questions can moderate our revels when they become too excessive and our depths when they become too low. They can help us to steady our lives.
In the onslaught of the holidays it can be difficult to remember to reflect upon these questions. However, if we fail to answer them for ourselves others will seek to answer them for us. In his essay of the same name, activist Jeffery Kaplan discusses what he describes the gospel of consumption. It is, he write, "the notion that people [can] be convinced that however much they have, it isn't enough."
This gospel was created by American industrialists in the 1920s as a way to preserve their power. At the time labor unions and some progressive thinkers were demanding, and sometimes winning, six hour working days. The gospel of consumption ensured that the workers would need to continue to work longer hours in order to earn enough to buy new consumer goods. As the president of the National Association of Manufacturers put it: “'I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.' 'Nothing,' he claimed, 'breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.'
Leisure, and time for contemplation teach us to value non-material things. That is exactly the opposite of the gospel that proposes that the purpose of life is to own more stuff. Each of us will never be happy until we own more things. The trouble is that there are always more things to own. Every year some series of products replaces last year's line. Radios are replaced by black and white television sets. Black and white television sets are replaced by color television sets. Color television sets are replaced by high definition television sets. On it goes, in order to keep up with the gospel of consumption there is always some new product to had.
The winter holidays with their rituals of gift giving and excessive partying can be over taken by this gospel. In fact, our holiday celebrations are a cornerstone of the national economy. Thanksgiving is followed by the two most important shopping days of the year--Black Friday and Internet Monday. How much people buy in these two days forecasts the health of the economy in the months to come. This year spending over these days only slightly up from the previous year. However this was not enough to make up for the previous few months downturn in sales. This suggests that we will be in for a long recession.
Recessions can be quite painful. During them people lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. Painful as a recession is, it can be an excellent time to reconsider the gospel of consumption. A recession may bring reduced spending. That, in turn, can provide us with the opportunity to consider what material goods we actually need in our lives.
Religious community provides us with a place to explore this question. Spiritual practice provides us with a vehicle how. One definition of spiritual practice is "an action intended to make a change or adjustment in the deepest realm of the self." Spiritual practice most effects us in the way that it provides order and structure to our lives. The very word practice implies this in that it is a regular occurrence, something that we do not do once or twice but continue with throughout our lives. Spiritual comes from the Latin spiritus which means breath. Spiritual practice could be understood as a breathing practice. Many spiritual practices do focus on breath work. Even those that do not can be understood as essential for the balanced life.
In our Unitarian Universalist congregations we do not proscribe any particular spiritual practice. We are not like the Muslims whom ask that you pray five times a day. We are not like the Catholics with their rituals of penance and forgiveness. And we are not like the orthodox Jews with their complicated cleanliness codes. However, we do encourage our members to have spiritual practices. In this congregation there are people who pray and meditate regularly, there are people who make art or write in their journals, and there are people who walk in the woods or take care of their gardens.
My primary spiritual practice is writing in my journal. I have kept a journal since I was 12 years old. It helps me keep my life in balance. It allows me to deal with unpleasant emotions and to privately celebrate moments of personal, familial, congregational and even societal triumph. It captures both extremes and my life's ebbs and flows. It provides me with a chance to assess my life, my work and my relationships. It offers me an ongoing record of my daily observations, struggles and successes. Occasionally, my journal writing provides me with insights into myself and the wider world.
Keeping a regular journal has been one of the most important spiritual practices in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. Most of the transcendentalists--whose ranks include mid-19th century Unitarians such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau--kept regular journals. Portions of their journals form one of the finest parts of the American literary canon. Many of Emerson's essays and Thoreau's classic work "Walden; Or, Life in the Woods" were both developed from entries in their journals.
Thoreau's "Walden" contains a meditation on what is necessary for life. After spending "two years and two months" in a small cottage he built for himself in the woods, Thoreau concluded that all we need to survive is "Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel." The rest, as the saying goes, is vanity.
"Walden" is not an exercise in aestheticism. Within the book Thoreau is not calling for people to forsake all of their worldly possessions. Instead he challenges his readers to wrestle with their relationship to work and material objects. Do our things own us or do we own our things? Is our work necessary for our livliehood or does it simply occupy our time and prevent us from engaging in serious reflection?
In one celebrated passage Thoreau describes a conversation with a friend. They discuss who can get to Fritchburg faster. Will it be Thoreau who plans to walk or his friend who will take the train. Thoreau writes: "Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the mean while have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibily this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquintance altogether."
"Walden" is an exploration of and exercise in what William Ellery Channing called self-culture. Channing was an early lion of American Unitarianism and the mentor of many of the transcendentalists. He describes self-culture as "the care which every man owes to himself, to the unfolding and perfecting of his nature." Channing believed that by our human nature we each contain within us the same divine consciousness that Jesus had. It is possible, Channing thought, for us to obtain that consciousness through self-culture.
Cultivating such a consciousness, developing self-culture, is one of the goals of spiritual practice. It can only develop from the discipline and moderation that spiritual practice brings.
You already have what you need to seek the path of self-culture. You have yourself. Any person can begin a spiritual practice at any time. Taking the initial step is not that difficult. It requires three things. First you must set your intention to begin a spiritual practice. Without intention nothing is possible. Second, you must select which spiritual practice best suits your temperment. Meditation, for example, works for some and not others. Keeping journal, I believe, most appeals to lovers of literature and language.
Finally, you must integrate your practice into your life. I recommend that you begin by engaging in your practice for fifteen minutes a day. This is a small goal. Most people can find fifteen minutes someplace in their day. I suggest that you take those fifteen minutes early in the day. That prevents you from procrastinating. On those days I tell myself that I will write in my journal in the evening I rarely do.
While the first steps towards a spiritual practice are easy to grasp actually integrating one into your life is more difficult than it seems. I cannot claim to write in my journal everyday. In fact, until recently the times when I needed to write in my journal most were the times when I wrote in it least. When I was stressed out and overwhelmed it would become very easy for me to tell myself that writing in my journal was not a priority.
This changed recently when I spent a week in North Carolina with Fred Craddock. Craddock is regarded by many ministers as the Dean of American preaching. During my time with him he stressed that good preaching comes from a solid spiritual foundation. A solid spiritual foundation can only come from regular spiritual practice, the sort of practice that does not falter when life becomes busy. I have made a point of integrating into my regular routine no matter what. And that has made a difference in my life. I noticed that it keeps me steady and more centered under pressure. When I am struggling with a sermon or a personal issue I find that pausing to write in my journal clears my head and helps me to calm down. I sometimes even gain a more objective view on whatever it is I am struggling with.
My spiritual disciple and practice also comes from my involvement in a religious community. I suspect that if I was not a minister I would not lead anything that approached a disciplined spiritual life. I have to write a sermon every week. I need to be spiritually centered enough to try to provide pastoral care to members of this congregation. I find I must prioritize my own spiritual life, no matter what else is happening, in order to have the clarity of heart and mind necessary for this work.
The connection of religious community to spiritual practice is where Thoreau goes wrong in "Walden." We need something beyond "Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel" to sustain ourselves. We need community. While he is trying to live a life of self-reliance in the woods he is still dependent on others. The ax he uses to cut trees for his house come from a friend. He buys the shingles for his cottage from another man. He admits his inability to function as an isolated individual and seems to imply that it is unfortunate writing, "We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, the merchant, and the farmer." For my part, I am glad of my connection to community. It helps in my moments of struggle.
There is a story one of colleagues tells about this. When he was an intern his supervisor constantly would ask him about his prayer life--they both shared prayer as a spiritual practice. Whenever they would have supervisory meeting or got together to discuss some matter my colleague would begin to rattle off all of the issues that he was facing in his internship. He was not happy with his sermon, he felt that he failed to connect with a parishioner during his last pastoral visit and he was overwhelmed with administrative tasks. His supervisor would always stop him and ask "How's your prayer life." At first my colleague found this practice to be extremely annoying. Eventually, he realized that it helped to bring him back to his center.
Our religious community can serve a similar function. When we get caught up in the particulars, overwhelmed with the details and forget our regular spiritual practice then our religious community can stop us and ask us "How's your prayer life?" How are you doing with your spiritual practice? We need community and connection in our lives.
Gathering for worship every Sunday with this community can be part of a spiritual practice. It can help us when we cannot or do not want to have another. A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a longtime member of this congregation that reminded me of the importance of a religious community. I asked her why she is a member of the Society. I wanted to know a bit about her spiritual practice. After a few minutes she said that coming to the Sunday service was part of her spiritual practice. She told me, "it gives my life structure."
This is what religious community and spiritual practice have to offer us, they give our lives structure. They cannot be bought or sold. They are things that can stick with us throughout our lives. When life gets hectic and overwhelming, as it is will over the holiday season, both spiritual practice and our religious community can help us to ask the questions: What is necessary for my life? What is important? They provide us the space to take step back and look at the larger picture.
Unlike the gospel of consumerism, religious community and spiritual practice let us know that we already have what we need. We have ourselves and now all we need to do, if we have not already, is to take that first step and begin slowly, with fifteen minutes a day, to cultivate a spiritual practice that will see us through the holidays and other days to come. If we take that step our religious lives will be richer. Either way our community will be here to catch us when we falter.
That it may be so, I say Amen and Blessed Be.