Enough
A SERMON BY REV LINDA A HART
In the United States, there’s a reality television show called ‘Hoarders’. In it, or so I gather (I’ve never seen it), the viewing public get to see people whose lives have gone completely out of control as they have accumulated stuff. Perhaps you’ve known people like this who can’t seem to get enough of something or who cannot bear to throw anything away. I have a bit of a tendency that way myself, accumulating clutter seemingly by simply stepping into a room. These people are much worse.
The before and after pictures on the show’s website are pretty horrifying: rubbish hip deep in a kitchen, and every vertical surface covered with dirty dishes and random items; laundry rooms that are piled with so many clothes that you can’t even see that there is a clothes washer and tumble dryer in the room; living rooms piled deep with plastic storage containers that reach the ceiling that allow only a narrow pathway leading through the room, other rooms that you can not see floors at all because of the layers of things strewn about.
The people who appear on the show are typically in some sort of extreme crisis. They’ve been threatened with eviction or with the removal of minor children or something similar. A psychologist and a professional organiser come in and work with the hoarders for some period of time, and they try to help them let go of what they don’t need. At the end of the hour long show, sometimes there are cleared out rooms and some semblance of order created in the homes, in others there is little change between the before and the after.
There are several things I find interesting about this. Firstly, I’m always astonished by the capacity of people to expose themselves in this way. In every reality show there is some element of schadenfreude, gaining pleasure from the misfortune of others. It is the presentation of something that allows the rest of us to feel superior whilst viewing some of the worst of humanity. Human beings are often fascinated by the horrors of another’s life, we crane our necks to see what has happened in road accidents or to overhear what the police officer is saying to the person stopped on the street, we ruffle curtains to see what the couple outside in front of God and everyone are shouting about and avert our eyes whilst catching glimpses of the drunk staggering along at mid-day.
I think it’s perhaps because we do see some small bit of ourselves and our human brokenness in the midst of it all. Though we might puff ourselves up a bit by noting our good fortune or praise ourselves on our self control, organisation, hard work, good driving skills or whatever, in seeing the difficulties of another, especially these extreme difficulties may remind us of that little part of us that is there too: the time – times? – we had too much to drink, or when we nearly collided with another car, or when a conversation erupted into shouting and angry words. The hoarders at their worst may seem nothing like any of us, but there’s a reason that greed is among the deadly sins: it is common to all human beings in one form or another. The hoarders fascinate because they are us, too. Like us, like other human beings, they cannot let go of what they have even if it is only rubbish.
Secondly, I’m a bit amused by what is considered hoarding and what is considered a delightful eccentricity. Imelda Marcos acquires thousands of pairs of shoes and everyone laughs about it. People ‘collect’ certain kinds of objects until they have in the thousands of tiny figurines or coins or beanie babies, those small soft toys that were all the rage years ago, and they are admired for their collections. Thousands of pounds go to collecting rare Barbie dolls or medals from ancient wars and it’s an admirable thing. While it is no doubt true that there are differences between people who make an intentional and organised collection of objects that please them in whatever way and the people who cannot take our the rubbish for 10 years, it is worth pondering when one becomes the other and it all fades over into crazy town.
Thirdly – and what interests me most – why is it when people accrue vast sums of money, millions and millions of pounds or dollars or euros or whatever that we don’t call it by this name, too? They are not just millionaires or billionaires, but they are also hoarders whose worlds won’t actually change much if they make or lose sums of money that would make the rest of us faint. Footballers are paid outrageous sums, often to play very badly indeed. Bank managers of banks that have failed walk away year on year with bonuses of millions of pounds on top of their already too inflated exorbitant salaries. What is this if not a kind of hoarding? It is hoarding and supported enthusiastically by governments around the world, or so it seems. When will someone do a show that helps a millionaire relinquish the excessive money she or he has stockpiled? That’s what I want to know.
How do we know what is enough? How do we know that this is all we need and more isn’t necessary?
This time of year can drive us into that kind of need and want frenzy if we’re not careful. There’s a story of the young girl at Christmas who produces a massive list of gifts that she wants Santa to bring and presents it to her father. The father, distressed that his daughter doesn’t have the right idea about the season takes her to the tree where the nativity scene is set up, and asks her to look at the scene and the little baby Jesus. Then he tells her to write a letter to the little baby Jesus. She writes: ‘Dear baby Jesus, Please ask Santa to bring me all the gifts on my list....’ The father sends her back for another try and she writes: ‘Pretty please with sugar on top, ask Santa to bring me all the gifts on my list.’ When that doesn’t succeed and she is sent back one more time, she sits and thinks and finally picks up the statue of Mary and wraps it in a cloth and carries it to her room, puts it in a shoe box and tucks it in the back of her wardrobe.
Back at the tree she begins to write, ‘Dear Baby Jesus, If you ever want to see your mother again...’
What is enough? In a culture driven by consumerism that begs us to buy more and more and better and better: what is enough?
It is work to find that small still voice within that tells us what is enough. It takes awareness and cultivation to know.
Awareness: being able to see through the persistent cultural story of get and spend that saturates our lives. From television to internet to billboards and adverts on the tube and buses, in films and adorning the uniforms of sports stars. It is everywhere and always there. We have to see again, and remind ourselves to see again what that story that the culture is telling us is in order to choose to live by its values – he who dies with the most toys wins – or by another set of values, perhaps one not unlike what Alice Walker suggests in our reading: ‘Live frugally/On surprise’ she suggests. ‘Discover the reason why/So tiny a human midget/Exists at all.’ Step outside the dominant paradigm. Be a heretic, that is, one who chooses.
Awareness: recognising that we are among the monetarily wealthy of the world already. Plenty of food, health care, a warm place to sleep, opportunities for leisure and pleasure. There are so many in the world who have so much less.
Awareness: what we have is only ours on loan, and so the question needs to be not ‘what can I keep?’ but ‘what can I use?’ How is it that we use our wealth to be of use to the world.
Awareness: that our wealth is not what we own or how much money we’ve amassed, but the qualities of our living that are not subject to quantification. How well do we love, how forgiving are we, do we live authentically and deeply?
And once we see, we have to remember, to cultivate that awareness on an ongoing basis. How do you remind yourself when you forget this? How do you come back to what is most true, most important? How do you see again the wealth you have? How do you say no to the story that is told again and again and again?
When we have those practices and reminders in place to help us to remember, more and more we can be like Chuang Tzu’s draftsman as well:
So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
"For" and "against" are forgotten.
No drives, no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free
This is what we seek, I think, when we can clear away the too much and the too many, the accumulations that we carry with us, no matter if they are the mistakes and bad choices that we rub smooth in our minds, or the collections of things that settle in around us, filling our houses and lives. To be free to choose, to live well and to keep our hearts centred on what really matters.
May it be with us in this holiday season that we find that we have, that we are, enough.
Amen.
Prayer
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common–this is my symphony.
~ William Henry Channing
Spirit of love and of life,
In the quiet of this time together
may we know the possibility of
an intentional life.
In the days to come, may we
see the world around us
more clearly,
may we have the spaciousness
of a clear head and an open heart
to make our choices well.
The world calls to us with
temptations.
May we listen more closely
to hear the soft, still voice of
our best selves,
and step by sometimes faltering
step
move toward that place of
freedom and peace
that is ever present to us
ever possible for us.
So may it be.
Amen.