…for neither she who plants nor she who waters is anything, but only GOD who makes things grow…

for a couple years now, i have been giving much thought to the driving force of our society: CONSUMERISM.

my interest began with the idea of ‘buying local.’ it’s one of those things where if you start to get informed, you know too much to buy into the myth that the ultimate goal of shopping is to seek the lowest price. you begin to realize that when you pay for something, you are trading your time and skill (work hours) for other people’s time, skill, and resources. you are spending your work days supporting whatever you spend your money on. so if i am paying low prices at pick n’ save, i am saving money, but i might be trading my life for chemicals, or preservatives, or pesticides, or underpaid or exploited workers, or fat salaries for CEOs. also, my money might be flying out of my neighborhood to a big corporate headquarters in the sky, with the taxes leaving the services my neighbors and i need. if i run down to the neighborhood co-op and sacrifice by paying more for my groceries, i know that i am trading my life for healthy food that loves our environment and workers and volunteers that are treated fairly and contribute to MY community. this direct relationship with the stuff i am consuming has really changed the way i view money. rather than always wanting to stretch my dollar as far as it will go to get me the most stuff, i get to think of my dollar more like a vote or a say in things: if i want natural healthy food, or community-owned businesses, or art in my neighborhood… i use my dollar to communicate that.

i would like input here from people raising families who have seriously considered this topic. as a single person, i feel i have more a luxury in being able to be intentional with these things… i don’t have little mouths to feed. however, what i have found to be completely true is that paying more for fair trade, sustainable, local items doesn’t leave me unable to afford what i need at all – it simply leaves me unable to afford to accumulate more than i need. it forces me to be resourceful, to garden, to repair my clothes when they get a tear in them, to conserve energy, to reuse. all of these practices have increased my quality of life.

for a great plain-language explanation of our nation’s obsession with stuff, watch the 20 minute video below.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/   (thanks, alicia, for the link!)

wouldn’t we rather choose to reject consumerism and change our lifestyle now, than eventually exploit our resources to the degree that we have no choice?

there are also aspects of being a Consumer as our primary identity that sabotage our spirituality. i think many churches observe that people show up to services wanting “get something out of them.” now, there is nothing wrong with desiring growth and looking for an environment that fosters it. that’s good. but i think the hang-up occurs when that becomes the sole focus: ME and what I am gaining from a relationship with a church body. this really is strangely unrelated to Jesus’ teachings and His instructions for the church.

something dramatic that josiah has taught me without realizing it over the past year is that even my concept of relationships was dominated by a Consumer attitude. i feel like messages bombard me a million times a day through the dominant attitude of people around me and TV shows and movies: “is your relationship working for you?” “is he what you are looking for?” “is this what YOU want?” essentially, if you don’t feel it like you used to, dump it and find something else that excites you. the only problem is… eventually, you realize you can’t continue on that cycle forever. being intentional about your relationships is a good thing. but i think Christ teaches something different: to move away from what WE are getting out of another person, or what they do for US, and to move into choosing to love in a committed and subordinate way. i am just starting to wrap my head around this concept, but what i DO know is, i refuse to be a Consumer of people. i do not want to change my friends, or my boyfriend, or my community when it is not giving me that feeling or that experience that i am looking for. i want to be faithful and submitted in my love, and to never never think about children of God in the same way i think about stuff.

so how do we consume less? that video above has good ideas for reducing our literal consumption. i think a lot has to do with replacing the world’s values and goals with a mindset that values things that are lasting. this means stuff, values, relationships… you name it.

for now i still shop at the gap once in a while, and have many areas in which there is room for improvement… but i hope that over time i will be able to transform my mindset from consumerism to simple living and committed loving.

This pseudo-poem comes out of some recent experiences of frustration, beginning with recognizing my own desire for what I am calling a “white confidante” in moments of great tension in a diverse class examining race relations in education this past semester. After that, a wacked out guy screaming, exasperated, at Jerica on 8th & Burleigh: “I’M WHITE!” as if their comraderie through skin color would provoke her to give him change for the bus and treat him preferentially. Finally, while riding my bike through FloridaBrookfield today, I arrived at an elementary school and asked directions back to my Grandad’s road (I rode pretty far, and got pretty dang lost). This stranger inserted several comments into his directions about how he didn’t want me to go through certain neighborhoods because “you know, there’s a lot of…. (dramatic pause)… in there,” etc. I know what he was referring to because I had just ridden through those neighborhoods in the plain-as-day noon sunlight: they were smaller houses, and lots of Mexican and Black families… SURPRISE!… minding their own business. For some reason this arrogant guy assumed I would know what he meant by “THAT kind of neighborhood.” My anger fumed the whole ride home. I am sick of this phenomenon of white people seeking safe places with one another, not based on culture or music or language or something beautiful, but solely based on an us vs. them mentality… the fear of the non-whites. As if white people really need more safe places. It’s really gross and I am sick of being considered part of this clan.

Someday when I am older and wiser, I will probably look back on entries like this and be embarrassed by my fiery and blind retorts to these situations. But for now, the wisdom I have is all I got, and I’m pissed. My response: muttering angry retorts in Spanish the whole bike ride home, a bad poem on some wussy blog, and perhaps growing the wisdom and love to next time somehow respond and defend in a relevant way. Oy.

——————————-

Don’t make me your white confidante.
The color of my skin should not incriminate me.
My ancestry alone does not make me an accomplice to your domination.

My pale complexion divides me from you if you think I know what you mean by “those people” -
If you think I agree with you that that is a “bad neighborhood” -
If you think that I feel threatened by immigrants, or music, or differentness.

My heritage does not fill in the blanks for me when you trail off in sentences -
“That neighborhood has a lot of… you know,”
“I don’t want to send you through there because of the…”
I do not get the idea.
And I am not accepting of your racism just because you implied rather than slurred. 

Don’t assume I know what you are hinting at.
Don’t assume I feel a kinship with you and your stale perceptions.
We’ve all heard it all before.
Imperialism is not my only hereditary option for a world view
and I refuse to be driven by fear. 

I am bound to my people by freedom
Culture, richness, poverty and simplicity
Food and language

An undiscerning God, taking on the humblest of children - 
my brothers, my sisters, and me -
one in the faith, one in the struggle.
Even those who I haven’t met or who don’t know it yet
because through the oppressed shines the pure heart of the Kingdom.

Join me instead in rejecting our scripted role as the oppressors,
in a long line of murderers and evangelists,
a sword in one hand, a Bible in the other -

No estoy de acuerdo contigo
solo porque del color de mi piel.
No me atrape en la herencia de nuestra raza.

I resist becoming a product of the suburbia from which I came,
so don’t make me your white confidante.

BOOK REVIEW! A sloppy one.

Because when it’s winter break, you get to be presumptuous and review a book no one asked you to. And also, lazy and informal.

This book was recommended to me by Mark Lynn of Brew City Training Community (who apparently now is a Mark OF Something, and rightly so – he’s pretty epic). I believe he claims it to be his favorite book, and Mark: I can definitely see why you like it. Although Lamott’s writing style (revealing lessons about faith through personal anecdotes) is very reminiscent of Don Miller, she has a certain edginess and bluntness to her. Hence, Mark, why I can see you loving it – swearing and all. Also Betsy gave me the book, which is great. Er, lent me the book.

Lamott really tells it like it is and reveals her insecurities and flaws, down to things like getting really annoyed with the people we love and other things we aren’t really supposed to admit. Many a time during reading was I comforted to know that I am not the only one who is completely immature and dysfunctional. Like listening to mewithoutYou, but much lighter and often comical.

The book was a really quick read – easy and fun. Took me three days.

Here are some of my highlights:

1. Her thoughts on body image. I loved when she said that she thinks she will never look back and regret going to the beach and swimming in the ocean despite how her butt looks in a swimsuit. She speaks of struggles with eating disorders, and concludes “that no one needs that plastic-body perfection from women of age and substance” (p. 197). That is very beautiful and very true.

2. Her humor. A part that made me laugh out loud is when she is talking about Elijah hiding in a cave in the Bible. She says:
“First the angel told him he shold eat. This is one of my favorite moments in the Bible, God as Jewish mother: Elijah, eat something!” (p. 165)
Hilarious.

3. Her stories of the spirituality and significance of coming alongside friends who are suffering, especially from illness. She has a lot of stories of friends who are sick or who have really sick kids. Their stories are straight-up discouraging: the Lord is there, but there is not comfort to be found in the situation. She really emphasizes the need to be there with friends going through times like these, with nothing to offer and no solutions, but simply to give them a window out to the world beyond their own suffering – to remind them that the entire world hasn’t been reduced to hospitals and worry and waiting and pain. I have a beautiful and strong and resilient friend who has been suffering with sickness for over a year now, heroically and tragically. There is no comfort for her right now. But the way Anne Lamott took the opportunity to share in sorrow with others so seriously as one of our biggest spiritual experiences, it really made me realize how much more important it is for me to be available for this friend than anything else going in my life right now that may seem significant. This ties in very directly with the book I have recently started about Oscar Romero’s life and dedication to the poor in El Salvador: that in seeking God’s face by truly coming alongside the poor and suffering, we experience one of the purest forms of holiness.

This book was very beautiful and I highly recommend it… a great book to read a few stories out of before bed each night… if you can put it down.

MUAHAHAAA

i have been in naples (florida brookfield) for 24 hours and have adjusted well to my new golf resort neighborhood of white retirees.

in the first day alone, i have already:

1. begun yelling so my friends can hear me
2. been told to marry a man who makes a lot of money
3. eaten at perkin’s
4. stolen a full fistful of sugar packets from a restaurant
5. watched antique road show
6. eaten butter pecan ice cream
7. argued about whether or not the Jews really control the government. 

4 more days and i may assimilate completely.
maybe i’ll come home sporting a tremor.
WISH ME LUCK!

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators 
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you 

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

- W.S. MERWIN