Christmas is coming and this weekend is the biggest shopping weekend of the year, and American consumerism is at its ugliest. We are all like kids in a candy store (or Carl in a pancake shop) and we just want more and more cool stuff. Why have a stack of two pancakes when you can have a gorgeous stack of 5 or 6? Why have a regular cell phone when you can get a smart phone? Why have a regular TV, when you can get an HD flat screen? I heard that in certain places, people were camping out in front of stores on Tuesday in preparation for Black Friday. They were camping out in front of some big box store right through Thanksgiving Day.
My family has moved 5 times in the last 5 years. We haven't been any place long enough to accumulate much, and each time we move, we get rid of LOTS of extraneous stuff. Yet each time, I am still amazed and appalled by how much stuff we still drag around with us. My parents didn't have this much stuff. Their parents, who immigrated from Sweden, didn't lug along anywhere near that much stuff. Old houses have tiny closets because that was all they needed. And they didn't rent storage units, either.
I was just listening to an economist on NPR, talking about our national debt and deficit. She said that the problem is that Americans have increasingly become "overconsumers." We have lived beyond our means for a very long time. She said that unless we learn to consume less we will not be able to maintain a sustainable economy. Overconsumers. Hmmm. I thought immediately of the size of that pancake. (not to mention the amount of food I ate on Thursday!)
I have been considering the issue of our society's unsustainability in many areas lately. The U.S. uses most of the world's resources. We eat ourselves silly. We build acres of 5000 square foot houses with 3 and 4 car garages. We heat and air condition all those houses and fill all those cars with gas. And, I am sorry to say, we also have a church on just about every street corner, each one with its own furnace to fill, roof to repair and staff to pay. All you have to do is look at global warming, increasing obesity, the mortgage default and bankruptcy rates and the rate of decline and closure of churches to know that we are behaving in unsustainable ways and things have got to change.
We are in a transitional place in history in our country. We know we need to change things but we don't yet know how. We know the future needs to be different, but we're still clinging to familiar habits. We know many of the things we do aren't good for us, but we keep doing them anyway, unsure of what a future without them would be like. This reminds me a lot of the kinds of stories I hear in 12 step meetings.
And I guess I'm thinking about unsustainability in the month of December in my own home. And I am praying for the courage to change. Am I going to spend more money than I have to get stuff to go under the tree that gets enjoyed for a day or a week and then gets stored in a closet? Do I have to buy stuff this Christmas or can we find a different way to show God's love to each other? All I know is what we've always done. What would a different kind of Christmas be like?
Well, I'm not going to solve our country's issues of unsustainability myself this season. But I can take some little steps toward change. I've decided I don't need to fill the stockings with fun little items that last a short time, but then fill the landfill with more plastic. In fact, I'm thinking twice about buying anything made of plastic lately. I'm thinking about giving my kids an experience for Christmas (like a family trip) instead of giving stuff. I'm thinking about walking to the grocery store when I need a few things instead of jumping in the car. It's only 1/2 mile away! And I'm turning off lights all over the place.
And I'm praying. Praying that God takes my life and my will and turns me toward sanity. I want to become entirely ready to be made new and to welcome healing for my - and my society's - unsustainable ways.
