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| Carl Bloch |
Okay, so we were somewhat early at Heathrow, breaking a bad habit of being the last people to board the plane–just when we hear “passengers Mathias, passengers Mathias.”
And so I wandered through the shops; oh my goodness, what an onslaught of consumerism!
Now I rarely shop. Literally, rarely enter a shop! Roy buys groceries, and most other things. I buy what I need on the internet. (In fact, I moved back to the UK in mid April 2004, and I reflected that the only piece of clothing I have bought in the UK in the last 7 years is a cardigan at Edinburgh Woollen Mills. I have got used to the American catalogues I shopped in LL Bean, Cold water Creek, Norm Thompson, and like a boring stuck-in-the mud have continued shopping there, and have paid shipping and customs duty for the clothes to be sent here. Roy tells me that this does not make economic sense, and he’s probably right, though I just shrug because I hate shopping. I pick up sweaters when we travel—and it’s harder then to resist entering shops because I have two girls.)
And so, the Alladin’s cave of Harrods and other blingy stores really caught my eye.
‘
“Do you know I haven’t bought any clothes in the UK for the last 7 years,” I said to Roy, in poor brave me tones. “I don’t even know what my UK size is.” (Well, perhaps that’s just as well!!)
I glance at the price tag on a silk shirt and the drum beat of consumerism began to beat.
Must. Make. More. Money.
* * *
Now if it is essential to make money—for instance to pay for the right school for the girls, albeit private, or for something we really, really want, like our house which we both fell in love with—that dreary drumbeat Must Make More Money can be energizing and creative. I enjoy lying face down, in concentrated prayer, seeking wisdom and creativity if I need money for an altruistic or creative or spiritual or healthy endeavour. Or even to pay bills!
But to buy stuff?
Nope. Condemning myself to make more money to buy pretty stuff is like signing my life away to being pricked by many griefs.
* * *
There is another way to deal with the siren call of consumerism and shops with all their pretty glitzy things. The endless black hole of The Next Thing.
Buddha discovered this.
It is a two world koan.
Desire less.
* * *
Buddha, Prince Siddharta, saunters forth from his sheltered palace and sees a sick man, an old man, a dead man. The inevitabilities—sickness (perhaps), aging, and death.
And is this the end of all mortal desire? He meditates under the Bodhi tree in Gaya, and formulates his Four Noble Truths,
Life is suffering.
The root of suffering is desire.
Suffering can be eliminated by eliminating desire.
Desire can be eliminated by the noble eight fold path–right views, aspirations, living, mindfulness, speech, conduct, effort, conscience.
Yeah, nice way to live if you can manage it.
* * *
God is just and God is merciful. And so God gives every religion some shadows, some intimations of the truth.
And that is indeed one way to avoid suffering. Reduce your desire. Witness: The subprime crisis and the global credit crunch and economic crisis, unmanageable consumer debt, home repossessions, the whole sorry freight of grief caused by unruly, out of control desires.
Tone down your desires, do not buy things unless you really, really want or need them,and you save yourself a lot of unnecessary more-month-than-money syndrome, make-more-money slavery. overwork, debt, anxiety, constrictions, sleeplessness, and sicknesses caused by overwork and worry.
Charles Dickens (who like Chekhov had has health permanently damaged by having to work hard as a young person to help support his family, a feckless family in Dicken’s case) famously formulated one secret to happiness “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and six, result misery.” Saving 2.5% of one’s income can make the difference between happiness and misery, Dickens guesses. I now, mercifully, can save a minimum of ten percent of what I earn, and am grateful for this, but there was a tense period of a couple of years when I was establishing my little business, when I did not do so. And so I can second Dickens.
Or to put it another way. Do you want to suffer less? Desire less.
* * *
And what’s the flaw in this noble injunction?
Yeah, tell a woman with PMS to desire less chocolate. Simple, ain’t it?
Tell an overweight person to run and diet until he or she is slim.
Tell an anxious person to be a bit rational about their anxieties.
Tell an angry person to keep calm.
Tell a disorganized person to do first things first
Or an untidy person to put things in the right place.
Easy, isn’t it.?
Just stop it.
As in this sketch
***
The focus of Buddhism is cautious and negative—life is suffering, and we can avoid suffering by avoiding desire. If we want nothing, and love nothing, then nothing can wound us by its loss, brokenness, recalcitrance or betrayal.
However, Lewis famously says in The Four Loves,
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.
* * *
Christianity has a positive focus. We are not to focus on the negative—on suffering and how to avoid it, not to live our lives in fear of suffering, tiptoeing on eggshells trying to avoid it.
We are to focus on a person. A very creative person (whose creativity is so essential an attribute that he is known as the Creator.
We are to align our lives with his wisdom.
And what will that look like?
Well, since God is infinitely creative, it will look different for each person. For C.S. Lewis, it meant writing, as it does for Michael Wenham of the brave Donkeybody blog, or for me. For Simon Cozens, it is being a missionary to the Japanese. For Beth Moore, writing Bible studies. For Heidi Baker, adopting 10,000 orphans. For my friend and fellow-blogger, Lesley Crawley, pioneer ministry.
So instead of avoiding desire to avoid suffering, we are to follow a person, whose words have been recorded. Certain things will stand out for us in letters of red or gold as the Spirit highlights them. And his spirit fills in the gaps of the written word. Offers specific directions for our lives.
It’s a far better road map than avoiding suffering by avoiding desire, isn’t it?
* * *
What does Christ say about suffering? That some voluntarily chosen suffering is essential to a decent Christian life. Follow him. How? By taking up our cross.
This again will mean different things to different people. For me, who am not particularly disciplined, it means, for starters, staying in the battle to exert self-discipline in what I eat, in trying to keep my body reasonably strong and healthy, in keeping up with the house ( I’m naturally untidy!!), in controlling my speech, annoyances, and moods, in basic self-discipline in sleep wake cycles (I am naturally a night person, but staying up reading or blogging till 2 is not the best thing if one lives with people—neither is it the best way to spend the next morning). In making as much use as I can of my gifts. All these things give me plenty to be getting on with—and ironically, they are just the starting point of a life of taking up one’s cross and following Jesus.
* * *
What else does Christ say? That suffering is inevitable (John 16:33) This world has a crack in it. It will be redeemed, but while we wait, we groan. However, we are to be of good cheer, despite the certainty of suffering, because of the power of Christ to give us grace to endure, to change us (and sometimes to change our circumstances). As Paul says, we will be able to handle both being abased and abounding through Christ who strengthens us.
And while we would never choose this refinement, suffering does refine us like diamonds, like gold. It takes its place as black borders, and splashes of red in the tapestry of our lives.
What else does Christianity have to say about the problem of suffering? We might not be told to desire less, but we are certainly told to sin less. Much—though by no means all!!—suffering is self-inflicted through sin– laziness, greed, self-indulgence, meanness. Selfishness. We sow bitter seeds, and sadly eat their fruit.
* * *
So while reducing desire reduces suffering, as Buddha said, and as anyone in debt or struggling with decluttering and messy houses can tell you, and while avoiding sin will reduce suffering as any counsellor can tell you, Christianity is not about avoiding, but embracing. Embracing a person, and dancing with him where he leads, sometimes on the mountain tops and sometimes in the valleys, sometimes in the wilderness and deserts, and sometimes through green pastures.
Bless me, oh Lord, and may I dance with you on the heights, the mountain peaks, though green valleys, quiet waters and places of blessing, but Lord, better the wilderness and desert with you, than the fleshpots of Egypt or the milk and honey of the promised land without you.
Amen
Read my new memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India (US) or UK.
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My book of essays: Wandering Between Two Worlds (US) or UK
Thanks Jennifer. I've never seen “Live your wage.”
I like the Dickens philosophy on money. There's a bumper sticker I see here fairly often that says “Live Your Wage.”
And the Christ way of grace (and suffering) is the best answer.