Basil the Great once said, “The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of one who is naked. The shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of one who is barefoot. The money you keep locked away is the money of the poor.”
These are difficult words to hear, especially after Christmas and during the New Year sales. So many of us amass possessions to an extent that would have shocked holy Basil. Our modern life provides so much that is enticing and desirable; from clever electronic devices that we can’t live without, to every possible comfort in our homes and gardens, to more clothes than would have been imaginable even fifty years ago. There are even television programmes whose sole content is the programme’s host helping people, overwhelmed by their possessions, to dispose of some and store efficiently the rest. There are more programmes which help the viewer to decide which device, or car, or even garden plant, they cannot do without. We live in a place and at time the author of Gulliver’s Travels would have thought too fantastical to invent. In fact, Jonathan Swift could not even have imagined it.
Does all this plenty indicate satisfaction and happiness? It certainly means we have created mounds of waste of every description. But what is the answer? How do we resist the temptations of online shopping and January bargains? Perhaps with a new appreciation of sufficiency: to quote an old Shaker hymn:
‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
Maybe that should be all our New Year’s resolution – every year’s resolution. For the sake of our planet our consumer based economy needs to learn to consume less.
Happy New Year!
William