Not What We Have, But What We Enjoy
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I’d like to tell you a story, a true story, that a friend of mine witnessed firsthand. It’s about a congregation in the midst of a holiday food drive for a local food bank. Members of the congregation were asked to fill brown paper shopping bags with food. The suggestion was that they go to the grocery store and purchase the sorts of things they would buy for themselves, focusing on canned and packaged goods that the food pantry could stock without needing to refrigerate.
When the food drive was finished, and the congregation had collected all of those bags, they had a huge amount of food. So a group from the congregation got together the next morning to sort all of it. Part of their job was to check to make sure that it was all food that could be donated, since public food pantries can’t accept badly dented or rusted cans, or boxed or bagged food past its expiration date.
As the volunteers were sifting and sorting, they’d pull out pieces that couldn’t be donated and put them in a pile for expired food. In the beginning none of them thought much about it, but then the pile started to grow. For the most part, it wasn’t recently expired stuff; it was things that were years out of date: packaging from the early ‘90s, with brands that had long since gone out of business.
Now at first, the volunteers imagined the kindest explanations they could think off or why someone would donate a whole bag full of expired food. Supermarkets aren’t always careful either, and someone might have bought a lot of spaghetti or rice without checking the label. But that didn’t explain how much there was. And not everybody can afford to donate a whole bag of food, when they’re having trouble keeping themselves and their families fed to begin with. So it might be that some families, ashamed to come to services without a bag to donate, just did the best they could.
But that still couldn’t explain how much visibly old food there was, some of it clearly inedible. The only explanation that was left was that some of the folks in the congregation had gotten their bags for the food drive and simply swept in the discarded, forgotten contents of their own pantries.
How narrow our hearts can become, when we do not devote ourselves to opening them wider. Trying to explain the mentality that would allow someone to offer a stranger food they would never serve to their own children, one obvious answer is contempt. Contempt for the poor and hungry among us is common enough in our world, where there are powerful messages from many corners telling us that we deserve what we get. That the rich deserve to be rich, and the poor—well, they deserve that too.
But if all you had in your heart was contempt, why donate anything? Why even go to the service to begin with? When I try to imagine the folks in this situation, what I see are people trying to do what is right, trying to show a kindness to other human beings. But that kindness is hemmed in, forced into a narrow place by fear: the fear of scarcity, the fear that there isn’t enough.
A sense of scarcity—that there’s not enough to go around, so I need everything I have or can get—can arise from a place of real need. But truly not having enough does not automatically move every person towards that outlook, and it’s easy to take that narrow view even when our basic needs are being met. Comedian Louis C.K. commented on the daily wonders that surround us in the modern age, technologies and experiences that would have been unthinkable a century ago, describing the situation this way: “Everything is amazing right now, and nobody’s happy.”
In Judaism, Shabbat—the Sabbath— begins on Friday evening and runs until just after sunset on Saturday. It’s a time of rest and celebration, and a traditional way of marking it is with good food.
Many of you have probably eaten challah before. One of these special foods, it has a distinctive appearance because the dough is braided before it’s baked, and a distinctive taste because it usually has egg in it, and sometimes a sweetener. One of my rabbis once pointed out to me that for almost all Jews living in Eastern Europe 200 years ago, challah was a special treat. They couldn’t enjoy it every day, because it took extra work to make and was too expensive, so having it on Shabbat was something that made the day special.
Today in America you can buy it in the grocery store, for no more than many other breads sell for. The specialness isn’t there anymore. Challah, like many consumer goods, has become cheaper and more available—it has literally become more abundant—but this material abundance comes at the expense of a larger message of spiritual and emotional scarcity.
We live in a world where art, entertainment, and even political discourse are inherently bound up with advertisement— the all-day, every-day effort to convince us that we are not presently happy, but could be if we just bought something. There is a line by Leonard Cohen that I believe describes the problem. He sings, “You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.” It is all too easy to get caught up in the race for signs of success, the things we are culturally trained to want and enjoy. But they are distractions from the way of life that our deepest selves are calling us to live.
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus felt that life’s greatest pleasures were simple ones: good food and the company of friends. It was a goal of his philosophy to attain ataraxia, which means a state of peace and freedom from fear. Epicurus wrote, “Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.” Those words have never been more relevant than they are today, in a world driven too much by having, and not enough by enjoying.
The scarcity mindset that saps our generosity of spirit, that keeps some hungry and others well-fed but afraid ,is opposed by an attitude of abundance. Because when we truly enjoy life, we do not fear to share it with others. As we approach freedom from fear, we can begin to trust that there will be enough. Enough food on our tables. Enough love in our hearts.
We need to move, each day, away from the disposability that directs too much of our world, and towards sustainability. For this to be possible requires, first, a reasonable degree of security.
While it is certainly possible to think abundantly when you don’t have enough food to eat, or a place to live, or a sense of basic physical safety, that doesn’t make those shortages right.
My grandfather grew up during the depression, and at every dinner for the rest of his life, he always wanted bread on the table. Simple, sliced white bread. That was what he needed to feel secure, to know that there would be enough for him and his family. If there’s bread on the table, no one has to go to bed hungry. With that security, he could better enjoy the meal and the company. He could live abundantly.
Another essential requirement, after security, is service. Any pleasure that depends on us hiding from the pain of others is fragile and fleeting, and ultimately false; we know ourselves only by knowing others.
Ten years ago, I was a volunteer at the Grace Smith House, a domestic violence shelter in Eastern New York. My work there was not much to boast about: some light childcare, manual labor, household chores and the like. There was one night when I was helping a new arrival get situated in her room. She had an infant daughter whom she had brought to the shelter with her. They’d escaped an unsafe home in the middle of the winter with the clothes they were wearing, a bag of diapers and not much else. The mom had her hands full with the baby, so I was helping to get their room ready. I got pillows and bedclothes from a storage room, I put sheets on the mattress, and I was spreading out a blanket when she said something.
She’d been watching me while bouncing her baby up and down, and said, “I’ve never seen a man make a bed before.” Ten years later, those words still haunt me. They still shape the way I am in the world; they still teach me what sort of husband and father I want to be.
We Unitarian Universalists find meaning in all sorts of places, not only in scripture and ancient revelation, but also in events of the present day. In order to live in a world of abundance, a world in which there is enough for us and for everyone, we not only have to believe it is possible, we also must do our part to make it so.
Kelly holds a B.A. from Bard College and a Master of Divinity degree from Starr King School for the Ministry. Before coming to First Parish, Kelly served as a hospital chaplain at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY, and as part-time parish minister at Pullman Memorial Universalist Church in Albion, NY. Kelly and his partner Sara were married in 2004. They welcomed their first child, Miriam, in 2008 and their second, Mordecai, in 2012. Miriam, Mordecai, Sara, and Kelly live in Beverly where, after many vagabond years, they are happy to finally be at home.
- Not What We Have, But What We Enjoy - October 1, 2015
