Too much with us

Too much with us

“The world is too much with us, late and soon, / Getting and spending we lay waste our powers . . .” These opening lines of a Wordsworth sonnet (written among rolling English hills that make me wonder what “too much” looked like in 1807) come to me often as I make the rounds from Trader Joe’s to the Emigh’s hardware looking for parking. I thought of them yesterday as I juggled three bags of groceries trying to get my key into the lock.

I think of them also as I delete pop-up ads that annoy me but attract my eye because one of them shows a tunic I like and another patio furniture we could use now that it’s spring. Someone has done studies of how much energy we expend just deleting those ads—let alone clicking, perusing, considering, and buying. It’s sobering. And it’s easier these days than it once was to recognize exactly when my powers are dwindling and in danger of being “laid waste.”

Lent is a good time, of course, for less getting and spending, less eating, less squandering of time on costly drivel. But a new season is coming of birthdays and graduations and summer travel. And as we thread our way through those events it’s something of a challenge to think about when, exactly is the “time to get” and “time to lose” or “keep” or “cast away.” as Ecclesiastes puts it.

I have no stones to throw; I’m American and “middle-class”—whatever that has come to mean—and try to buy responsibly and am caught in the same web of commercial pressures and carbon-based fuels and plastics as the rest of my kind. But in the midst of the errands and ads and eating, I do find myself these days thinking more urgently about what “enough” looks like. For a lot of us, “enough” happened some time ago.

I don’t think Jesus’ warnings about having too much “stuff” (building bigger barns, etc.) were meant to induce guilt or warn of divine punishment; I think they were more like statements of observable, objective fact: the more stuff you have the more energy you spend on the stuff you have. At some point you really can’t have a healthy spiritual—or even physical—life if you’re expending your energies on what you buy, locate, lose, relocate, maintain, and eventually replace.

But reducing things also often means changing relationships. It is interesting to consider, as holiday seasons succeed one another, what hospitality requires, and what generosity looks like. Do we need to invest in the aforementioned patio furniture? Replace the aging towels? Serve hors d’oeuvres? If we do those things, can we do them with real delight, generosity of spirit, and imagination so they’re not laying waste our powers, but are practical acts of love?

What we can “afford” is a question that has to do with so much more than finances. Even when we factor in time and energy as well as money, the question remains: what kind of acquiring and having help sustain love of God and each other? What expenditures help me live in a way that serves the common good? What equipment widens my imagination for others lives and needs and hopes, and helps me attend to them? Sometimes stuff does that. It seems good, as the lovely Advent hymn puts it, to “make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table.” It seems good to buy soft blankets for the guest bed, and to make sure our home has music in it. It also seems good, more than once a year—perhaps once a week—to observe a “buy-nothing day” when getting and spending give way to walking and talking and writing and reading and reflecting or resting—even sitting in a big chair, falling asleep, rejoicing that we are not finally in charge, and that the world will trundle on without us for a little while. After that, we may be able to let our light shine even in the check-out line.