Breathe Network: May Update

Greetings from Breathe,

 

We hope you enjoyed Easter and have had plenty of chances for feasting since. Powerful though fasting is, thanks to Easter hope, it can always end in a feast!

 

‘Stuff’

This month Phil Whittall writes the first of a 4-part reflection: ‘What I once owned had begun to own me. That's what possessions can do, they can possess. But along comes Jesus and challenges this attitude, 'sell them and give away the proceeds,' but we walk away sad because, well, we have a lot of stuff.’ Read it in full below...

 

The Gathering – 8-9th October

Please think about clearing space on 8-9th October this year for our first ever ‘gathering’, run jointly with A Rocha’s Living Lightly group. We want to go deeper than a normal conference format allows so we’re planning a night (or two) away. More details coming soon...

 

Blog stuff

Lobby your MP about climate change as part of the Big Connection: www.thebigconnection.org

A fascinating, inspiring and challenging snapshot of the ‘ethical’ world (Go Yeo Valley yoghurts and Greg Valerio ethical gold!): http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/05/observer-ethical-awards-2011-shortlist  

Congratulations to Jeremy Williams, a friend and contributor to Breathe, on the birth of a son: http://makewealthhistory.org/2011/05/06/personal-update/ 

Let us know your stories at editor@breathenetwork.org

 

Breathe

 



 

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Stuff

 

As a family we’ll soon be moving house and moving house is one of those shared experiences that almost anyone can relate to. We all know what moving house means and so we all have similar stories to tell.

 

“I don’t know where all this stuff came from!”

“I never knew I had so much”

“It’s never going to fit in car/van/container/new house*” *delete as appropriate

 

I find myself having those same thoughts and I thought I was living simply. Turns out there’s more work to do to deal with both the desire to acquire and the resistance to removal that I find in my heart.

 

One of the defining features of consumerism is that not only do we throw away a lot of rubbish but we hold on to almost as much. The beginnings of modern consumerism can be traced back to the late 1950s and early 1960s and as it grew new industries and businesses began. One industry in particular illustrates the growth of consumerism and it's one that was born at the same time as the consumer society we live in today. It's strongest in the USA but in the past twenty years has taken off in the UK and Europe as well. I'm talking about the self-storage industry.

The facts are astonishing. In the US alone the industry generates annual sales of $20 billion. More remarkable is the amount of space which we need to put our extra stuff. The US industry has 2.35 billion square feet of space. That's 84 square miles or to put it another way - that's bigger than cities like Miami, Washington DC and almost as big as Paris. Make that one big space and everyone in America could stand inside.

And that, don't forget is the space needed for the stuff we don't really need but can't let go of. One British company described the development of the industry, “Self storage arrived in the late 1960s and its popularity grew in line with the escalation of the array of goods that became available to the consumer during the 70s. More goods invariably meant less storage for property-owners, particularly with new build offering limited storage capacity.”[i]

It sounds like smart business to me, someone spotted the way that society was going and developed a model to meet that need. What bothers me is that there was a need in the first place. A need no other generation in history has ever had before.

The need I think they saw was that we want to keep hold of what is ours. They saw how important our stuff had become to us, and I'm not just talking about things of sentimental value, but pretty much everything. Who we are had become connected inextricably to what we own. All across the developed world garages, lofts, attics and every other conceivable space had been used and now we needed more.

What is it about our stuff that makes it so hard to part with? Or perhaps we should be asking why the rate of our giving is not keeping up with the pace of our getting? Why can't we give more of it away? It's not a new dilemma; Jesus met one such individual who walked away from him sad, precisely because he couldn't get rid of his stuff[ii].

 

It's a simple, inevitable process and one that I suffer from just like everyone else. What I once owned had begun to own me. That's what possessions can do, they can possess. But along comes Jesus and challenges this attitude, 'sell them and give away the proceeds,' but we walk away sad because, well, we have a lot of stuff.

 

So moving presents us with the opportunity to do a soul check on our relationship with the things we own and also an opportunity to taste a little bit of freedom as we give, release, let go and trust that maybe, just maybe Jesus will look after me without that unused gadget box tucked away under the stairs.

 

Phil & his family will be moving to Sweden this summer to begin another church planting adventure.

 

[i]    http://www.safestore.co.uk/self_storage/default.aspx


[ii]   Mark 10:22