And he said to them ‘Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not exist in the abundance of possessions’
Luke 12:15
Do you remember the Argos catalogue? My mum used to subscribe to a couple of catalogues in the 1980s. It was a delight to flick through the thin glossy pages in early December and share what I hoped Father Christmas would put under the tree. I never questioned why Father Christmas ran a catalogue business. After Christmas I would create collages by cutting out items. In an age when we scroll rather than flick it seems an oddly quaint form of consumerism.
The artist Theresa Bruno has spent months cutting out every item from the last Argos catalogue to be published and laminating them to reflect the catalogues on display in the stores. The whole piece takes up the floor in Yorkshire ArtSpace in Sheffield. She’s arranged the cut-out pieces in what look like rivers that swirl around the floor. This is more like my on-line shopping experience where I begin looking for a new set of saucepans but get caught up in the flow of the Amazon river and end up purchasing something else. One river ends with a pair of earrings - yep, that is me.
I remember hearing Ruth Valerio, who worked for the Christian environmental charity A Rocha before moving to TearFund, telling us to be more careful with our spending and to internally deliberate our consumer choices. She wasn’t being a kill-joy. She said that there was more joy and satisfaction in selecting something that we genuinely needed, that was of quality and that we had researched the environmental impact of. In other words, more Argos and less Amazon (other sites are available!).
Did Jesus flick or scroll? He wasn’t against the material world but lived simply and lightly. He lived according to the flow of the Spirit and didn’t drown in the abundance of possessions that, if we are not on our guard, end up possessing us.
Take a moment and pause the next time you are poised to make a purchase (online or on the High Street). Do you really need it? Is there a more environmentally friendly alternative? Could you make it or borrow it instead? Might there be more joy in that?
Suzanne Nockels
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