DREAMING OF A
GREEN CHRISTMAS
Frank
Carpenter, D. Min.
December 17,
2006
For our Jewish
friends, Chanukah began at sundown this past Friday. According to the legends, the temple in
When the
Jewish people retook the temple with the leadership of Judas Maccabeus, they
removed the Greek altars. The menorah,
the eight-branched candelabrum which was supposed to be kept burning all the time,
was out. It would take them eight days
to make new oil for the menorah. They searched
and search, but all they were able to find was a small bowl, enough oil to keep
the menorah burning for one day.
And then, the
miracle: the menorah burned for eight days with that oil which was just enough
for one day.
If it was
enough oil for eight days, would it have been enough for nine days? It is interesting that the story does not relate
that they did not keep the menorah burning with the oil from the small bowl,
but apparently used the new oil they had made.
Would the oil
from the original bowl have been enough to burn for nine days? That is not the story. The story is that there was enough. Enough for what? Enough, just enough for what they
needed. Enough oil.
Do you have
enough of what you need? How much is
enough?
Our reading by
Wayne Muller for this morning is entitled “The Way of Enough.” He talks about a friend of his who
makes
a crucial distinction between abundance
– a fearful response to scarcity – and sufficiency
– which invokes an experience of satisfaction and well-being. Sufficiency is that moment when we have
enough. What is enough? After a meal, our craving for food
dissolves. After we have arrived at our
destination, we no longer need the map that brought us there. After a drink from a cool fountain, we are no
longer desperate to find water. The
instant we have enough, dissatisfaction and desire melt away (SABBATH 201)
Fearful of scarcity
we are diverted from whether we have enough, and we want more. We stuff ourselves at Thanksgiving. We stuff ourselves at Christmas. More! But
really, enough would have been fine. The
poet Muriel Spark marks how critical this distinction can be in her poem, “The
Goose:”
Do
you want to know why I am alive today?
I
will tell you.
Early
on, during the food-shortage,
Some
of us were miraculous presented
Each
with a goose that laid a golden egg.
Myself,
I killed the cackling thing and I ate it.
Alas,
many and many other of the recipients
Died
of gold-dust poisoning. (Keillor, 14)
Asking how
much is a green question: how much heat do we need? How much gasoline do we want? How much garbage do we want?
At this season
of the year, this Christmas season, instead of dreaming of a white Christmas,
or a red Christmas. Let’s dream about a
green Christmas and what is enough, how much is sufficient?
Watching the Christmas
ads on the television, I get the feeling that they are challenging me. Do I have enough presents under the tree? My presents do not make for a four foot high
pile around the tree. No child will be
able to dive into the presents, as into a pile of autumn leaves.
Today’s
Christmas is a vast capitalist enterprise, having more to do with shopping than
with giving. Ads galore!
A thousand
times a day, in a million forms, calling to us from bill boards, magazines, television,
radio, newspapers, movies, web sites, and telemarketers, every single message
without exception is this: You are not enough.
You do not have enough. And you
are NOT happy. You have not achieved the
American Dream. Not “you are the light
of the world.” Not “Peace on Earth, good
will to all.” Not “Do unto others as you
would have them to unto you.” But
rather, “you are not happy.” Look,
listen, is this not true?
As the old auctioneer
in Arthur Miller’s play “The Price” remarks, “It used to be, you were unhappy,
go to church to pray; go start a revolution.
Today? You’re unhappy? Go
shopping.”
And what have
we become?
This past
week, the Census Bureau drew up this profile from its data:
Americans
drank more than 23 gallons of bottled water per person in 2004 — about 10 times
as much as in 1980. We consumed more than twice as much high fructose corn
syrup per person as in 1980 and remained the fattest inhabitants of the planet,
although Mexicans, Australians, Greeks, New Zealanders and Britons are not too
far behind.
At the same
time, Americans spent more of their lives than ever — about eight-and-a-half
hours a day — watching television, using computers, listening to the radio.
Can we be surprised
at this, given a culture which repeatedly tells us that enough is not enough,
that we do not have enough things under, around the Christmas tree? There are now over 4 billion square feet of
land devoted to shopping malls. Perhaps
it is too late to defeat Wal-Mart!
Go out and buy,
you do not have enough.
But that is
not a spiritual way of life. The spiritual
take on life is that more and more material things only proves that you have
more and more of material things. While
it is said that the guy with the most toys wins, what can he win? Another toy?
Never enough toys, never enough under the Christmas tree.
Morris Berman describes
our lives in this consumer culture, “We live in a collective adrenaline rush, a
world of endless promotional/commercial bullshit that masks a deep systemic
emptiness, the spiritual equivalent of asthma. (page 54)
Sometimes I
wonder if our all consuming consumer culture is a form of revenge by native
peoples of
Consider the
potlatch. The potlatch is an aspect of tribes in the northwest. There the prestige of a person is bound up
with expenditure, and with the duty of returning with interest gifts received
in such a way that the creditor becomes the debtor. Consumption and destruction are virtually
unlimited. One is constrained to expend everything
one possesses and to keep nothing. The
rich man who shows his wealth by spending recklessly is the man who wins
prestige. Political and individual status
is determined by this war of property. Rivalry
and antagonism are basic. Sometimes there
is no question of receiving return; one destroys simply in order to give the appearance
that one has no desire to receive anything back. Whole cases of candlefish or whale oil,
houses, and blankets by the thousand are burnt.
The most valuable coppers are broken and thrown into the sea to level
and crush a rival. Progress up the
social ladder is made in this way not only for oneself but also for one’s
family.
Such was
keeping up with the Jones. Is this what
we are being reduced to? When is enough
enough?
Enough is an
inner practice. It is being satisfied
with what one has at the moment. Not
worrying about tomorrow. As Henry David Thoreau
wrote, “I make myself rich by making my wants few.” A spiritual approach means
that it’s the thought that counts, not counting the presents under the
tree. It means not trying to put more
food on the table than everyone needs.
Rather than
the numberless pies and cakes on the dessert table, and the mountains of
presents around the Christmas trees, what is important, what helps us see the distinction
between enough and too much, between sufficiency and abundance is the sharing
of memories and stories. An old story
suggests this to us.
It is said
that …when the founder of Hasidic Judaism, the great Rabbi Israel Shem Tov, saw
misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of
the forest to meditate. There he would
light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and
the misfortune averted.
Later, when
his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same
reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest
and say: “Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire,
but I am still able to say the prayer,” and again the miracle would be
accomplished.
Still later,
Rabbi Moshe-leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into
the forest and say, “I do not know how to light the fire. I do not know the prayer, but I know the
place and this must be enough.’ It was enough, and the miracle was
accomplished.
Then it fell
to Rabbi
And it was
enough.
For God made humanity,
the Hasidim claim, because he loves stories.
What stories
help us understand what is enough at this season? For me, the most important part of the Christmas
legends tells of the angels bending low over the hills. They tell the shepherds to fear not, for the
bring tidings of great comfort and joy.
Notice, they
don’t bring great comfort and joy, only tidings, reports of great comfort.
What they
bring is a promise of peace on Earth, good will toward all. This story more than
any other tells me what these holidays are all about. In our war torn world, where children suffer
and women are abused, still the promise awakens us, brings us hope.
Is it
enough? Is the promise of peace on
earth, a promise that has not been fulfilled since that night two thousand years
ago, is it in some sense, enough?
Only if the
angels are still present, I think, only if the angels are still singing. But where are the angels?
To my mind, we
must be the angels. It is up to us to
keep on singing of the promises of peace on earth, good will to all. It is up
to us to keep hope alive; it is up to us to keep the promise alive. And this will be enough. It will be enough if we remember the
story. It will be enough if we remember the
promise. It will be enough if we take
the angels’ places and keep making the promises. Perhaps peace is beyond our reach. But it will be enough if we keep the hope of
peace alive, if we sing of peace.
It will be
enough if we know that it is up to us, not to divine intervention, to bring peace
to our world. It will be enough if we overcome divisions amongst ourselves,
warm ourselves and all those who hear.
It will be enough if we sing the promise that we shall overcome war and
poverty.
For a brief few
minutes, let us pretend that we are the angels.
Let us sing “We Shall Overcome” as if we were the angels bending low over
the hills of