Stuff

Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or -- worse! -- stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moth and rust and burglars. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.

There were moments that I honestly thought there was no way that we would survive the last week. We are now packed, loaded, moved out of the house, and officially "on the road." Strangely, though, I feel decidedly un-Jack-Kerouacish. Mostly, I just feel tired.

We arrived in Houston yesterday afternoon after leaving Milwaukee Friday night with a full car-load of our stuff and stopping to see Lynn's sister Jane (Hi, Jane!) in Stevens Point. Saturday, we drove as far as Arkansas and then finished the drive yesterday. In the preceding six days, we had the rather wrenching experiences of tearing apart the place that had been our home for the past fifteen years and saying "see you later" to all of our friends and family. Most of our stuff got loaded into a pod that will be shipped to Houston and stored for us, and a least one more car-load is waiting in Mom and Dad's attic.

The emotion of it all didn't really hit me until we were all loaded and ready to leave and we did our final walk-through, and then I really broke down. It wasn't so much from sadness about leaving our house, though there is an element of that because we have put so much of ourselves and our creativity into it. It was more from the accumulated stress of the week and the fear and uncertainty of leaving the house unsold while we are gone.

That fear was exacerbated by our garage being broken into on Tuesday night. We spent all day Tuesday loading the pod, and someone apparently noticed that we had some stuff waiting in the garage and came back, broke down the door, and stole it. We lost all our crystal, half of our china, and worst, my two guitars and amplifier.

We've been broken into twice before, and people often talk about the feeling of "being violated." I don't know that I have ever really felt that. More than violation, I feel anger that there are predators in this world who take advantage of others for their own gain; the idea of stealing someone else's stuff is so far out of my own psyche that I can't even imagine it. If I knew it was some modern-day Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry family, I'd feel different, but knowing that it's probably going to feed a crack addiction or something makes it really tough to not take on David's mantle of righteous anger and cry to the heavens, "When wilt Thou slay the wicked, oh Lord?"

But laying aside that emotional response, it's really not that big a deal. OK, sure, it created a whole new hassle in a week that was filled enough with them. But apart from all that, it's just some stuff that we lost. How often do we use our china? Yes, there is an emotional attachment to the guitars, one of which was given to me for Christmas by my parents when I was 13, and the other by Lynn and our college friends for my birthday right before we got married. Losing them does hurt. But ultimately, they're just stuff. I'll buy a new guitar, and OK, maybe it won't be the same one, but that's just one more part of the story.

The whole congregation of believers was united as one -- one heart, one mind! They didn't even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, "That's mine; you can't have it." They shared everything. And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy.

Interestingly, this fits in very nicely with a big philosophical conversation that Lynn and I have been having over the course of the entire past two years that we have been planning the move. It relates to how we as Christians deal with material things, the "stuff" that life offers us. How much is enough, and how much is too much?

We are big fans of a show on HGTV called "Small Space, Big Style," and I love seeing how some people fit their entire life into a tiny apartment or something. We decided we really wanted to do that, and eliminate much of the most-useless stuff in our life. I mean, you would not believe the stuff we had accumulated through the years. In our basement, there were boxes of stuff that we had not unpacked from college, for crying out loud! What's the point of that?

We came to the realization some time ago that we had more house than we needed, even though our house was quite modest to begin with. One bedroom served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. It was literally empty, except for the closet. And did we really need that formal living room and dining room that we hardly ever sat in, even when we had guests? We decided that when we moved, we were really going to work on paring down our stuff and living more simply.

But as our conversation has continued, it has become become even more philosophical. What does "enough" mean? Is the concept of "enough" subjective, or objective? As long as God is more important to you than your stuff, is it OK to still keep a lot of stuff?

Jesus said, "There's only one thing left to do: Sell everything you own and give it away to the poor. You will have riches in heaven. Then come, follow me." This was the last thing the official expected to hear. He was very rich and became terribly sad. He was holding on tight to a lot of things and not about to let them go.

I am not an ascetic; I don't believe that God requires us to take a vow of poverty and literally give away everything we have in order to be His followers. But I also don't believe that Jesus was kidding when He said that, or using hyperbole to make a point, or only speaking to the rich young ruler specifically. I'm still trying to work this all out.

What about my TV (which we just sold -- enjoy, Jan and Diedre!), for example? It listed at $1000 when we bought it on clearance for $450. That's a pretty good deal and it made me feel better about spending the money on something as frivolous as a larger TV. It wasn't ostentatious or anything, but did we really need it? Couldn't we have just continued to get by with the older 23" model we had?

Stuff. It's seductive. Just one hit and you want more.

We're about to go to some of the poorest countries on the planet, and I fully expect to be hit hard by the poverty that I see. When I've seen really poor people before, like in Mexico, one thing I note is that lack of stuff and unhappiness do not automatically go hand-in-hand. And I know the opposite to be true as well.

I don't think it's an accident that this conversation is happening when we are going to be visting a lot of countries that are primarily Buddhist. I think that the Buddha was onto something with the whole idea about releasing your hold on the material world. Jesus and the Buddha probably could have had a nice chat over coffee on that subject -- if either of them had owned a coffee maker.

I don't know where the conversation is going. But I know I'm not going to be the same person I am now once it gets there.