Do we own our stuff or does it own us?

I have been developing a theory that our stuff multiplies at night when we’re not watching. OK, so it isn’t a particularly rational theory, but admit it, how often do you look around and say “where did all this stuff come from!?”

This seems to be a universal problem in the developed world. No one seems to be immune from the plague of ever expanding piles of possessions. It is especially scary that even for those of us who live in monasteries stuff has a way of accumulating, multiplying and taking up all the space that we allot for it. Even monks and nuns aren’t immune from the tentacles of stuff.

St. Benedict, the founder of monastic life in the west, lived long before the era of cheap, disposable goods. But even in the 6th century when he wrote his rule for monks, he knew the dangers of accumulation. Although Benedict is generally very flexible and pragmatic about monastic life he takes a particularly hard line on the subject of possessions (the polite word for “stuff”). He says “….without an order from the abbot [leader of the monastery], no one may presume to give, receive 3or retain anything as his own, nothing at all—not a book, writing tablets or stylus—in short, not a single item, 4especially since monks may not have the free disposal even of their own bodies and wills. Rule of Benedict chapter 33:2-4

Unlike modern people Benedict wasn’t just worried that his monks would run out of room for their stuff, he knew that the danger was much deeper and more insidious. He knew that our possessions change how we think. The more we own the less freedom we have. Our belongings start to control our lives. Pretty soon we think we “need” all kinds of things. Next, our life is oriented towards accumulating those things that we have convinced ourselves we can’t live without. We need to work harder, make more money, spend more time shopping for all the belongings that we “have to have” or that we simply want in order to make us feel better. Before long we need more space for our possessions, we spend all kinds of time caring for them, maintaining them, sorting through them, cleaning them, getting rid of them, worrying about them. In other words pretty soon we don’t own stuff, it owns us.

When our stuff starts to own us, rather than vice versa, we have lost a fundamental sense of freedom. For Christians and other people of faith there is a fundamental freedom in knowing and experiencing the reality that everything, our very lives, are a gift from God. Ultimately, as Benedict reminds his monks, we don’t own anything, all that we think we own is really a gift that we don’t necessarily or even particularly deserve. If we are able to truly embrace this reality then there is a paradoxical freedom. If we aren’t entitled to anything, much less a house full of stuff, then we can begin to be grateful. Instead of complaining, feeling empty, focused on what we want, we can begin to just appreciate the gift of our most basic and fundamental possessions. Most of us live in houses that are palatial by the world’s standards. We feast at vast banquets every day. We have hot, running water on demand. Automobiles take us wherever we want to go, whenever we want to go. And those are just the material possessions.

Even those of us who live the contemporary monastic way of life don’t live up to Benedict’s strict standards. We don’t own a lot (we don’t have enough room to accumulate a lot!) but we do have personal possessions. But we do make a commitment to struggle with the siren song of stuff. In the monastery our temptations may not be much different from those outside the monastery but by living in community with a common commitment to a simple life centered on God, we can perhaps accumulate less stuff and become less enmeshed in its grip. Monastic life is a chance to begin to divest ourselves of a sense of entitlement. We have to take a cold, hard look at what we really need and not just what we want. It isn’t easy, one person’s “want” is another person’s “need.” But hopefully our common struggle is a witness that if we begin to disentangle ourselves from the tentacles of our possessions there is a possibility for a life of freedom, gratitude and peace, a reward that seems more than worth the cost of a lot of stuff. When we begin to really divest ourselves of our sense of entitlement, when we reach a place where we can just give thanks for what we have, then perhaps that is the place where transformation really begins.

Subversive Benedict

It is probably just as well that Benedict doesn’t live in our time or that nobody other than a few monastics and fellow travelers read his Rule today. Benedict has some pretty subversive stuff in there. Today the reading from the Rule was a little short chapter entitled “Distribution of Goods According to Need.” Now that right there is should send tremors down the spine of anyone well acquainted with our culture. The old Tina Turner song was “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” The theme song of our culture should be “What’s Need Got To Do With It?”

Our culture is based on desire and consumption. When was the last time you bought something that you really, truly needed? OK, maybe that loaf of bread, but probably not necessarily the extra fancy, 7 grain artisanal bread that you like so much. Perhaps your last pair of jeans, but did they have to be that one particular brand that frankly makes your butt look less big? Yeah, probably not. We are trained from our earliest days to want more, to desire just the right thing and think that it is our God-given right to have that one particular thing, or masses of things, that we have been conditioned to want.

This in turn is what drives our economy. When we do not consume enough stuff, stuff that most of us don’t need, stuff that we have been conditioned to think we can’t live without, then our economy suffers, and some of us may begin to experience the strange phenomenon of actual need.

Benedict would have no clue what to make of this strange, dysfunctional culture we live in. His community was based on a very simple, very radical premise. First, everyone knew (or should know) the difference between what they wanted and what they needed. And second, they would then be able to get what they needed. Then in turn each person was supposed to be satisfied with what they received.

How can we even begin to unpack what that might look like in our lives? Most of us, even those of us who struggle to live simply, are bombarded with so many choices, so many enticing, intriguing, beguiling forms of “stuff” that we probably can’t really distinguish wants from needs. Just as the abundance of food makes it hard to know when we are really hungry, the easy availability of everything our hearts may desire makes it hard to know how little we really need.

Would you like an easy, quick lesson in humility? Simply look around your house and see how few things you really need to live. It shouldn’t be a lesson in guilt, we did not create this culture and we may be doing our best to change it. The point is what do we do with the reality of all that we have? Benedict says that those who have been given more should feel humbled on account of their weakness, a weakness that has lead to their greater need. Perhaps in our culture of tremendous abundance this is where we should begin, with overwhelming humility and perhaps compunction that our needs, whether real or perceived, are so great.

Perhaps out of that deep realization of having too much at the expense of those who are truly in need, something new can be born in our society. Benedict imagined a society that would imitate the early Church community of Acts: Distribution was made to each one as he had need (Acts 4:35). In a society that has drifted so far from this early ideal maybe the ever ancient, always new ideal of monasticism can bring us back to the society we were meant to be.