Friendly Neighborhood Blight

I've been more and more fascinated by the array of empty buildings in and around my Washington 'burb these last few weeks. It began last year, as the nearby grocery store folded. Another store chain was slated to take that place, but though the building has been gutted and prepared for a complete revamp, nothing much is happening lately. It's just sitting there, as windowless and wall-less as the DC Wasteland stores I wandered through while playing Fallout 3.

In that same strip mall, the costume shop is closed, and two stores down, the nail salon folded.

Across the street from the strip-mall, a 7-11 I've frequented for the two decades suddenly shuttered itself. This was a source of great dismay to my sons, for whom it was the great font of all Slurpee goodness. No more walks to get a cool treat on a hot summer day. It's down for the count.

Just a few dozen yards away from that, a Shell station has been abandoned, and to make it cheerier, the owners of the property painted the entire thing in a dark grey primer. I suppose the idea is that a new owner could paint it any color they liked, but the net effect is a little on the goth side. Properties don't move well if they seem moody and depressed.

This morning, as I waited outside a sporting goods store to buy the four-hundred-and-thirteenth pair of goggles we've had to get this summer, I looked out across the vast empty expanse of parking lot at the now-unused big-box electronics store that went bankrupt this spring. They deserved to go out of business, sure. But looking at the acre of asphalt in front of the store, I can't help but see the whole thing as a complete waste.

It's easy to get used to this absence, in the same way that I'm used to the vast expanses of empty pews in my oversized sanctuary. It reminds me that growth is not always good, that bigger that is not always better, and that we human beings have been overbuilding and overconsuming for thousands and thousands of years. We were certainly doing it back in the second half of the eighth century BCE, when the Prophet Isaiah laid into the endless consumptiveness of his fellow Jerusalem elites:

Woe to you who add house to house
and join field to field
till no space is left
and you live alone in the land.

The LORD Almighty has declared in my hearing:
"Surely the great houses will become desolate,
the fine mansions left without occupants..."

Not sure if an abandoned Circuit City counts as a great house or a fine mansion, but it sure is large and empty. And things are better here in the 'burbs of DC than in most places in the country.

Yeah, I know, it's supposed to be part of the "creative destruction" of capitalism. But real creativity produces beautiful things, not blighted mediocrity.

I Have Had Enough

Although things seem to be turning around a tick, I find myself wondering if I am responsible for the recent economic downturn. Not me personally, mind you. But my attitude towards both money and possessions.

It isn't that I don't like stuff. Stuff is cool. I enjoy stuff. But I seem congenitally incapable of wanting things that are somehow better than the things I already have. Take motorcycles, for instance. I ride a 2000 Yamaha YZF600R. It's a bit aged, and looks more and more like a Mad Max ratbike as the years slip by. But when I bought it used a few years back, it was only after very carefully considering everything I was looking for in a bike. Fast? Check. Decent looking? Check. Fuel efficient? Very. Comfortable? Reasonably. It has a touring range that puts big touring Beemers and Gold Wings to shame...I've seen over 300 miles on a single tank. It's exactly the bike I wanted. And it still is. New bikes are appealing in the abstract, but there really is no reason to get one so long as my current ride is still running well.

So I fail an entire industry.

Or take our van. It's a seven year old Honda, again bought used. Though it's starting to show it's age, I still marvel at just how thoroughly it meets our needs. So I fail the struggling automotive industry. Or our house, which is a rumpled little hobbit-hole rambler built back in the early 60s. Sure, things need to be fixed and replaced...but it's not a starter home. It's plenty of space for the four of us. It always will be. We just don't need or want anything more, and so I fail the housing industry.

And I fail at that task willfully. Joyously, even.

Yesterday during my walking meditation, right before things got intense, the Hebrew word dayenu fluttered down and alighted in my consciousness.

It's a part of the Passover celebration, and is typically recited as a way of giving thanks for all of God's blessings. It means, roughly, "it would have been enough." During the Passover meal, that term is said over and over again, as the participants give thanks for each of the ways in which Israel was delivered from slavery. Each of them alone is enough to merit joy and thanksgiving, even if none of the rest of them had occurred. It is an expression of basic satisfaction.

Dayenu is, I think, the greatest enemy of consumer culture. Having that as one's attitude towards the life in which we find ourselves is a liberation the endless grasping acquisitiveness of our society. It is a counterbalance against that gnawing, desperate sense that we are not good enough, or smart enough, or rich enough, or pretty enough, and that we must constantly struggle with one another to prove our worth.

This is a particularly useful thing for a pastor to grasp. So what if my church doesn't seat 4,500 in each of our five Sunday services? So what if I'm flagrantly imperfect? For those ways my church is a joy, and for the ways I am able to make a difference, it is better not to fret and anguish and scheme. It's better to just say, dayenu, and let that attitude of gratefulness define all else.

I'm Rather Fond of Trebuchets, Actually

There was a fascinating editorial in the WaPo this last week written by Robert J. Samuelson, a conservative economic commentator whose writings are always thought provoking. It was a description of what he perceives as an assault on the foundation of American capitalism, entitled "Capitalism Under Siege."

Most of the article referred back to the work of eminent economist Joseph Schumpeter, who felt that capitalism contained within itself the seeds of it's own destruction. In addition to it's dynamism, which we enjoy during the boom times but that seriously bugs us during the busts, capitalism's creation of excess resources establishes:

...an oppositional class of "intellectuals" who would nurture popular discontents and disparage values (self-enrichment, risk-taking) necessary for economic success.

As I read this, I found myself agreeing, but thinking that perhaps it isn't just "intellectuals" who are the problem for capitalism. The threat to the core values of capitalism does not just come from leftist professors on campus and busybodies who need to get out there and have a real job.

It comes, I think, from Christianity as well. Working diligently is a Christian virtue, sure. So is being willing to take risks and not cling to the things that this world values. Complacence and indolence wouldn't have gotten the apostles very far.

But self-enrichment? Not really. Christian faith has very little use for self enrichment. If it happens to us as a collateral result of our hard work, then...well...you have more responsibilities in terms of how those resources are used. As a goal towards which we orient ourselves, though, it is rather explicitly and repeatedly rejected by our Lord and Savior.

It's why folks like Ayn Rand despised Jesus people...because within His life and teachings, there lies something very very incompatible with the competitive culture of self that is at the beating heart of the free market.