James 3:13 – 4:8
Hey! Hey Hey! That’s what I say.
For younger folks, well if you know, you know. For older worshipers, you had to expect me to go there.
But let’s not start with the Rolling Stones. Let’s start with another kind of quaking and shaking.
Earlier this month, the New York Times Magazine published a piece by Jordan Kisner on the last two Shakers. You may have read it.
Brother Arnold, at 67 years old, is still active in the administration of the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine, while Sister June, 86, has withdrawn from public life.
As many as 4000 individuals might have belonged to the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, the formal name of the movement, around the mid-19th century. They started as an offshoot of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as Quakers. They were called Shaking Quaker, hence the name.
While the story of both movements is fascinating, as are the theological resonances with our own Social Gospel tradition, it may not have been particularly strategic for the Shakers to embrace celibacy, making it hard to recruit. Needless to say, no one was really born a Shaker, though they historically took in foundlings.
Today, the Shakers are best known for two things other than slowly going extinct. Hard work and craft were at the center of their faith practice, and they produced remarkable furniture and architecture known for simplicity and utility. And every musician and most church folks know a Shaker tune, Simple Gifts, which was adapted by Aaron Copeland for the score of the Martha Graham ballet “Appalachian Spring.”
Simplicity and hard work seem like pretty good values these days, when bitter envy and selfish ambition, the topic of our reading from the letter attributed to James the Lesser, seem like the norm, and in some circles are even lauded. So let us once again spend some time on fear, desire, and that pervasive sense of worthlessness that eats at so many souls.
First, there is mimetic desire, the idea that if that other person wants that thing, it must be worth wanting. Mimetic as in we mimic the desires of others, even when the object of desire is objectively not worth it.
That first Stanley Quencher tumbler might have been better than water in disposable bottles, but your tenth, the Olivia Rodrigo limited edition, is not. Arnold Schwartzenegger and Sinbad might have done epic combat to secure a Turbo Man action figure in the 1996 comedy “Jingle All the Way,” but our FOMO, fear of missing out, is no laughing matter.
It is shocking how easily we are manipulated to value what is worthless! Even if something has a nominal value, say a night at a Taylor Swift concert, we manipulate desire and scarcity so that the amount of life a normal person must exchange for it becomes absurd, though like everything else in this economy, recreation and entertainment, so essential to a healthy life, are unevenly accessible.
Every single day we are bombarded with false scarcity and false urgency, especially during an election year. Every sales person tries the “price is going up next week” trick pretty much every single time, and it often works. “Sign now!”
I’ve been known to look sales people in the eye and say “Your company made the decision to raise prices. Your company can make the decision to sell me the product at the old rate. That is if you actually want to make the sale.”
The ecosystem of desire is one kind of fear. Then there is the fear that if you do not contribute to candidate X today there will be Fascists in the street tomorrow. Not to be too flip about it, but there are already Fascists in the streets. I want you to engage in the democratic process because you love your neighbor, not because of guilt or fear, even if those are perfectly valid feelings in light of the current situation.
More than anything else, FOMO is about self-worth, because the man on the television telling you how white your shirts should be when you can’t get no satisfaction is implying that you aren’t worth much if you’re not wearing a crisp white shirt. And by the way, your skin should be whiter too, if you are dark, darker if you are white, curly hair straighter and straight hair curlier, whatever will sell you what they are spinning.
In an economy driven by extraction and exploitation, maybe the word we should be looking for with the letter “E” is enough, seeking not the happiness of Madison Avenue always just out of reach, but instead the contentment of the truly spiritual, whether they be Shaker or Zen Buddhist or Sufi. Happy isn’t exactly bad, though I have qualms about who gets to define it, and in the end, I’d rather be useful.
We’ve long known the murderous power of corporations, but we are becoming increasingly clear about our own role in the destruction of lives and the life of the planet, once brought to our attention by Thoreau. It is no longer just about the American-made bombs dropped in Vietnam or Iraq or Gaza, but also about micro-plastics in our own brain tissue and forever chemicals in our milk.
It turns out the free market does not police itself and all too often we are complicit. It is no wonder that so many are joining “buy nothing” movements that eschew discretionary spending for periods of time or follow under-consumption influencers on Instagram or TikTok, the same platforms that drive so much consumption.
Enough. You are enough.
Your task is not too beat the high score of the last dude in life’s eternal game of Donkey Kong, even if you do feel like Mario dodging barrels sometimes. God is not call you to be Player Two. God is calling you to be Player You, the best you that you can be, and that sure isn’t measured by the stuff we buy, not even my latest cool pair of shoes.
Finally, a gentle reminder… under-consumption-core and buy less are a luxury. We should be careful where we glamorize and valorize our ability to opt-out, as there are so many who can barely afford and sometimes simply cannot afford the essentials, and they too are under the constant tyranny of mimetic desire and never-enough movement. Some send kids to school hungry who hear the same message as kids with privilege, that they are not enough unless they have that Stanley Quencher Tumbler or Taylor Swift’s latest album in the Blood Moon Vinyl Limited Edition.
Which is why we keep working for justice in an unjust system, why we can’t get no satisfaction as long as a single child is hungry, a single person feels trapped in a cycle of domestic violence, a single woman is forced to give birth to a child she cannot afford and did not want. Because unlike the Shakers, we’re cool with sex, baby or no baby. Or cool with no sex. Whatever gives you satisfaction, fills the world with love, and lives into your call as an everyday miracle in this amazing world. Amen.