repurposed

In the home goods section of most department stores, you can find generic plaques with inspirational words like, �Family�Love�Memories� written in fancy scroll.

The other day I was walking through a Target in Portland when I saw one of these cream-colored plaques with black cursive writing. Except instead of �Family�Love�Memories,� it said, �Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.�

Only in Portland does the word �Recycle� make it into artwork, I thought.

The plaque makes for a tacky decoration, but I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind it, especially since I�ve been thinking recently about a Christian�s response to consumerism. Living in Portland where values like stewardship, conservation, and frugality are widely practiced makes this endeavor easier.

When I first began thinking about the implications of my spending habits, my initial response was guilt. I felt very, very guilty about where I shopped, what I bought, and the wages that people were paid to produce these goods. And that�s where my response started and stopped. Just feeling guilty, about most things, most of the time.

And then I began to feel guilty about feeling guilty and it got really ugly.

I think guilt is a common response, especially for people who have been brought up in a punitive religious culture where feeling guilty seems to be the actual chief end of man.

The problem is that feeling guilty is not a helpful response to anything. If it doesn�t change your heart or your actions, what does it matter?

But then there�s conviction, which is the healthy alternative to guilt. Conviction recognizes that a behavior or an action has caused someone grief or harm, and this knowledge becomes the driving force for change.

Instead of being paralyzed by guilt, I�m trying to respond in practical ways to genuine conviction.

My best friend studied home economics in college, and she has been a great resource. She has useful insights into what it could look like to live out the concept that, �Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.�

We talked about clothes shopping, and she suggested that instead of getting brand new clothes from the store, I go to thrift stores and consignment shops to get things second-hand.

I bought a townhouse earlier this year, and we spent a long time brainstorming about the most responsible way to furnish my new home.

She suggested that I start furniture shopping at garage sales, thrift shops, or even antique stores. This practice is essentially recycling old furniture, which is environmentally responsible. And getting used furniture also means I�m not directly increasing the demand for new goods from stores who get their labor from cheap international factories.

We even had a conversation about the best way to dress the windows in my new place. �It�s smart to use curtains rather than blinds,� she said, �Because you can repurpose the fabric when you don�t need the curtains anymore.�

I�ve been trying to apply these principles over the past few months. And when I become convicted about another area of my life that could be more intentional, I call my friend and we brainstorm some more.

I think in our online community, the brainstorming needs to continue as we �spur one another on towards love and good deeds.�

And soon we may discover that it�s not just our curtains or our furniture or our clothes that are repurposed, but our minds and our hearts and our souls.

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Posted in: consumerism,recycling,stewardship

back to school

Last night the air in Portland was crisp and cool, and this morning it rained. As I was sloshing to work in the rain, I realized that summer is almost over, which means that school is just about to begin. Which means, of course, that back to school shopping is in full swing.

I have never been a fan of back to school shopping. I have always thought of it as one of those contrived holidays meant to entice shoppers to flock to stores to spend their money on things they don�t need. Like shady salesmen who exhort you to celebrate President�s Day by buying a new king-sized mattress. It just hits me wrong.

Most shopping hits me wrong these days, actually. The emphasis on quantity rather than quality, the constant message that there�s something better than what you have, the idea that this purse or these shoes or this cologne is the missing piece that will make you feel complete�it�s all very empty.

I�ve been doing some thinking and reading and praying about consumerism lately. As part of this self-imposed research project, I watched a documentary called �What Would Jesus Buy?� It was produced by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who starred in �Supersize Me.�

�What Would Jesus Buy� was another, cheesier way of asking the questions I was wondering: What should my response be to consumerism? Where is my treasure? Where is my heart?

I bribed one of my friends with ice cream, and he agreed to watch the movie with me. The movie featured a man named Reverend Billy, who looks a lot like a blonde Elvis impersonator, and his back-up singers called the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Reverend Billy and his choir toured the U.S. in a charter bus, stopping to proclaim on street corners and in churches that America should stop shopping so much.

If you think this sounds like the plot of a good movie, you�d be wrong. At one point, The Rev tries to get an audience at Wal-Mart�s headquarters, but the security guards won�t let him in. So in a fit of passion, he does a spread eagle onto the shrubs in front of the Wal-Mart sign. Nothing gets executives to think seriously about the implications of their business decisions like a lunatic jumping into their bushes.

So anyway, about half way through the movie I decided I would rather poke my eye out with a stick than keep watching it. I was about to turn it off when the producers turned the cameras off of The Rev and his antics, and onto a man who was an advocate for employees of overseas manufacturing companies.

The man was standing in his office with his arm around a slight adolescent Asian girl who, when asked what her life was like, looked blankly into the camera and replied through the translator, �I feel like I�m dying.�

I feel like I�m dying.

I looked at the clothes I was wearing, the furniture I was sitting on, the dishes I was eating from. Was it possible that my purchases had contributed to the outsourcing of labor to Asian children who felt like they were dying?

If money talks, what was mine saying? That instead of getting an education that would enable them to improve their earning potential and their quality of life, these children should be earning pennies a day in sweat shops so I can have my clothes a little cheaper?

Of course, this is a bigger problem than you or I can solve on our own. But maybe we could start with changing the way we approach clothes shopping this fall.

American kids aren�t the only ones who should be getting back to school.

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Posted in: child labor,consumerism,shopping