Thoughts on the Mini-Storage Boom

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth . . .

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

(Matthew 6:19a, 21)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the 8^th Sunday after Pentecost, July 22, 2007

 

 “Too much stuff, too little space?  Can’t find things when you need them?  Frustrated?  Stressed out?  Overwhelmed?  Ready for a fresh start?  Don’t know where to begin?  I’m Bob . . . a hands on professional organizer who creates order and manages all of the out-of-control places in your home and office.  I go through years of your accumulated clutter, and I’ll make the most efficient use of the space you already have.  I’ll create order, and I do it all confidentially, patiently, and with a sense of humor . . . Garage out of control?  Files in disarray?  Home constantly in a mess?  Closets need revamping?  Toys all over the house?  For an appointment call . . .”  (Advertisement found at www.clutterbuster.com)

 

I hired a Clutter Buster once.  In 1986 I joined the staff as Administrator of First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Hans Engelhardt, fresh out of the German Merchant Marine, applied for an open custodial position.  Hans was a Clutter Buster, a Clutter Wizard, in fact!  The basement boiler room was his coup de grace.  For fifty years it had accumulated junk in every nook and cranny.  Hans worked his magic, right down to polishing those nasty boilers, just as he would have done aboard ship.  It was so impressive that Dr. Strobe, our Senior Pastor, who often gave tours of the church facilities, began adding the boiler room to the tour’s itinerary!  The entire church sparkled, so much that my friend Bill Kincaid, chair of the Staff-Parish Relations committee, wrote in his report to the Board, “Every house needs a Hans.”

 

Indeed.  Storing remnants of the past, we have become a nation of junk keepers, cramming stuff into closets and garages until our domiciles overflow.  I suppose one of the biggest changes in American homes since the 1950s is larger closet and storage space.  But even with spacious storage, our stuff overflows until we face a choice.  Do we get rid of it?  Or, find somewhere else to stuff it?  More and more, people who can’t stand the thought of disengaging from their stuff have created a boom industry of mini-storage, those strange little mausoleums to materialism, little cubicles of collectibles made necessary by a consumer culture in overdrive. 

 

And what’s this we hear Jesus saying?  Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume.   How does our culture hear these words, our knuckles white from our firm grip on possessions?  “Who knows,” we think, “treasure may be lurking in the midst of the clutter.  I’ve seen Antiques Roadshow on PBS.  Why should I toss anything that might end up being one of America’s hidden treasures?” 

 

Alex Shear was labeled by People magazine as King of Pack Rats.  Alex spent decades proving that “one man’s junk is another man’s pop culture archive,” amassing over 100,000 20^th century artifacts, from Penzoil tinmen to waffle irons to martini shaker yo-yos, 400 transistor radios made to look like brand name products, 10,000 matchbooks, and countless other items of Americana that give visitors to his New York apartment a sense that they have stumbled into Uncle Sam’s attic.  His wife, frustrated with the clutter, gave him an ultimatum.  Which do you love more — me, or the clutter?  They divorced in 1990.  Alex took advantage of the extra space to add model trains, paper weights, Pyrex glass irons, plus 1,000 bars of hotel soap and a pristine Farrah Fawcett make-up center in its original box. 

 

Alex said something I find to be a treasure for preachers and philosophers -- that the thrill is in the hunt, in the moment of acquisition.  After that, the sole reason to keep it is a memory of the hunt.  Pack Rats, he said, can’t live in the present unless they are everywhere reminded of the past.  

 

Our lives can become so cluttered that we find it hard to breathe.  I think Jesus would advise most of us to loosen our grip, to lighten our earthly load – not to heap high the collectibles, stuffing our min-storage units with old frying pans and high chairs; lava lamps and every kitchen gadget ever featured in an infomercial.  What are these but ways for us to remember the hunt, to live with constant reminders of the past, not realizing that the past can suffocate our enjoyment of the present.  Jesus would have us loosen our grip so that we can learn to live in the present with freedom.

 

Says George Carlin, that mostly irreverent commentator on moral customs:  That’s all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff?  Everybody’s got a little place for their stuff.  This is my stuff; that’s your stuff, that’ll be his stuff over there.  That’s what life’s all about, tryin’ to find a little place for your stuff.  That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff.  If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house.  You could just walk around all the time.  A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.  You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane.  You look down, you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff.  And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up.  Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff.  Cause they always take the wrong stuff.  They always take the good stuff.  They never bother with that junk you’re saving.  Ain’t nobody interested in your kid’s fourth grade arithmetic papers.  They just want the good stuff, the shiny stuff, the electronic stuff.   

 

To be sure, comedians operate by taking a point to the extreme.  Still, it’s a valid point, one to which Jesus might have said “Amen,” as evidenced by his words to the Rich Young Ruler to go and sell all he had and give to the poor.  Somehow, becoming un-stuffed, becoming a stuff-less soul, can be the key to a more meaningful life. 

 

I’m not talking merely about the clutter of things in mini-storage units.  My aim is deeper than mini-storage units, which are but symbols of hearts and minds cluttered by a technologically driven media culture – where TIVOs and Ipods and gadget phones, movies and music and internet and 10,000 other distractions have filled our lives.  The net result seems to be that a whole generation becomes bored if left alone for more that five minutes, the maximum self-attention span.  After that, boredom sets in, and more gadgets are needed.  How desperately, in a media-oriented, celebrity-wowed culture, do we need room to exercise spiritual virtues – room to breathe in sacramental moments of peace, allowing ourselves to think, meditate, and experience the still small voice of God.

 

A Jewish exile from Nazi Germany, Martin Buber, speaks of the two basic words in which the human life adheres, the two words Jesus used to categorize our allegiance -- God and mammon.  “You can’t serve both God and mammon.”  Buber characterized these antithetical philosophies as “I-It” and “I-You.” 

 

He describes the world of I-It as a world of utility, of using and accumulating things, of means and ends.  The I-It world is a world of measurement and comparison.  Who has the largest roof to cover their stuff?  Who has the most stuff at the end?  Measurement is key to the philosophy of the It-world.

 

The I-You philosophy is fundamentally different.  It brings us into the orbit of encounter, with God and others.  The saying is hardly trite:  We are to USE things and LOVE people, but sometimes we get it precisely backwards, LOVING things and USING people.  The I-You world is not one of measurement and comparison, but a world of encounter and relationship.  Measurement is no factor because the YOU, truly encountered, cannot be measured.  The experience of the YOU is immeasurable.

 

To the extent that we embrace a materialistic culture, we live for the I-It.  We submerse ourselves in It — and the It-world pulses with a passion to preserve.  Buber wrote, “When man lets IT have its way, the relentlessly growing It-world grows over him like weeds . . . until the incubus over him and the phantom inside him exchange the whispered confession of their need for redemption.”

 

It-pursuits are ultimately hollow, leaving in its wake a cluttered existence overwhelmed with things ready to be packed, boxed, taped, and stored.  It-pursuits can result in lives too cluttered to allow us room to breath.  Cluttered with It, we cry for organizing consultants, whispering confessions of our need for redemption. 

 

What’s worth storing up?  For God, we are.  We are hidden treasure.  Fallen, broken, useless.  Who would have blamed God had he discarded us, started over?  But God espoused the I-You formula to joy – that of encounter and relationship.  God encountered us by becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, and entered into relationship with us through the Holy Spirit taking up residence in our hearts as the Temple.  To God, we – You and I – are hidden treasure worth saving.  That’s Good News. 

 

Sources:

 

Several essays from PARABOLA, Volume 10, Number 4 (Winter 1985, The Seven Deadly Sins), including: Focus, by Lorraine Kisly; “The Vicious Inherencies (Avarice)”, by Frederick Franck; “Experiments in Truth,” by John Loudon; and “The Human Place: An Interview with Pauline de Dampierre.”