Consuming Religion: Faith, Desire, and the Economy
Ecumenical Christian Chapel Service
April 24, 2008
Caring for Our Pants: Thoreau on Living In, But Not Of, the World
Matthew 16:24-26
In the opening chapter of Walden, Henry David Thoreau recounts an encounter he had with a local tailor, perhaps regarding a pair of pants. “When I ask for a garment of a particular form,” Thoreau writes, “my tailoress tells me gravely, ‘They do not make them so now,” not emphasizing the ‘They’ at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say.”
Surrounding Thoreau in the 1840s, even in an unassuming tailor shop, was evidence of the rise of the Industrial Revolution. The market economy was expanding. Farmers’ livelihoods increasingly depended on their ability to produce more and more crops beyond the local marketplace. Railroad tracks had been built that nearly brushed Thoreau’s beloved Walden Pond, and the schedule of the railroad cars was newly synchronized with time zones for the sake of commerce. Men were becoming tethered to mean, monotonous jobs to turn incomes. Thoreau understood that the market has the insidious capacity to consume the soul, and to counter that juggernaut, he sought to harness the market so he could consume the richness of life.
It’s popularly believed that Thoreau built a cabin in the woods to escape the world. Yet, to believe so is mistaken. Thoreau’s project of living on Walden Pond near his native Concord, Massachusetts was motivated by precisely the opposite reason: his was an experiment in living in, but not of, the world.
It’s no coincidence that the first chapter of Walden is titled “Economy.” “I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man,” Thoreau writes. He fashioned his house with boards and shingles from a dismantled shanty, some plywood, two used windows with glass in tact, old bricks, two containers of lime, hair, some iron, nails, hinges and screws, a latch, and some timber, rocks, and sand from the woods. I can tick off all the materials because Thoreau meticulously listed them—with the price he paid for each. In total, he spent $28.12½ on his house. To defray some of his expenses, he cultivated two-and-a-half acres to plant beans, corn, peas, potatoes, and turnips. From selling the surplus, he netted $8.71½ by the end of the growing season. Other food he bought amounted to $8.74. He also purchased $8.40¾ worth of clothing and spent $2.00 on lamp oil and household utensils. After including the start-up capital he invested in his enterprise, Thoreau was budget neutral by the conclusion of his first year at Walden Pond. In return, he could afford, he writes, “the leisure and independence and health thus secured, [and] a comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it.”
Thoreau was successful in his experiment. He exemplified the difficult task of living in, but not of, the world: he sold just enough produce in the market to support his necessities, not his desires. Our desires are themselves not blameworthy. I can certainly imagine Thoreau in a bookshop wanting a certain book that’s out of his budget. Undoubtedly, we’ve all been in that position. But the danger of the market—indeed, of the world—is the way it seduces our desire for more, that unwavering tendency baked into human nature since Adam and Eve. The market has the ability to lure us into thinking that because it can offer us more goods, we need more than what we already own. And as our focus shifts from attending to our needs to gazing toward what could be ours, we gradually become disciples of the world, growing obsessed with making more and more money in a futile attempt to fulfill those desires, regardless of how it taxes our soul.
Today, situated in the early years of twenty-first century America, we nearly always forgo purchasing cloth and sewing pieces of it together when we desire a new pair of pants. Instead, we can first choose among numerous stores that sell them. Each of these stores contains dozens of pairs of pants, likely assembled in faraway places. We might find a pair whose fabric and style—and price—are appealing. Then, we might head to a dressing room to try on different sizes until we choose the pair that fits best, though because they weren’t made directly from the dimensions of our own figure, they fit imperfectly. Finally, we can purchase these pants without any exchange of physical money, only the swipe of a credit or debit card linked to an electronic stock of currency.
When our pants become dirtied from a few days’ wear, what do we do with them? Instead of filling a bucket with water, adding some soap, and using a thick brush to scrub those pants clean, we take less than a minute to throw them in a washing machine with some detergent and let the washer churn them clean. Then, we might take a few seconds to throw them in a dryer.
And what do we do when a hole rips open on our pants? In Thoreau’s day, we would likely reach for needle and thread and do the mending ourselves. A hundred years after his time, we might take them to a tailor, a specialist in mending clothes. But today, our most likely response to a ripped pair of pants is to consign them to the garbage—or, if we’re feeling up to the hassle, we might give them to a second-hand clothing store. The pants are disposable because they can easily be replaced. We don’t even need to wait for the store to open to buy a new pair of pants. Since we know their brand, style, and size, we can search for a vendor on the Internet, pay for them electronically, and await their delivery at our doorstep.
Observes Thoreau, “A hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and the numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be petty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end [to] which it was already but too easy to arrive.”
We live in an age when it is terribly easy to be consumers. The antidote, Thoreau teaches us, is to live deliberately in the world—that is, to live consciously amid what can consume us. Meticulously tend to things as ordinary as pants, from purchasing, to cleaning, to mending them. Deliberately invest the time, energy, and patience in conserving to deaden the desire of consuming. Seek opportunities to simplify. And above all, be mindful of Economy.
Amen.
