July 28, 07
A Matter of Good Taste
Reflections on Gluttony
Sunday morning message, February 28, 1999
The Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva Illinois
"I am not saying that enjoying the material goods of the world is evil -- I didn. t say that in relationship to greed, and I. m not saying or implying it now. And the balance, the healing for Gluttony isn. t radically different for the balance and healing needed to overcome Greed. We do live in a universe in which spirit is embodied in the material -- and we do need to consume -- to take in and make part of our very selves -- elements from the material realm if we are going to survive.
But there is a difference between sinful consumption, which is Gluttony, and healthy consumption, which is a combination of the old virtue of temperance and the deeper experience of joy. The blessings of life -- food and drink and time and things of beauty and usefulness and fun -- are to be shared, not consumed in isolation. The joy of a spiritually healthy consuming of life. s gifts is a transcendent joy. It is a gratitude, an appreciation, a happiness springing not from the thing itself (although the specific item, whether it. s a chocolate dessert or a hand-made scarf or an hour of time, does have its own inherent beauty and value, too), but from the wider connections, the deeper meanings of the relationships -- to another person, to a community, to the world -- that the specific object embodies. Joyful consuming is expansive, abundant, overflowing with the desire to share. It is respectful of persons, compassionate, thoughtful. It needs very little -- it rejoices in sharing the plenty that it has.
If your life is too full, if you are filling your time, your body, your house, your life, your spirit, your self, your soul with things that do not satisfy; if you see that you have too much of anything and that that too much does not bring you joy; if you find yourself mindlessly, thoughtlessly taking on and taking in more and more and more -- and feeling less and less satisfied as your life fills up -- then what you hunger for does not exist in food, in busy-ness, in things.
You will not find that which satisfies the spirit for sale or for use or for consumption anywhere.
You will find it within what the mystics have called the God-shaped hole within every human heart -- that part of the self that already knows that what is holy, what is fulfilling, what is truly needful for life, is found in our relationships, in our connections, in our attentiveness to those joys and those gifts that are beyond mere things. The holy is found in what we would share with one another, never in anything we seek to keep only within ourselves."
http://www.uusg.org/sermon_2.shtml
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A Matter of Good Taste
Reflections on Gluttony
Sunday morning message, February 28, 1999
The Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva Illinois
Our Reading is from "Fragmentation" -- a chapter of SANE BUSINESS,
by marketing consultant Jeanne Childs (1997) [the full text of this
article is available on Convergence Magazine. s home page:
http://www.convergence-web.com/index.shtml
[ I am listening to a tape I found
in my clutter by Jeanne Child's.
It is called "Fragmentation."
The quote is from her.
I cannot find her on the internet--this book.
She may have successfully got off the grid!
She aspired to handle the disease of Gluttony
--too many things
On the tape produced in 1998:
http://www.presentations.net
jeannechilds@presentations.net
603.448.5537
One Court Street,ste 330,
Lebanon, New Hampshire,03766
Phone? no answer..... ]
"I sat across from my friend in the restaurant she had selected for its delicious food and peaceful view overlooking a waterfall. It was five months past her birthday; she'd had no time for my gift, this luncheon, until now. She glanced over the menu, quickly chose something, and hailed the waitress. After we ordered, I settled in for the long-awaited visit. Before I had a chance to say anything, my friend leaned across the table and said, "I have to get a wedding present for Saturday. If I dash downstairs to the gift shop right now, I can get it before our food arrives." I was speechless. After five months, my friend still had not cleared space in her life to enjoy the birthday gift from me.
.... my birthday friend and many, many other '90s Americans suffer from "fragmentation"--a modern form of gluttony. Life is really like a cafeteria. We pass through with trays upon which to place our choices. In the "old days," we could select from one, maybe two types of entrees, salads, pies, etc. It was not hard to make decisions, and we usually ended up with just the right amount to consume.
With each passing decade of my life, I have seen choices proliferate, pace accelerate, and peace deteriorate. The "eyes bigger than the stomach" problem becomes exponentially more difficult as we face the ever-increasing selections of menu items and daily "specials." We heap our "plates" too full to digest. Options become essentials. Life compounds and complicates itself both at work and at home. The urge to "do it all" permeates our culture. It is insane.""
--Jeanne Child's from "Sane Business"
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The Whole Sermon.
The sermon:
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There was a church-going woman with a serious fondness for the occasional cigarette; as the minister railed against the evils of alcohol, she sat up in the front pew and shouted AMEN! And when the preacher moved on to consider the ballroom in hell awaiting slow dancers, she called out PREACH IT BROTHER! And when the preacher spoke of the body-&-soul- destroying impact of that demon weed tobacco, she stood up and marched out of the church, saying, "That. s it . preacher. s stopped preaching and started to meddle!"
Just hold that story somewhere in the back of your mind..... (Remember also that I. m again preaching to myself...)
We. re back to our series on the Seven Deadly Sins of traditional Christian theology. We. ve visited Pride, Greed, Anger and Lust -- which leaves Envy, Sloth, and that all-time favorite, which is today. s topic, Gluttony.
The last time I discussed this particular sin, about 10 years ago now, it was a choir Sunday. At that time, some of you will remember, the choir sat right in front of the pulpit. As I attempted to begin the sermon, the congregation started giggling -- there is no other word for it -- and since I knew I had not yet said anything particularly amusing, either intentionally or unintentionally, I was a bit unnerved. The giggling turned into badly-concealed snorts of laughter, at which time I realized that attention seemed focused on the choir. Looking over the pulpit, I discovered that each member of that dignified group of artists had pulled out and was beginning to enjoy a great big chocolate chip cookie.
The only thing that saved them was the fact that they had a cookie for me, too.
I rescheduled that year. s sermon on Lust in order not to have it coincide with a choir Sunday.
But I think I didn. t need to do that. The painful abuses of self and others that are present in Pride, Greed, Envy, Anger, Lust, even Indifference (or Sloth) are usually recognized, and they don. t generally inspire us to snickering. But Gluttony tends to bring out the jokester in just about everyone.
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I. ve mentioned that there are a number of web sites that are devoted to the Seven Deadly Sins -- either collectively or individually -- and Gluttony. s no exception. But Gluttony is also the only one I. ve found that is basically celebratory -- there are links to chili-cook-offs and dangerous dessert recipes and songs of praise for the value of chocolate in the lives of women and food festivals all over the place -- right out there in open cyber-space where anyone can find them! At least for the seamier side of lust you usually need a credit card. Not Gluttony. This sin is eager to invite us all in, reminding us that "Stressed" spelled backwards is "Desserts" and "Evil" spelled backwards is "Live"!
Even the religious web pages own up to some chortling over gluttony. The Presbyterian Church. s equivalent of our Unitarian Universalist Association. s web page has sermon links that include an outline of a message entitled "The Content of Contentment." That minister (whose name I didn. t find) started out by asking the congregation how many of them had ever heard a sermon on Gluttony? "Not many" was the anticipated response -- because "we think it. s a silly sin! We may worry about being overweight; we may be obsessed with dieting; but we hardly begin to list this as a deadly sin..."
This minister suggested that this may be in part because gluttony is the one sin that most churches will tolerate in their clergy -- and not only tolerate, but actually encourage. The minister or priest has to sample every item at the potluck, or someone. s feelings will be hurt. Don. t know what to give the minister for Christmas but want to do something? Cookies or chocolate are always good. You know those robes and gowns so many clergy wear? It. s not a fashion statement, friends; it. s the one article of clothing that fits on the day we graduate from seminary and still fits twenty years later. I speak from personal experience.
When the list of deadly sins was being composed, gluttony was specifically a reference to the inordinate longing for indulgence in food or drink; the taking of food or drink in excess or in such a manner that is harmful to the body. That. s how traditional Catholic teachings define it, and the Protestants, so far as I know, haven. t deviated from that particular emphasis. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century wrestled with how the desire for something as necessary to life as food and drink could be a mortal sin; his conclusion was that it. s a mortal sin only when interest in consumption outweighs interest in the ultimate source of all things -- when it outweighs, when it replaces, one. s spiritual hunger for God.
The definition of sin that I use, I hope you may recall, refers to a universal human experience of the twisting, the abusing, the skewing of that which should be good, healthy, creative, and life-affirming. Sinfulness is the condition of being out of balance, out of harmony, out of right relationship. Sin is always relational . even when it may appear to be solitary, it affects how we are connected within ourselves, with others, with the world, and with God.
The SIN of Gluttony is traditionally about the misuse, the mis-consumption, of those gifts of creation that are necessary to sustain life. Like the sin of Lust, it is trying to satisfy a hunger that is both physical and spiritual, trying to meet a real and legitimate need, with something that cannot possibly provide genuine satisfaction -- because it doesn't understand what it is that it truly seeks. It knows it needs something . but it doesn. t know what, and what it chooses is the absolutely wrong thing. "A glutton," in the words of Frederick Buechner, "is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition."
The characteristics and issues of gluttony include the failure to care appropriately for the body and for the spirit, the misdirected selfishness and the wastefulness of taking more than one needs, and the thoughtlessness, the carelessness, of at best unnecessary and at worst personally and societally harmful over-consuming. Gluttony at its most fundamental level is about thoughtlessly consuming something because it. s there -- not because you need it or even because you want it -- but just because it. s there, and because it. s too much trouble to say No.
Notice, by the way, that I am removing from this discussion issues of will power and addiction, although they certainly do have a place here. I. m also going to suggest that Gluttony -- or the spiritual state of imbalance to which this sin refers -- is not restricted to food. Food is, if you will, a red herring -- or maybe red snapper -- blackened -- with rice . . .
The point is that when food and drink pretty much covered the list of available consumer items, it made sense to confine gluttony to issues of comestibles. Food and drink, from the early days of the church right up into fairly recent times, were, and for many still are, the most obviously mis-used, mis-consumed of life. s goods and blessings.
But the point Jeanne Childs is making in this morning. s reading -- a point which others have also noticed -- is that we have allowed ourselves to become a culture of gluttons -- and it is no longer only about seeking to fill ourselves with food. Our choices for self-distraction, for filling our lives with things that we hope will matter, that we hope will satisfy us, but which ultimately will not, are far broader than even the most beguilingly- stocked supermarket shelves. It. s now our whole culture that is calling us to consume. We accept as given, as real, a "need" for something -- and we don. t even think about whether or not that need is real! We shop, we eat, we schedule our days without ever asking if we. re going to be satisfyingly full, or uncomfortably over-full. We buy on impulse, we eat the whole bag of chips and can. t remember eating them, we say "Sure" to the request for our time without thinking through whether or not "yes" is the right response. And that mindlessness with which we as individuals and as a culture respond to the summons to "More! More!" -- that is the mortal danger, the spiritual death-threat, that we face.
There are so many "needs" we seem to experience now that our ancestors would regard with much confusion. A need for food and water and shelter and something useful to do -- those are understandable. But who ever would have known that we couldn. t live without high-priced athlete-endorsed big-name footwear or fancy personal calendar systems or expensive cars or faster modems or completely new wardrobes or bigger hard drives or $5 cups of coffee before we were told that we could have it all, we ought to have it all, it. s good to have it all . . .
We are encouraged to consume, to take in, to accumulate far beyond what we need -- far beyond what we can even reasonably use! Food has become the metaphor for our personal and our collective over-indulgence. If I say my plate. s full, you don. t know if I. m talking about a potluck dinner line or my weekly schedule. Either one would be regarded as admirable. We. re supposed to have full plates -- we. re supposed to have too much.
We serve more food, plan more activities, accept more demands, collect more stuff than we know what to do with. How many of you have more than two Beanie Babies per child in your house? More than 5? More than 10? I. ll stop there.... But who in the name of god NEEDS a hundred stuffed animals?
Ah, but gluttony, remember, is not about need -- it. s about wanting something because it. s there to be wanted, because it exists, because it might meet a need that I never knew I had. It. s there -- I want it -- it. s not hurting anyone else -- what. s the big deal?
This is the important difference between Gluttony and the other related sins of greed, envy and lust. Gluttony can and does ask in all sincerity, What. s the problem? Greed is malicious -- Greed wants it all, wants it for the sake of power, physical comfort, a sense of entitlement, and does not care who is hurt in the course of its gatherings. Not only does Greed not care who is hurt -- Greed expects others will suffer, and that. s just fine. Greed assumes there can never be enough, so it wants more. Envy is also malicious and also assumes that there is not enough of whatever it thinks it lacks -- Envy desires what it sees another possessing. It doesn. t necessarily want the other to lose what the other already has -- Envy just doesn. t want to see anyone else having anything it doesn. t also possess. Neither Greed nor Envy sees other people as people -- as individuals with legitimate desires, dreams, wants and needs. Lust doesn. t see other people either as people, either -- it just wants to possess them for its own gratification. It doesn. t expect to do harm -- but it doesn. t care if it does. It thinks the immediate gratification of a desire is all that matters.
But Gluttony tends to think of itself as innocent. It isn. t making a greedy demand that it get everything (although greed can creep into the equation, especially if there. s only one pint of Haagen-Das chocolate-chocolate chip and two or more people craving it...). Gluttony doesn. t mind that someone else has something, as Envy does. It. s after immediate gratification, as Lust is, but Gluttony isn. t using other people.
Gluttony is not unkind -- it is unthinking.
It does not see itself as in any meaningful way related to anyone else. s needs. It is thoughtless. It is lazily disinterested in the hard work of making careful, thoughtful choices. It thinks it isn. t hurting anyone -- or at least it isn. t hurting anyone else. Especially when there seems to be plenty, Gluttony asks Why shouldn. t I have it? What. s wrong with wanting it all? I. m not depriving anyone else -- why can. t I indulge myself? I. ll buy another pint of ice cream. You can collect Beanie Babies too. If I. d rather spend the weekend polishing invisible imperfections off the protective coating on my lovely expensive car than go with you and the kids to church, so what? You can tell me about it later. Maybe I am wasting my money, my time, my health -- but it. s my health, time and money I. m wasting. It wasn. t a choice between a cafe mocha or funding a health clinic in the inner city. What. s the big deal?
What is the big deal?
The big deal is that, while gluttony may not recognize its connections, it is indeed, like all sins, about the self not in isolation, but in relationship; not the self alone, but the self connected to others. Gluttony misses the picture -- from the big picture of global community to the intimate picture of those who most love us.
We live in a culture that concentrates wealth, that concentrates comfort, that concentrates material goods in the hands of a very few. Let me offer an image sent to me by a colleague. I haven. t double-checked these numbers so I don. t know if it. s completely accurate, but my sense from other sources is that it. s at least pretty close: Imagine the Earth's entire population represented by a village of precisely 100 people. With all currently-existing human ratios remaining the same (rounding off), the village would look like this:
There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and South) and 8 Africans.
51 would be female; 49 would be male
70 would be non-white; 30 white.
70 would be non-Christian; 30 Christian.
80 would live in substandard housing.
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
Only 1 would have a college education.
No one would own a computer.
50% of the entire world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people -- and all 6 would be citizens of the United States.
Now, Gluttony is no stranger to the admonition to "clean your plate, the children are starving in Europe!" Gluttony probably remembers thinking, Fine -- send this liver and onions to them. We are taught as a culture to be indifferent, or at least oblivious, to the disparity between what we take for granted and what the vast majority of the rest of the world can only dream about. That oblivion, however, or the worse indifference, are not a whole lot better than the active selfishness of greed. There is a basic immorality in the thoughtless over-consumption of anything so long as others are deprived of the means of satisfying the most basic of human needs. Greed is at least deliberate; Gluttony just doesn. t notice.
If the world-wide scope is too much to take in, we can concentrate on the narrower vision of our own immediate worlds. Do I really need to suggest that the isolation, the frantic busy-ness, the over-full lives of all of us who indulge in the various personal gluttonies do affect those closest to us? Isn. t that obvious when we take the time to look at it? The problem is that Gluttony doesn. t take the time -- doesn. t look -- doesn. t recognize damage done to relationships. But I. ve noticed over the years that those people who do decide to break free of substance or behavioral addictions seem generally to do so in large part out of an emerging healthy awareness that they are not totally independent of others, that their supposedly private indulgences do harm others -- others whom they care about, who care about them.
I am not saying that enjoying the material goods of the world is evil -- I didn. t say that in relationship to greed, and I. m not saying or implying it now. And the balance, the healing for Gluttony isn. t radically different for the balance and healing needed to overcome Greed. We do live in a universe in which spirit is embodied in the material -- and we do need to consume -- to take in and make part of our very selves -- elements from the material realm if we are going to survive.
But there is a difference between sinful consumption, which is Gluttony, and healthy consumption, which is a combination of the old virtue of temperance and the deeper experience of joy. The blessings of life -- food and drink and time and things of beauty and usefulness and fun -- are to be shared, not consumed in isolation. The joy of a spiritually healthy consuming of life. s gifts is a transcendent joy. It is a gratitude, an appreciation, a happiness springing not from the thing itself (although the specific item, whether it. s a chocolate dessert or a hand-made scarf or an hour of time, does have its own inherent beauty and value, too), but from the wider connections, the deeper meanings of the relationships -- to another person, to a community, to the world -- that the specific object embodies. Joyful consuming is expansive, abundant, overflowing with the desire to share. It is respectful of persons, compassionate, thoughtful. It needs very little -- it rejoices in sharing the plenty that it has.
If your life is too full, if you are filling your time, your body, your house, your life, your spirit, your self, your soul with things that do not satisfy; if you see that you have too much of anything and that that too much does not bring you joy; if you find yourself mindlessly, thoughtlessly taking on and taking in more and more and more -- and feeling less and less satisfied as your life fills up -- then what you hunger for does not exist in food, in busy-ness, in things.
You will not find that which satisfies the spirit for sale or for use or for consumption anywhere.
You will find it within what the mystics have called the God-shaped hole within every human heart -- that part of the self that already knows that what is holy, what is fulfilling, what is truly needful for life, is found in our relationships, in our connections, in our attentiveness to those joys and those gifts that are beyond mere things. The holy is found in what we would share with one another, never in anything we seek to keep only within ourselves.
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