• back issues
• gallery
• discussion
• blogs
• donate

The company we keep

by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

The other day on the bus, I sat down near someone about my age—late twenties—who looked the part of an educated, white collar professional with a hint of artistic individualism. I was surprised to notice that he was reading a book on conquering clutter.  For some reason, he didn’t seem like “the type.” 

Thousands of pages of magazines and books are devoted each year to this insipid battle against stuff, particularly publications targeted toward frenzied moms and dads who clean one room only to walk through the door into a freshly created destruction zone.  Certainly, there is something to be said for the positive psychological benefits of a neat home, where everything has its place, but I can’t help wondering how much of our obsession with conquering clutter is at heart an anti-matter theology.

I like this quote from C.S. Lewis, which he applies to eating, but I think is relevant to other aspects of the material life as well:

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God, God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

Those familiar with biblical texts are probably well aware that we shouldn’t “store up…treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy,” but I do think there’s a difference between taking delight in the tangible creation for which we were made and making an idol of that creation.  Perhaps today we even err toward a foundational idolatry of the intangible “spiritual” world while unintentionally (or guiltily) indulging materialism anyway.  Just on an observational level, such schizophrenic dualism seems to lead to exhaustion, moral confusion, escapism and a general inability to feel like a complete, content person.

In the introduction to House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live, author Winifred Galagher details the steps of realizing what her book would be about:

Early on in this process, I began to focus less on my home’s looks than on two larger questions: how do the decisions we make about our domestic world both reveal and influence our inner world?  How can we make better choices?  A week’s stay in the anti-home that is a hospital confirmed the importance of making the most of the home’s peculiar power over our bodies, minds, and spirits.  Like most patients stripped of control, privacy, individuality, and sleep, bombarded with unpleasant sights and sounds yet deprived of the soothing sort, I developed a malaise beyond my diagnosis.  Two days ahead of schedule, I tottered out of the hospital, up the stairs to my bedroom, and into my familiar nest of pillows and quilts. 

In my room’s dappled sunlight that was so different from the hospital’s fluorescent glare, I took in the photographs, art, and emotion-laden flotsam and jetsam that remind me of who I am and what it’s all about.  I smelled lavender in my soft old sheets and watched the shadows move across the apple green walls I had painted myself.  My daughters brought me tea in my favorite cup and sprawled across my bed.  For the first time in many days, I felt just right.  If a doctor had sat on my bed and monitored my metabolism, I’m certain that he or she would have watched my level of cortisol, heart and respirations rates, and other signs of stress drop as my spirits rose and I relaxed into at-homeness.

While Galagher goes beyond the value of objects to explore the psychology of space as it relates to particular rooms of the house, woven throughout her text is the principle that everyday objects take on meaning to the extent that they express a portion of our identities.  Galagher cites Russell Belk, a professor of business at the University of Utah, who “describes an ‘extended self’ that includes not just the persons and places but also the things that one is attached to and supported by….  Our accumulation of possessions provides a sense of the past and tells us who we were, where we have come from, and perhaps where we are going.”

As someone who values simplicity, I can sense my instinct to send up a red flag here.  Are we really just the sum of our possessions?  I don’t think that’s what Galagher or Belk are claiming; rather, they’re attempting to explain why, for example, victims of the broken levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina felt such a deep sense of grief at losing everything in their flooded homes.  They’re also attempting to explain why so many people who have mountains of possessions still do not possess happiness.  Surrounding ourselves with things that have been purged of all personal relational meaning is like living in a house full of strangers who silently judge us for our inability to master our own dispositions.

Galagher seems to be doing some wonderful work to break down the barriers between our inner and outer lives. The things with which we surround ourselves are part of our answer to the question, “Who am I?”  Even the Spartan existence of a monk or a member of the military is an external expression of that individual’s desire to submit to a larger communal identity. In that knowledge, we do well to seek a right relationship with the objects with which we surround ourselves, understanding that they’re not neutral, but are a reflection of our deepest beliefs.  Though the core of who we are is not entirely obliterated in the case of losing—or giving up—all that we have, the things we keep can be powerful symbols of who we were, whom we hold dear and what we hope for.  We recognize the power of such symbols when we take seriously the charge of keeping them, delighting in the smooth coolness of a stone sculpture, the warmth of a patchwork quilt, the vicarious memory of a photograph.  God likes matter, after all, and so should we.