Avarice

In the back of my garden – at the pointy end of the pie shape are two small peach trees. Bred to produce lots of peaches, they sometimes outdo themselves. They inevitably produce more that we can use in the short time they are ripe. On more than one occasion they have produced so many peaches on a branch that the branch has been broken and it, and the peaches have been lost. I could have removed some of the peaches when they were small. I knew I should have at the time. But there was something about all those lovely peaches. I wanted them all. And of course I paid (and my little tree) the price.

There is something about more. I love my tomato plants covered with tomatoes, far in excess of what we than we can eat. Vines heavy with green beans, and the very satisfyingly overproductive zucchini, appeal to something within me. If I am honest, I recognize it as a familiar feeling – avarice. Having more is, at some level, exciting, delicious. More than what? Just more.

Assume for a minute that God is a Grandfather-like guy, with a long white beard and flowing robes, enthroned in the clouds. If there is one human trait that keeps him up at night, it is avarice.

We tend to think of avarice as just concerning financial matters – and that is a major destructive force to be sure. But I prefer the more technical, broader definition roughly conveyed as “This ain’t good enough, God!”

More than any other human failing, this is the one that will bring us to our last days as we drain and pollute our Garden of Eden in search of more, more, and still more.

Regardless of our wealth, or culture, humans typically convince ourselves that what we have is not enough. We see something we want, we hyperventilate. We buy. Very often we go into debt to buy. We possess. We store and dust and fill our shelves and our closets and our garages and we stack boxes in corners, and we buy things to store and display the things we have and we and rent storage units, and then we buy more to replace the things that we already have but we forgot we had, or we can’t find them.

It’s all very human. I suppose some rodents are known for putting up supplies for the winter (and occasionally forget where they have stored them which accounts for a lot of new trees in the Spring) but by and large the rest of God's creatures do not seem to have this drive to accumulate beyond their needs.

Oddly – the way we show love or congratulations or appreciation or, for that matter, any excuse, is to give something.

Imagine what life would be like if we cut back to what we need, and/or, as someone suggested, really love. (I have to say that because otherwise I’d have to exclude chocolate and I don’t want to go there.) All those hours in the mall, all the time moving, cleaning and deciding what to do with stuff not to mention coveting other people’s stuff.

This human trait and does not have any basis on our real needs, or our economic status. The need for more is just as powerful in the wealthy as the poor. Somebody did a “study”. Someone is always doing a study. But this one was interesting.

They interviewed lots of people and asked how much money would make them comfortable – would be enough. Regardless of culture or economic status, people pretty much said the same thing. They would feel satisfied, and at ease if they had 2.4 times as much. If you had $10,000 you wanted $24,000. If you had $100,000 you wanted $240,000. If you had a billion – well you get the idea. Very few of us are happy with what er have now, but among the happy, you would be just as likely to be poor as rich.

This was also a moving target. If you reached your 2.4 times, goal, it transformed itself. Now you want wanted 2.4 times what you now have.

And yet there is plenty of evidence that, beyond the basic needs, having more does not bring happiness. It is common to give lip service to that idea, but how many of us really are willing to live our lives at a simpler more basic level?

What if we didn’t have 10 or more pairs of shoes? What if we actually wore our clothes out? What if we didn’t keep replacing and started repairing. What if we learned to enjoy simple food in reasonable portions? What if we stopped buying, buying, buying? What if we had room for what we own and I don’t mean by buying a bigger house. What if we left a little for our grandchildren?

When I picture God in his kindly anthropologic form, I see a tear in his eye. I do know this – refusal to be happy with the gifts God has given is not the way to love God.

When I am sitting in my little garden with the bees and the bugs and the birds and the plants with their leaves turned toward the light I am struck by the simple satisfaction that comes from appreciating the abundance of nature, and pausing ever so briefly from a life of accumulating and collecting stuff.

It is complex and it is simple. It is all a wonderful gift but so common we usually fail to see how generous nature is to us. The plants collect water with their roots and carbon dioxide with their leaves and use the sunlight to produce sugars that are the basis for their structure and our food. They don’t complain. There is plenty. Each plant provides far more fruits and seeds and roots that are needed for its own reproduction and so provides food for animals. It is simpbeautiful. It is breathtaking. And when sitting in my garden, at least for a few moments now and then, I realize it blasphemous to be anything other than grateful or to ask for more.

There are two major threats to the survival of the human species. One is environmental degradation which would include climate change. The other is war, increasingly war over resources. Both of these threats could be significantly reduced if not all together alleviated if we could control our avarice.

Today we need to use another divine trait we have been given - the ability to see beyond, to project forward, to see ourselves as part of a single living organism. We need the wisdom to say enough is enough, to trim back the peaches, to share the tomatoes, to rejoice in the generosity of nature and stop demanding more.



“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”