Yesterday, I suggested that the forces of capitalism—always operating simultaneously at local, national, and global scales—are trying to tighten their grasp on our lives by offering us a certain kind of rest, and that this rest comes with strings attached. It comes with acceptance of the idea that rest is only ever a temporary reprieve from work that should define one’s sense of purpose and meaning. It comes with acceptance of the false notion that our communities could never survive if they weren’t built on a foundation of exploitation and violence. The rest offered by capitalism certainly feels like relief, but only insofar as it’s contrasted with the exploitative labor to follow.
And, over against that idea of rest, I suggested that a faithful Sabbath rest involves grounding ourselves in the goodness of our creaturely flesh, the power of our connection, and the possibility that such goodness and power could shape an alternative way to be.
Today (well, tonight, since I was too busy playing Plants vs. Zombies with one of my kids to type this up earlier), I want to talk about the second gift I think Sabbath offers: gratitude.
Capitalist Distortion
The capitalist distortion of rest is tied to a distorted form of gratitude. Perhaps you’ve even felt it yourself. It certainly tempted me when Disney put Frozen 2 up on Disney+ early, when Grubhub waived delivery fees during this period of sheltering in place here in Chicago, when our local Target restricted the purchase of certain items (e.g., toilet paper, flour, rice), and when Zoom offered free upgrades of their service to folks with a .edu email address so my seminary can function without paying for a set of subscriptions we hadn’t budgeted for.
I felt thankful that my ability to work from home was being facilitated. I felt thankful that I could more easily purchase goods and services. I felt thankful that a giant, viciously litigious media conglomerate was going to allow its subscribers to view a movie a bit earlier than planned.
I really did! I felt grateful…until I stopped to wonder why I felt grateful, at which point I decided to yell at my website just like so.
This distorted gratitude distracted me from the simple fact that the economic insecurity and resource-related desperation that are layered on top of this pandemic’s terror are themselves creations of capitalism. That is, I wouldn’t be worried about finding food and cleaning supplies or about working as effectively as possible from home (so that our students won’t leave our seminary and so they’ll be able to stay on track in their programs, lessening the number of semesters they’re taking on debt) if giant corporations hadn’t spent the past seventy years strangling the life from any form of organized social welfare program that might make people think they don’t need to work themselves to death (literally, given the toll labor takes on so many of our bodies bodies) just to make it through life.
Let me try again, since my sentences keep running away from me. Capitalism teaches us to be grateful for tiny scraps, as billionaires perpetuate a system that forces us to come to them, one way or another, to be fed. Those folks want us to be grateful to them, to feel they’re generous when it really matters…because this is a dangerous time for them. The truth of their role in our society is becoming increasingly and more-widely obvious…but more on that tomorrow, when I talk about clarity.
Faithful Gratitude
There’s a more faithful gratitude we can experience, though. And I’m sure you’ve felt this.
We can be grateful to the people who make things work, even as they’re systematically devalued and endangered. We can be grateful to the people who, even now, are working to reach and take care of folks who struggle to find food, struggle to find a home or stay in one, struggle to find rest. And we can be grateful to the activists and organizers who are working for a world in which the disruption of corporate operations wouldn’t send our entire world into an apocalyptic terror…when it’s actually the operations of those corporations that should have us worrying about the collapse of our society.
That faithful Sabbath gratitude, like Sabbath rest, is something that can be carried beyond the time of rest. It can shape our actions going forward, lead us to support those to whom we are grateful, lead us to take part in seeking a world where our gratitude isn’t tainted by our awareness that the folks to whom we’re grateful—nurses, grocery store workers, farmworkers—are being devalued and exploited.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the third gift of Sabbath: clarity. In the meantime, I hope you can experience gratitude, and deeply consider where it might lead you, and the rest of our society.
Questions for consideration/discussion
To whom do you feel grateful?
Whose work, for which you should be grateful, has slipped past your notice?
Whose work in building a better community should your gratitude call you to join in?