Taking Account of Things

The removal van disappeared around the corner and I was left staring at my empty flat. Apart from a couple of bin-bags full of clothes, a bag of books and a box of essential personal files I was ‘possession free’. And this was to be for several months. My stuff was destined for storage as I hadn’t yet anywhere new to live.

That was three years ago. I remember feeling a strange mixture of anxiety and relief. ‘Things’ bring with them responsibilities – for looking after and protecting them. Now my stuff was someone else’s problem. Yet being without it left me feeling strangely rootless – without the symbols and signs that have sculpted and refined the textures of my identity. When I finally sorted myself out and regained my things, I felt that in an important sense I had ‘got my life back’. Even the things I’d forgotten I owned spoke to me: of places, relationships, hopes, achievements, failures, the past, the future.

Of course, this was not a tragedy or a life trauma, it was simply the temporarily uncomfortable bi-product of a positive life-choice. My possessions were not suddenly and violently destroyed, without warning, by dint of a natural disaster. Nevertheless, this experience has been on my mind as I’ve watched news footage of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Victims again and again have recounted stories of losing everything they own. The ‘lucky’ ones have followed that up with, ‘but my loved ones are safe, and that’s the most important thing.’ One man, prised away from his stricken home and his beloved cats, when asked, ‘does this break your heart?’ simply shrugged and said, ‘Well – everything is broken.’

The losses we see there are unimaginable. Loss of life is, indisputably, of paramount importance – the loss overshadowing all other loss. But to get our minds round the magnitude of this tragedy for those affected by it, we need to take account of material things too. It’s easy for Christians to dismiss things as ‘mere things’ of secondary importance, therefore of little importance. But to do this is to fail to appreciate just how much matter really matters. For there are cities, towns and landscapes that will never be the same again. There are thousands of people whose internal landscapes will be deeply affected by the brute fact that their stuff is gone forever. Favourite and meaningful things and places, all destroyed. It seems that material reality is part of our spiritual reality – not the enemy of it, as some theologians used to think.

Alison Webster is the Social Responsibility Adviser to Oxford Diocese