Gavin McLellan / Sanctioned Sanctuary
In Birmingham late last November I took this picture of two temples; the church and Selfridges.
The steeple seems to be teetering and wispy in the face of the hulking, brooding retailer’s temple. It strikes me as an image of the times; out of proportion, overblown, and bloated on credit. Yet what both of these places of worship now have in common is a sense of living on borrowed time.
In this time of conflating crises; global recession, war, climate change, where do we take sanctuary? Retail therapy or spiritual retreat, ……..the wilderness?
My fellow bloggers have spoken of ‘enough’, that there is to be found, or sought, peace and sanctuary in contentment. Perhaps neither are available at the church or Selfridges? Probably a discontinued line.
Where do we find sanctuary?
Did we find ‘enough’ in our festivities? Was contentment unwrapped in our giving and receiving? Did our resolutions, if we made any, sanction ourselves to do less?
There is one comment on Sanctioned Sanctuary:
Your blog post reminded me of something retail analyst Victor Lebow wrote, “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.”
Do we overconsume at Christmas because we are subconsciously trying to meet a spiritual need at what was traditionally a spiritual ritual?
January 7th, 2009 at 12:42 pmComment on this post...