Searching for Thomas Merton in My Handbag

I have a favorite handbag that I’ve carried for years. It is perfect. It holds my files, journal, two kinds of pens, note cards, makeup and money. I love this bag. It cost less than $100. But when I go to New York City I fondle designer bags.  I pet the suede, calfskin and dyed canvas trimmed with leather. One of these bags costs as much as a car payment. But I want one. It’s lust. 

Then at home I look at the books piled on my coffee table, bedside table and desk. Books about personal growth and making a better life and having a spiritual connection and at the top of the pile: Thomas Merton—monk, philosopher, writer.  He had some things I want too: a life of contemplation, simplicity and, oh yes, renunciation.

How do I reconcile these competing and conflicting desires? What is a human to do?  Some of us are dashing around the mall wearing our name off our credit cards and others smugly announce they’re, “Making do with less” this year. I want both, always both.

Consumerism is based on the belief that problems have material solutions. We do it with bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger jobs. But we also do it by consuming more spirituality, trying more spiritual practices or teachers or even religion as “products” to fix our lives.  

Count me in: yoga mat, meditation pillow, charms, chimes, statues, wall hangings, a necklace—gold, expensive—to announce my belief in God. Even recovery jewelry. I buy more things to proclaim my belief in simplicity.

Yes, we all use consumption to create our identity. But it’s equally flawed to create a self-image based on refusing to participate in the dominant culture or by disdaining those who do.  The fundamental error is the same: whether we derive our identity from consuming or from not consuming we’re still focused on self.  Spiritual wanting is still wanting. 

How perfect that it’s a bag I’m craving now. I can look in my handbag—literally a sack to carry my identity—to see who I am. It holds my driver’s license, medical cards, reward

cards for the stores I shop—my cell phone address book displays the details of what and who matters. But I still think the outside of this bag—calfskin would be nice—will change the inner me.

As recovering women, we live at the intersection of spirituality and consumption. Could we choose peace in our hearts and at the mall? I am searching for Thomas Merton in my handbag and hoping for peace in my very human heart.

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More on recovery, shopping and style in "Out of the Woods" published by Central Recovery Press.

Does My Higher Power Love Clothes?

After these many years of working a Twelve-Step program I recently began to think about this idea of “choose your own Higher Power.” Of course I had heard that many times over the years. You too heard about making the group your Higher Power or make Nature your Higher Power or in those blunt, old-timer voices, “You can make the radiator your Higher Power, just pick something and pray to it.”

Maybe this was the snob in me but I thought, “well, if they have to do that I guess it’s OK but I have a God and that’s the best kind of HP.” Yeah, I guess that is being a spiritual snob.

But a few weeks ago I heard a woman who has a recovery life that I admire talking about how she created her HP and it hit me, “They really mean it—we can choose.” And I wrote this note in my journal: “Can I create my own loving, positive, supportive God and HP? What would He/She be like? How would I connect to them?”

I felt new freedom right away. Just pondering that helped me realize how much I had carried a childhood God into my recovery Higher Power. No wonder surrender is still hard. And no wonder I feel like I have to bargain and deal. But then another fear it me:

I like clothes a lot and I like art. I’m also a writer and I love to read. I spend a lot on books and clothes and well, beautiful things. That can’t be very spiritual, right? So the guilt again: Still not good enough for God.

But this morning looking at the new line of Eileen Fisher clothes—always joking that she must have designed for Thomas Merton and for nuns—it hit me: God loves beauty. God must love beauty a lot—look at all the beauty, design, color, style in the the natural world. My God, (literally) I’d love to wear any color combinations I see out my window today. Wouldn’t you? And perfumes? Yep. And design, shape, line. All there.

And literature? Whatever faith you follow there is beautiful language and marvelous texts. And there are stories that have transcended thousands of years, and poetry—every religion has poetry. Religious poetry is the basis for all secular poetry. So God must care about language, narrative and words.

And my beach vacation? God. The way my heart leaps at a beautiful scarf? God. Beautifully designed and well-crafted shoes? God.

Now we cannot be without discernment here. If I want 20 scarves (and I do) that’s not really faith-filled. There is greediness and grabby-ness in that? And that part of me that searches for a new handbag and then as soon as I buy one starts to look again---Oh that is my addiction and not my serene love of beauty talking.

But I’m going to try out this new Higher Power and believe that He/She is also happy with Eileen Fisher—and maybe has a hand in the social-justice-plus-fashion work that Eileen is doing. And maybe this Higher Power wants me to feel lovely and confident so I can write and speak to carry His/Her message. Maybe when I pray I can talk about all of me: my recovery, my work, my relationships and the beauty around me, and I can ask this new HP, “New olive bag—guide me on this too please.” And then get really quiet.