Garments of faith

An old man was asked by a certain soldier if God received a penitent man. And after heartening him with many words, he said to him at the last, "Tell me, beloved, if thy cloak were torn, wouldst thou throw it away?" He said, "Nay, I would patch it and wear it." The old man said to him, "If thou wouldst spare thy garment, shall not God have mercy on His own image?"
-"The Desert Fathers" by Helen Waddell

I cannot remember the last time I patched a garment. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I repaired something at all. It's as though I have fully bought into the "toss away, buy anew" attitude of our country.

I was watching "Mary Poppins" with my children recently and as Mary set about darning a sock my 8 year old daughter looked at me and said, "What is she doing?" I responded that she was repairing a hole in the sock and she looked at me confused. "Why?" She asked. "She's repairing it so that she can wear it again, rather than buying a new pair." She was confounded. "Hmm." She said, "We never do that." She was right.

I don't often feel guilty about it. "Oh, things are made cheaper now" I reason to myself. There is a part of this that is true. We don't build things to last anymore. Everything is consumer-driven, made to wear out, so that we will buy more; and more often, as well.

This saying of the Desert Fathers presents me with a spiritual challenge to this thinking however. Imagine this same scene now, the Desert Father asks me that question and I would answer, "I would go to Target and buy another one."

I don't know yet what the old man would say to me at that point.

When I was growing up in Cincinnati Ohio I lived in a predominantly German Catholic area. You attended the church in the "parish" you were nearest. Your choice was limited to one or two different Catholic churches at best. In fact, most people did NOT choose their church. They simply went to the one they "belonged to" by nature of the location of their house. The only reason for changing churches was a housing relocation.

This idea of "shopping" for a church was new to me when I moved to Chicago stopped attending Catholic mass and began to explore the Evangelical Protestant church. Now my choices were beyond measure. Once I had a car my choices tripled! Each church had it's own set of marketing tools telling me why their church is better than this church or how much more "biblical" their preaching was compared to the heathens down the road. What I really wanted was community. I did not know it well enough to articulate it as such at the time, but that is what I wanted.

I suppose choice is a good thing overall. And yet, I cannot help but feel sad that the wisdom of the Desert Father has lost relevance to me. I am even sadder that it will be completely baffling to my children if I allow my thinking, and therefore my actions to remain as they are at present.

I have no answer for this. Only pondering...discernment...a stirring of the Holy Spirit in me to examine it further and a call to a change of heart and of hand.