Shifting Contexts With Ten Thousand Villages

Not all stuff is bad.  Some stuff is good.  In fact, a life without certain stuff would be terrible.  The problem is that bad stuff can get in our way and hinder our appreciation of good stuff.  That’s why StuckInStuff.com is “positively cautious about stuff.”  It’s also why in the StuckInStuff.com tag line “rejigger” purposely comes last.  Once we get out from under our abundance of stuff and then start to arrest our insatiable acquisition of more stuff, we can get to a place of rightly ordering our stuff.  I think that place - putting stuff where it belongs - is the best place for us people and our stuff to be.

Sometimes to change a mindset or habit it helps to switch up the context.  For example, my wife and I often censure each other.  I know, “freedom of speech.”  Bla bla bla.  Trust me, often our most precious rights must be chucked... in a marriage.  Governments might be different.  But I’m not much of a political blogger.  Anyway, my wife and I have noticed that once we get to complaining about something the same word or two repeatedly creeps into our protest.  Perhaps we’re not verbose enough.  Whatever the reason, after a day or two whoever is on the listening end of a grievance can easily identify what’s coming when one of those “words” stumbles out of the other’s mouth.  So we censure each other.  “I’m removing the x-word from your vocabulary for a week.”  That’s all it takes.  Sometimes.  But usually it works.

I think a change of context is also good for rightly ordering stuff in our lives.  Censure shopping malls, Nordstrom, Amazon.com, Lowe’s, Turner’s Outdoorsman, you know your habits and weaknesses.  Take a month off.  (That is one of the differences between censuring speech and stuff, it takes less time for the speech censure to kick in.)

Along these lines checkout Ten Thousand Villages.  It’s an organization I’ve had a little interaction with, in that I’ve browsed a Festival Sale one time in Wheaton, Illinois and have bought a gift or two from one of the Ten Thousand Villages stores.  From what I know, though, it’s a great organization that kind of shakes up our Western contexts when it comes to material possessions.  In a positive way, of course.

I know there are other organizations like this.  Anyone know of examples?

Comments

[Nina Ruth]

well, I know that some people secretly are disappointed, but sometimes I figure that along with (not quite ready for "instead of") the Christmas chaos of more stuff to be stowed, I've "shopped" at Samaratain's Purse "stores" or other Christian ministry "stores" where, instead of buying more stuff for friends' & family members' overcrowded stores, you can buy a poor family from another country a lamb to raise or thread for a weaver or a duck for them to support their families. Zulu beads is another thing that is helping (glass beads to help single-mother families in Africa) and then, of course, Far Reaching Ministries sells items (jewelry, journals, etc.) benefitting single-mother homes in Africa. I've actually shopped at 10,000 villages, myself...pretty cool!