I have been a fan of the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping since Black Friday of 2007 when I dragged my reluctant, shopping addicted family to New York City to see What Would Jesus Buy.
This fall, I had the fortunate opportunity to join the Church’s board of directors. They are actually a 501(c)3 non profit organization, you can read more about them here. (http://www.revbilly.com/about-us). I find their brand of blend of performance art and environmental activism very inspiring.
I thought I’d share his Thanksgiving Message with you.
REV BILLY’S THANKSGIVING MESSAGE
The holidays were once holy, and we still have a sense of why. With Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, there is a cycle that begins with increasingly scary darkness, then continues with the giving and thanking at harvest-time, and finally with the big one: with the winter solstice we celebrate the increase of heat and light and the promise of Spring. Each of these three holidays has been overwhelmed by corporate capitalism, but Thanksgiving retains its origins in its very name.
The gift economy – and the thanking after receiving a gift (which is the beginning of non-corporate storytelling) – is rising in many countries. There is a quiet revolution of home shops and gardens, farmers and thrift and swap markets, and the rise of organic, slow food and bicycles and walking. It is a human scale and earth-friendly economy. It is the heart of healthy neighborhoods and towns. These are direct challenges to Consumer Society in its expansive earth-damaging form.
The advertising of corporations will always try to imitate what it senses is a threat, and you see the contented, story-telling humanity of thanking/giving in ads that feature actors selling industrial turkeys, etc. But the capitalists cannot stop the rise of giving and thanking and thanking and giving. They can’t stop the very sophisticated media called talking and listening. The quiet revolution is a gab-fest. And in making relationships, flirting and bonding and trusting – the result is a non monetary currency. We are inclined to help one another without a credit rating, without the presence of professional ethicists or priests. Much magic happens in a slow handing-over of a piece of hand-made jewelry or a rutabaga or a bicycle repair, when we are looking into each others’ eyes and quips begin.
The money becomes very different when it is given hand to hand and the gesture is not hurried in a blur of efficiency. The money is then more human, closely identified with the thing it represents, and verges on the something more meaningful than the monetary. “Of course, pay me when you can” is never far from us giving and thanking, thanking and giving. This back and forth and back is a kind of ecosystem, a forest glade full of song. It is hard to laugh, sing, describe, tell a joke at its own rhythm – in the line at a Whole Foods. But a bodega in Bed Stuy, or a diner in Baltimore or unmediated love-making between two grateful friends – such places ring with laughter and all the vivid joking stories that cause it.
The Church of Stop Shopping – our unlikely community – is grateful to the laughing citizens of “Earthalujahville” – on this Thanksgiving weekend.
To learn more about what the Reverend Billy is up to, visit their website www.revbilly.com
