‘Souvenirs of the Holy’

LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Laurie M. Brock, an author and Episcopal priest in Lexington, Kentucky, stopped by the virtual studios of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” to talk about her new book, “Souvenirs of the Holy: Encountering God Through Everyday Objects.” Listen to her 54-minute conversation with podcast hosts the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong here.

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Brock said she has wrestled with the question, “What place are possessions taking in your life?”

While we’re not all called to be monastics, “I also think having so many things that you don’t even know what you have gets in the way of our relationship with God,” Brock said. “If you need 48 lip balms, go see a dermatologist. Something’s wrong.”

As Christians, we ought to be having a conversation with ourselves about how much is enough, Brock said.

A thing can bring us joy, Doong noted. “There’s a difference between that and you deriving joy from the purchasing and having something,” he said.

That’s true, Brock said, and advertising is largely to blame. “Advertising works on the simple belief that we’re going to tell people that they aren’t enough,” she said. “Compare that to the Christian message that you are enough, full stop.”

“Not only are you enough, but you’re enough in your messiness,” she said. “You can’t buy your way to enough.”

Brock wondered if we can “stand up to the advertisers who are constantly telling us what is quite honestly an anti-Christian message, which is, ‘you’re not enough.’ God says, ‘no, you are, and nothing that you buy will make you enough.’”

“It’s OK to derive joy from things,” Brock said, “but the accumulation and the process of trying to be enough is never going to work for you.”

Catoe wondered: “What does it look like to look at material goods differently?”

Do more than just consider the price of things, Brock suggested.

With community-supported agriculture, “I know the local farmers. It’s a deep connection,” Brock said. “The money that I put into that is an investment in holiness and grace. What if I did that same process as much as I could” with everything else she buys, she said. We can start with the question “why?”

“Why is a powerful and holy question we don’t ask enough in our world,” Brock said. “Sometimes we Christians don’t think our faith walks with us as we walk into stores. It does, and it should dictate how we consume things and the things we keep around us.”

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Noting that Brock’s book features a cast-iron skillet on the cover, Catoe said that image takes him back to his grandmother and great-grandmother. “An object can invoke the senses. I can smell their cooking,” he said. “Objects are the fingerprints of the past and of our loved ones. I think some objects can enhance our spirituality.”

“God is always speaking to us, wanting us to stop and listen,” Brock replied. “I have realized that everyday items in our lives have so much to say about love and how hard and complicated love is sometimes, and amazing and breath-taking.”

Every time she cooks with her own cast-iron skillet, which she inherited, “I know my grandmother and great-aunts are with us. The fat bonds with the iron, I think,” Brock said. “I am cooking with molecules that have existed for a hundred years.”

Objects can hold both memory and love. Sometimes the memory they hold is painful. “Filling our space with the things that matter give us a way to be present with God and those who have loved us through eternity,” Brock said.

Not everyone can afford to own a handcrafted dining room table, “but you might be surprised,” Brock said. Students at a nearby college studying under a master carpenter built her a table that cost less than she would have paid at a furniture store. “I met the students who worked with the master carpenter. They all signed the table underneath,” she said. “It is a holy thing. I know the story and the people who created it.”

“In valuing cheap, we also value cheap relationship,” she said, “instead of valuing something that took time to create.”

As a child of the South, Brock has her great-great aunt’s china. “I eat everything off that china. I don’t want to eat off cheap plates,” she said. “I want the food that’s going to nourish me to come off of something that has a story.”

Brock said she wonders what happens “when we as Christians begin to think about the things in our lives that have stories.”

“Not everything has one. Cheap faith? Cheap grace? Cheap is not generally good,” she said. “I think frugality is a wonderful value, but cheap drives down value.”

New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.