Having and Being (Mid-week Message)

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Having and Being 

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

July 31, 2013

²⁵ “I warn you, then: don’t worry about your livelihood, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? ²⁷ Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? ²⁸ And why worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. ²⁹ But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith? ³¹ Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ ³²Unbelievers are always running after these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingship over you and the justice this demands, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Enough, then, of worrying about tomorrow.  Let tomorrow take care of itself. Today has troubles enough of its own. (Matthew 6:25-34) 

Psychologist Erich Fromm, in his later books To Have and to Be (1976) and the Art of Being, (1993) describes two basic modes of experiencing life:  “having” and “being.”   

“Having” is when we find our value and meaning in acquiring and keeping things outside of ourselves: money, wealth, prestige, beauty, honor, or what others call “success.   Ambition, aggressiveness, competitiveness, and constantly comparing ourselves with others, seeing how we are “measuring up” are all part of this mode of existence.   Craving for more and more is often part and parcel of the deal, and in the long run dissatisfaction with one’s life and a lack of psychological integration are almost always experienced.  

 “Being,” however, is a mode of living where we are not enslaved to a need to acquire, constantly craving more.  We simple are, and use our gifts fruitfully, being at one with the world.   

This coming Sunday’s scripture readings are mainly about what Fromm calls “having” as a way of life: Ecclesiastes 1-2 tell us about its total futility; the parable of the prematurely dead rich man (Luke 12:13-21), its foolishness.   A life of simply being with others, being dedicated to the Right and Just, and being who we truly are—cared for creatures of God, beloved children—is the life we are called to, a life of gratitude and trust.  It is the life that will give us joy. 

Grace and Peace,
Fr. Tony+