Living in a Junk Shop

"Junk" is such a harsh word. Few people think of junk as a positive description of anything. Ever drive by a junkyard? Piles of worn-out, rusty automobiles, shattered TV tubes, mounds of decomposing diapers. Not attractive. Even calling it a landfill only makes it sound slightly less appealing. We can cover it up with soil, puncture it with PVC piping and plant grass on it, but in the end its still a pile of junk.

We all create junk. Just think about your most recent meal. Mine was breakfast. As I deftly and almost mindlessly began heating the teapot and preparing my meal, I suddenly noticed that I kept moving back and forth between the counter and the trash can. One piece of trash for my empty Sweet-and-Low packet. One piece of trash for my instant oatmeal wrapper. Yet another piece of trash for my chamomile tea bag holder. Three pieces of trash, for a monastic breakfast. And I am just one person. Multiply that by three meals a day and over 280 million people in the United States alone and you begin to sense the ecological issue we face.

I grew up hearing the phrase, "God doesn't make junk," especially people. A profound theological point and certainly true in my opinion. We sang our little prepubescent hearts out for a whole week one Vacation Bible School musically making this point. Maybe its easier to remember or easier to see when you're twelve. God doesn't make junk and you've only had eight years or so to start screwing it up.

The San Francisco Chronicle carried a heart-wrenching article yesterday titled, "A homeless beauty and the beast, heroin" describing the tragic life of Rhonda Bye, a Washington state girl, her beauty confirmed by modeling jobs and her brains clear from her technical work on computers for a part-time employer. She dropped out of school, married young and tried cocaine. Cocaine led to a heroin and crack addiction. Her beauty withered. Her intelligence faded. She became yet another undesirable person under the freeway; one holding a cardboard sign emblazoned, "Dreamin of McDonalds," asking for another handout.

Looking at Rhonda's picture as a young girl, you realize that she's not any different from those other kids that were on that church stage, singing and knowing that "God doesn't make junk." Yet Rhonda chose to live as if her body was a junkyard. Take in the worn-out, rusty, shattered mounds of decomposing trash, one hit, one cube, one vial at a time.

We are no better. The trash we accept may be different, but the junkyard attitude is the same. Another order of fries, a cigarette, that third cocktail, add on the trash, just make sure we cover it all up with a little soil and some flowers. We convince ourselves that at worst we are living in a landfill and for that matter, its ours and we can do what we want with it, thank you very much.

Rhonda died of kidney failure this past Wednesday at age 39. If we're even half-listening, Rhonda wakes us up. Rhonda reminds us that we are not our own. Rhonda reminds us that we are only one or two strategic pieces of junk away from the path she trod.

How would we live if we still believe that God doesn't make junk? How would we live if we remembered that we occupy not a land fill of our own making but a temple to the LORD?