Earlier this spring I had occasion to visit a nearby Home Sense store twice in a weekend. On Saturday to make a purchase, and then on Sunday to return it.
We were looking for a shade to match a lamp we bought shadeless years ago at a discount emporium. We pulled it down from the attic and wanted to use it, so we were scouring stores to find a shade that would "work." It wasn't easy. Especially because the only way really to know was to buy one (or more typically a few), bring them home to try them out, and then return them for refund as we continued to find out how incompatible a lamp we had bought.
Saturday when I bought two shades at Home Sense, I was surprised how empty were both the parking lot and the store. Two or three cars in the lot, counting mine, and three clerks on staff to handle the three customers, counting me, who were meandering around the store. I wondered how they could stay in business.
Until I returned Sunday on my way home from worship to return the shades.
The parking lot was full. As was the store. I couldn't count the number of people in the store. Not exactly an "innumerable multitude" but a lot of people. People strolling the aisles, surveying what was on display and available for purchase to meet any imaginable household need or whim. Some with shopping carts already brimming with treasures found. Others with hand baskets similarly laden. Others still just looking. And you could tell that for many, just looking would be enough.
It was reassuring for all, I think, just to be able to see the bounty that was available. The needs that could be met. The things that could be purchased at reasonable cost to make their house a home, and their home a haven. Or a heaven.
The tip-off for me about what was going on here came as I stood in line in the cordoned-off check-out area, waiting to return my purchase and be given my refund. It was a long line. Even though all cash counters were staffed, it was also slow because of the number of things people were buying, the nature of some of the transactions, and the amount of easy conversation being exchanged between cashiers and customers. And ... in spite of all this, in the face of all this, no one seemed impatient at all!
All seemed content and happy. All seemed at ease and at rest. Just grateful to be in a place like this, and be able to rest in the reassurance of abundance available from somewhere beyond themselves, but for themselves when needed or wanted.
In other words, it was an experience of sabbath rest. And something in the hearts and spirits and bodies of those people in Home Sense that day knew it, even if they may not have known or accepted that language for it.
No wonder they came here on a Sunday. Perhaps human beings long for sabbath rest, even when we resist or feel we have moved beyond "religion" and "church" and boring, pointless things like "worship." Perhaps even after we leave behind our more traditional sabbath practice of weekly worship, we still need something like it. Something to reassure us that life is still good, that we are taken care of, that abundance is true, that what we most need is given for us, and that we can take home and take to heart what we need. Even if it is just a new set of towels and linens, or that delightful ornament, or a new magic blender. Or that one perfect lamp shade.
I just wonder, though.
Lately I have also been spending a little more time than usual at the bedsides of people living with cancer and in the living rooms of people whose life partner has died. And I wonder what Home Sense might have to offer to them?
