There was a column this week in the Globe and Mail that mourned the decline of malls.
Do you remember them?
You might have a mall near where you live and maybe, sometimes, you go there. When I find that when I am in a shopping mall (rarely now) the experience is mostly one of remembering. I look around and observe what stores, that were in the mall when I was a teenager, are still there now. Perhaps, this shows why visiting a mall is an act of remembrance for me. Perhaps, it is mostly an age thing.
I suspect not entirely, however.
The Globe and Mail column identifies some of the reasons the writer is offering a kind of elegy for malls. They were places of social gathering and social networking. They were places that existed because financial and consumer transactions used to include at least some element of human interaction. That is, if you wanted to buy a book or a record or a pair of jeans, you would have to speak with at least one person and you might even engage with people who were in the mall conducting their own consumer business.
Malls were coming-of-age places as well. They were the landscape of burgeoning independence for young people; places you could go without your parents. They were places where you were with friends, unsupervised even. I appreciate the elegy, and even share some of its lament, but, like the author, I don’t find myself wanting malls to come back, to have some kind of resurgence.
I’ll ask another question - do you remember church?
Sometimes being in a church, being present for a service, can carry some of the same emotional remembering for people evoked by malls. Namely, a kind of appreciation for the social, and perhaps spiritual, significance of the place, but no accompanying desire to go back.
There are people who are still in the business of trying to keep malls alive.
There are people in the business of trying to keep particular models of church alive.
Whatever their job entails, at least part of it is the work of convincing others, and I suspect, the more precarious work of convincing themselves.
The thing is, in both cases - malls and church, they are just models. Malls have only existed for a short period of time historically. There are people alive today who were alive when the first mall in the world was built. The model of church, particularly evangelical church, has, arguably, been around for longer, but not much longer.
If malls die and become relics, that does not mean that shopping, retail, and consumer activity has died. If a particular model of church dies, that does not mean that “the gates of hell have prevailed” against the church. It might even be that the hand of God has prevailed against a particular model of gathering.
There is this uncomfortable emotional feeling attached to the loss of something, particularly to the settings of formative times in our lives. We might not want malls to come back, but we are not altogether joyous about what has arisen in the place of malls. We might not want church, as we knew it, to come back, but we are not convinced about what seems to be arising in the place of church as we knew it.
There is hope. The positive things that we valued about malls are still on offer today. When walls come down, be they of the local mall or of the evangelical church, there is the possibility of being sent out. It can be daunting to consider the less defined lines, but there is still the hope of human interaction, of meeting others, of engaging in even small activities that occasion engaging with another person.
Maybe the decline of the mall could allow more, not less, time and space for social interaction. We may simply have to determine to be open to it. Maybe the decline of particular models of church will allow more, not less, time for spiritual and social growth. We may simply have to determine to be open to it, and less committed to a particular structure, or entity, or empire.
Be patient with those who think that going back to what existed before would be the best option. We all know, I think, that such going back is not an option, even if we wanted it to be. There are however, both in retail and in church, fantastic, hopeful, humanity affirming examples of finding a good way forward.
Not too long from now, the local garden market in my neighbourhood will begin again for the season, two days each week. Judging from the crowds there on a Saturday morning, it’s one of the ways that people like to shop. You should see the line-ups for loaves of bread. These lines are long, sometimes 20-30 minutes, and the people standing in them seem not to be impatient. Most of them, not always me, seem to appreciate the deliberate slowness. They talk to each other. They have their dogs with them. You can buy fresh produce at the market as well, grown right on site.
Imagine that.
To be fair, you can’t get everything at the market. You might still have to go online when you get home to buy your detergent.
Imagine what similar kind of change would look like for church. The market isn’t trying to be all things to all people. There is nothing coercive about it. Sure, there can be aspects (buy local, etc.) that can be preachy or even judgmental, but no one, as far as I can tell, has implied to anyone else that if you don’t go to the market, then you might just face eternal damnation.
Happy shopping. Happy praying.
For a conversation that addresses spiritual aspects of nostalgia, you might want to listen to an interview I was part of with James K. A. Smith.
You are funny 😂