This week I wanted to reflect a little on ideas that have
come out of the “Get Rid of It” challenge.
I have led this project in two congregations and heard similar themes as
the process goes on. One theme is the
simple power of making a decision. Often
we hold onto things because we cannot decide what to do with them. Looking through closets and bookshelves is a
bit like a geologist looking at layers of sediment. We can see the authors that have fascinated
and entertained us at one time or another.
I have a collection of Hemingway novels and E.B. White essays all stemming
from an 8th grade English teacher who thought early exposure to what
he considered good writing would refine my style.
We can see the classes we took and
the hobbies we tried over the years.
Letting go of such things can represent a failure of will and
follow-through. I was going to be a
great artist until I ran out of time but I promised myself I would get back to
it. I once knew calculus and Latin and
still have the textbooks to prove it.
Letting go of them means admitting that the knowledge was transitory. My personal translation of Virgil remains
unfinished and physics much past F=m*a remains beyond my grasp.
The process of letting go is a
process of admitting that who you were is no longer who you are. When I was a child I dreamed of great things
and great achievements. I could be an
astronaut. I could be famous, maybe the
president. I could be an Olympic
champion. As I grew older, the dreams
changed and the goals changed. I could
be a musician. I could be a
scientist. I could be an author. None of these were bad dreams. Perhaps some were deluded by a lack of
knowledge, but none were inappropriate for that moment in my life. Yet I look at the presidency today and
wonder, “Who in their right mind would want that?” I have met former athletes, now senior
citizens, who in old age deal with the damage to their bodies from the youthful
pursuit of excellence. I am content now
to try to keep myself in decent shape, but no longer hold Olympic dreams. The person I was may shape the present, but I
am not longer the person I was.
By removing some things, we give
ourselves permission to move forward to the next dream and next passion. We can acknowledge that most dreams and most
passions are transitory. It is all right
to enjoy a hobby for a little while and it is all right to move on to something
else. It is all right to change, to
explore, to backtrack. Change is the
nature of life.
In many versions of contemplative
prayer and meditation, one of the goals is to acknowledge that thoughts are not
permanent. They are an ethereal sparking
of connected neurons flickering in the background of consciousness until that
moment we pay attention to them. Then
somehow they gain solidity and move into the foreground. Contemplative prayer challenges us allow them
to flow in the background, to bubble up and fade away. One thought rises as another subsides.
Similar images can be used for the
things in our lives, the physical possessions, the scheduled priorities. What if we learn to loosen our grip on them,
to give them less attention? What if we
learn that things are just things? Could
we live with less? Could we share
more? Could we open more physical space
around us? Could we open more time in
our lives? Could we better handle the
changes that are a natural part of life?
Like it or not, we change. The world changes. The things we own also change. Cars dent and paints fade. The new shirt becomes the stained shirt. The enthralling mystery book loses its appeal
when you find out whodunit.
The good news is that God’s love is
constant when the world is not. God’s
love surrounded the person you were. It
surrounds the person you are. God’s love
will surround and sustain the person you will be. The path of discipleship is that path that reminds
us of this truth, a path explained well by those words of Meister Eckhart that
are shaping this Lenten season. “To be
full of things is to be empty of God. To
be empty of things is to be full of God.”
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