Thursday, January 23, 2020

Clearing out the clutter...

"Anything can be clutter if it keeps me totally absorbed in myself and unaware of what God is offering to me."
Sr. Joyce Rupp, "The Cup of Our Life"

I'm rereading an older book, "The Lessons of St. Francis," by John Michael Talbot, and I'm finding something interesting. My desire for simplifying my life goes back to the late 90's! I remember this book and others (such as the Joyce Rupp book quoted above) emphasizing voluntary simplicity and how exciting that concept felt to me. I remember clearing out my closet while Chris was away over a weekend. When he returned, seeing its bareness, he asked, "Are you moving out?" So simplifying is no passing fad for me...but it is always a work in progress. One can eliminate physical things in our environments even as the clutter within can still pile up. What is the clutter we accumulate within? Well, judgmentalism, our knee-jerk responses to things and people. Our prejudices, fears, and anxieties. Our sense of our own right-ness and, correspondingly,  our perceived wrong-ness of others. All of that, St. Francis would call, "The purse of our own opinions." And mine can be less a purse and more of a footlocker. I could be sitting in an empty room on a folding chair and still be in the middle of this kind of clutter. Simplifying our lives is not a weekend endeavor or even a year-long project. Done thoroughly, it takes us a lifetime to clear out ALL the clutter and find our hearts and minds more roomy. Maybe that can be a project for us this new year...clearing out the mental and emotional clutter along with the clothes we never wear. Love, heidi