Sorting Through and Shedding Stuff: A Spiritual Practice?

Once in awhile Judy and I talk about all the stuff we have and that eventually we will have to get around to downsizing. 

 When we moved from place to place in the past we had opportunities to shed some of our material things, but we usually felt that we still had too much "stuff".   When we came back to the states after living some years in third world countries we would go through a kind of reverse culture shock - we especially remember the vast variety of choices in the supermarkets and the large number of things every family felt they "needed". 

In the 1970s there was much written about the value of a simple life style.  This concern interfaced with the growing consciousness of the vast number of people in the world going hungry and living in poverty.  My perception is that the movement to simplify lives did not catch on in this country. Marketing and consumption are a huge part of our culture.

 

The other day I was looking around the garage and I saw boxes with labels like "Files" and "Miscellaneous".  Looking inside I found many letters, memos, reports, articles and papers that, undoubtedly, at some time we thought were important to keep.  So we neatly filed them away and most of them have never been looked at again.. until now.

I started to look at these files and had an inspiration to sort through and start to shed myself of much of this accumulated paper trail of my life.  As I read some of them I was flooded with good memories, but a few even brought on a tinge of regret for a undue critical comment made in a letter. I mentioned this process of sorting and shedding to dear friends, Paula and Peter Limburg, with whom we worked and shared some of the most memorable years of our lives when we served our respective church organizations in Central America.

Paula sent this perceptive and entertaining commentary on their recent experience:

Dear Jerry and Judy, I read your blog this morning and was so tickled because that is exactly what Peter and I have been doing for the last 2 months! Peter has pulled all print materials from the attic and is almost done in his basement office. We've tossed, recycled, and sorted for shredding tons of STUFF!

Like you, we've been significantly delayed by the distraction of reading whatever it is we're sorting. We have lots of letters from you, and of course from our parents. It must be that when we've moved, we've just transferred boxes and boxes of old letters, college term papers/tests, documents, pictures - they all jog memories that we have to track down in the allies of our brains or ask each other for clarification (usually believing our own take on the memory anyway) - makes for lots of dinner conversations about the past.

I hope that this is just a stage: I love thinking of decades past, but not exclusively! Peter says he's done with the paper-mining, and there will be no more. Hah! This week we "Reune" with my sibs, and in July with Peter's, so I'm returning their letters to them to re-read or dump. Peter's mom saved all our letters to her for several decades, and we got them back when she died. So I've sorted and tossed. Some files will make good memory books when we get hard up for reading - probably never. Then our kids will need to toss.

But it makes us think about life and living and dying - and the significance and meaning of all that we've done with our years. We're so grateful for our faith, and are learning that our worth is not in what we've accomplished, rather what God has (and does) accomplish through us. Otherwise, with our growing collection of frailties and failings, we would have a hard time with finding worth and meaning at this time in our lives when we're not working our heads off - it still is a challenge, though, since our culture tends to define people by their work and their accomplishments. Love to you both, Paula

Now, the spiritual part:  Some of this I got from a Quaker website (wouldn't you know it?)

What Paula wrote is very insightful.  Letting go of what is, in the end, just stuff  - is a spiritual opportunity to live a life of simplicity and stewardship.  It can be an outward act of inward removal of that which is not of God.  It is an occasion of expressing gratitude for the plenty that we have been given, and for receiving the grace inherent in giving to those in need.  It demonstrates to those around us how to live a (simpler?) life, and how to deal with life’s diminishments in a gracious spirit.