Let it Go

Yesterday I helped new neighbors move into their apartment. On the third floor. No elevator. Imagine my great joy upon seeing their heirloom wardrobe, begging me to clasp one of its awkward, sharp corners as our foursome carried it's wooden frame and empty womb up those flights of stairs. Even empty, it weighed a ton.

Yesterday brought once again that dreaded feeling of "too much." I looked around our small apartment and realized that our apartment was, indeed, obese with things that we continue to cling to, some of it for aesthetic reasons and others for functional reasons. But there is another category altogether that much of our extra possessional weight falls under: "no discernible reason."

Eastern religious masters, in their sage wisdom, are adept at practicing "un-attachment." The wisdom behind this practice lies in its underlying caution: things that you own will begin to own you.

Yet this practice is not purely Eastern, but should also be a Christian practice as well. Indeed, the first commandment "You shall have no other gods before me" is a call to un-attach ourselves from all that clouds us from keeping God as central in our lives. And it stands to reason that the more obese our homes, wallets, and belts get, the less room there is for God in our lives.

Even as Ecclesiastes reminds us that "For everything there is a season," we must constantly remind ourselves that many of our possessions may be out of season. And this may just mean that it is time to "throw away stones," as that wise author notes. And stones come in many shapes: couches, clothes, memories that continue to do evil to us, and food that can be eaten another day. So many stones.

How is your life obese?

I leave you with a poem by Eugene Peterson:

Blessed are the poor in spirit
A beech tree in winter, white
Intricacies unconcealed
Against sky blue and billowed
Clouds, carries in his emptiness
Ripeness: sap ready to rise
On signal, buds alert to burst
To leaf. And then after a season
Of summer a lean ring to remember
The lush fulfilled promises.
Empty again in wise poverty
That lets the reaching branches stretch
A millimeter more towards heaven,
The bole expand ever so slightly
And push roots into the firm
Foundation, lucky to be leafless:
Deciduous reminder to let it go.

Let it go...

See you in church,
VT...