Word of Unburdening-Possessions

by Carrie Eikler
Mark 11:1-11
Palm Sunday:

During Lent we are trying to speak less and listen more.  Talk less and explore more.  Some of the items of unburdening we have addressed may be just what you needed to look at.  Others, less so. 

As I was talking with Torin this week about our Lenten series, I remarked on how hard it has been for me to give these shortened mediations, so we can listen more.  The challenge to me, is to not simply sound like some sort of self-help book, giving seven to nine minutes of platitudes and worn out clichés.  It’s been hard to try to get to the fast and furious to the heart of the spiritual longings that we fill with spending, or media, or food. 

or possessions…  Those thing we have that really end up possessing us (wow, isn’t that a cliché). 

No matter how far along on the “simplify my life” path I go, I will always have farther when it comes to possessions.  Today we threw clothes in the aisle, remembering that the people didn’t only welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with palms but with cloaks…their clothes.  For some, clothes are a big deal they need to address. an obvious place to start unburdening. 

For me, clothes as possessions aren’t really the issue. Let me just say… I’m glad they didn’t line the path into Jerusalem with books.  Not only would it hurt to throw them at Jesus, or each other, but it would be too painful to decide which ones to throw out.

And things like books are possessions we can feel good about.  Clothes, electronics, lots and lots of cars (if we had the luxury to worry about itsd).  These are things (sigh) “we know” we don’t need as many as we have.  But books, for me…don’t make me reduce those.  Not my fiction.  Not that 1999 college text book on demography.  Not one out of 30 (or more) cookbooks.  Not that book about McCarthyism that I have never read, nor ever will read, but really just like having on my bookshelf because I want to people to think I have it…oh no.  I can’t get rid of that. 

This type of book I should say is in a category all of its own.  I like to call them my “ego” books.  Books that I think say something about me that I want to convey.  That I am the sort of person who would read that sort of book.  Ego books span the genres. 

These ego books are plentiful and are a problem for me. Even the non-ego ones.  Because what I realized this week is that while I can rarely speak to what is in them, I expect them to say something about me to others.  I want the books to speak for me.  We want our clothes to speak of us.  Or the fact that we have very unique kitchen gadgets.  Or the newest, fastest i-phone, or i-pad, or i-don’t-know-what-else. 

I want the fact that I own something to basically convey who I am, what I’m interested in, the type of person I want to be in this world, and what I value.

Essentially, I want the things, rather than me, to speak about my life

There is an old Quaker saying: “Let your life speak.”  Let your life speak.  Let how you act, what you say, how you live (not what you live with) be the definition of who you are.

 The books on the shelf, the movies in the cupboard, the clothes in your closet, the technology…they are part of your life.  But who are you without them?  When we speak of idolatry of stuff, we can probably better see what our idols all, not by what we acquire, but by what we simply could not part with.

What is the difference--or is there--between saying “Yes, I want that” and “No, I can’t part with that, now that I have it.”

So, right, I still don’t think I’m getting to that nitty gritty spiritual truth of the issue.  Maybe I’m just speaking still in self-help book clichés…probably from a self-help book I still have somewhere on my bookshelf.  So I’ll call on the help of Michael Lindvall, whose article in the Christian Century has helped me see a new see spiritual nature to our material world.  The following is from his article

It ought to be clear that God doesn’t hate stuff. Witness the creation story. God—none other—invents stuff. At the end of each of the six days of creation, God engages in self-congratulation. In litany fashion, God pronounces … the stuff created by the Divine word that day: “Good!” ,,,and then, on the sixth, “Very good!’

The problem, I think, is not so much that we like stuff too much; rather it’s that we don’t like it enough. Before you cry heresy, let me explain. We acquire things, but then quickly tire of the things that seemed so important when first obtained. We replace rather than repair because we have such fickle and passing romances with our things. The real soul danger is not exactly in liking things too much, nor in owning them, nor in caring for them well.
The soul danger lies in the insatiable longing to acquire new things one after another, more and more things, as if the getting of them somehow proves our worth in comparison with others, as if the having of them can fill the emptiness. It’s this insatiable drive to acquire stuff rather than the stuff itself that’s the problem.

In Jesus Christ, God has definitively entered into that very good materiality to claim it, bless it and transform it.”

What is the stuff in your life that you hope speaks for you, and what would happen if you tried parting with it?  Why aren’t you letting your life speak, instead?