- Do the words of Clare of Assisi offend or encourage us? In what ways?
- In the final verse of the selected passage of Scripture from Matthew, Jesus essentially asks his disciple to abandon the burial of his deceased father. How does this exchange strike you?
- In what ways might our own material possessions and treasures be connected to our spiritual lives?
- Richard Foster writes that we, as Christians, must learn to live in right relationship to the issues of sex, money, and power, though most of us will never live as Clare of Assisi lived. His own personal response to these issues are to live in simplicity, in fidelity, and in service. What might our own lives look like when learning to live in these ways?
next week, Nov. 12, we'll consider the reading by Anne Morrow Linbergh
1 comment:
Lane says:
Clare speaks of "leaving the things of time for those of eternity"...what a noble and lofty sounding thought...but how do I live thusly?
I mean, really. I am quite earthbound. Note the watch on my arm, the ATM card in my wallet, the plop of sweaty clothes waiting for the washer, the scattered bills tilting like an unsteady stack of children's blocks on my desk.
So how do I become more attuned to the clock of heaven, the wealth of spiritual things, the clothing of my soul, the balancing of my heart and not my checkbook?
Possessions can possess me so easily. To live in simplicity is so countercultural...we have a society in the US that says more, more, more.
But Clare, and Foster likewise, seem to call us to less being more.
I like the way Foster notes it in the intro to the reading: "They develop the notion of God-centered poverty, not as a lack of material goods, but as a spiritual discipline of simplicity and detachment of heart."
At the base, the degree to which I am attached to my possessions, and to those of others in seemingly greener pastures around me, i. e. the green-eyed monsters of greed and envy, that is the degree of my heart's attachment.
Simplicity of heart for me is a tightrope I walk. And it can't be simplicity for simplicity's sake. It also has to be simplicity somehow bound up in the mix and mystery of Gospel living.
What holds me steady? My things? The things of heaven?
The Sermon on the Mount passage comes to mind....do I live trustingly like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field? Do I wake thankful for what is, and ready to be rid of some things that possess me that I might possess Christ more?
But to leave the burying of one's father...yikees. This seems harsh.
Is it the way Jesus has of saying that my truest identity is not at the fanfare of a eulogy, where we name the many things done on earth? Is it the way of Jesus has of saying, the headstone will fade, the foundation stone will not?
For this calendar year, I have put the majority of my things, and there are a-plenty after 53 years of living, in storage in Colorado. I live here on the coast of Georgia, in my parents' home, in an attic room, surrounded by my books and a closet of clothes...I sleep in a rather spacious window seat and wake to the dawn of sunrise coming up over the marsh.
I do all this unexpectedly for a season. I came here to be here with my aging parents, 81 and 85, as we begin the process of downsizing and simplifying their life since the avalanche of aging and illness has hit them.
The musical theme of simplicity has been a continual one in my head this year. It is both a symphony of peace and a cacaphony of chaos. What to do with all the many things my parents have accumulated? And will seeing all this make be live any differently when I return to Colorado and all my own stuff? And how do I live with my possessions in an unattached manner...open handed and open hearted?
Quite often when the noose of money tightens around me, God nudges. Give some away.
And I, like a child clutching a handful of sand, grasp tighter.
You know, of course, that when one holds sand tightly, it all runs out of one's hand.
But when the Lord says, loosen your grip, Lane. Give away what is not yours, but Mine. And it is in that moment that the notes of simplicity free me to be attached at the heart to the One who made my heart.
Simplicity, for me, is the continual loosening of the things that tie me up in knots. But it is no easy road. To have a few others who struggle with this idea of simplicity and living freely with the things of earth so I can live more wholeheartedly for the things of eternity is helpful.
Somehow the simplicity makes the treasure of each moment and the things I am gifted with all the more valuable. In a poof, the things of earth can vanish. Oh to be more possessed by eternal rather than temporal things.
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