We have recently moved our household. Moving is an experience unto itself. It is a time of testing and refreshing and closure and possibility. It is also a time of re-evaluating one's relationship to things and I do mean literal things - possessions - all of the stuff that one owns and either decides is worth the move or is ready to be offered up to the universe to fill up space in the home of someone else. This opportunity is always a mixed blessing in my world.
On one hand the evaluation of possessions offers me a chance to engage the things I own with an awareness to their utilitarian purposes in my life or with an openness to the embodied presence of deeper meaning that flings wide the doors of memory. Memories are mysterious gifts - they can bring the past alive in the present and they can spur us forward to action in the future. Memories can bring joy, pain, peace or discomfort and when things stir up memories those memories must be encountered - a process which takes both physical and emotional energy.
On the other hand I very often struggle with the base reality of owning stuff at all. I grew up in the Mennonite tradition - a tradition that, at its roots, values a simple life lived in community so that resources are not wasted on those with plenty when there are so many in the world without enough. This is a matter of social justice. Inevitably a move makes me aware that I do, in fact, own much more than I really need to live in this world and stirs up a whole vat of emotional and intellectual issues for me to work through on religious and social fronts.
So where does all of that leave me - other than exhausted from the physical, emotional and intellectual energy that is being drained out of me? Well, the optimistic side of me wants to say that it leaves me cleaned out with plenty of space for new experiences and attitudes - just as my old apartment is cleaned out and ready for new tenants. The tired side of me can only see the residue and debris of life straggling in the corners - all the little things that don't quite fit into any of the other tidily labeled moving boxes, physically or metaphorically. But the reality is, it leave me right in the middle of the fullness of life itself - a fullness that is exhausting, energizing, transitional and transforming all at the same time. A fullness that will never have all of the answers and for the most part only sparks more questions. A fullness that continues to keep my spirit engaged in the act of learning to live and challenging me to keep evaluating that which surrounds me and that with which I surround myself.
On one hand the evaluation of possessions offers me a chance to engage the things I own with an awareness to their utilitarian purposes in my life or with an openness to the embodied presence of deeper meaning that flings wide the doors of memory. Memories are mysterious gifts - they can bring the past alive in the present and they can spur us forward to action in the future. Memories can bring joy, pain, peace or discomfort and when things stir up memories those memories must be encountered - a process which takes both physical and emotional energy.
On the other hand I very often struggle with the base reality of owning stuff at all. I grew up in the Mennonite tradition - a tradition that, at its roots, values a simple life lived in community so that resources are not wasted on those with plenty when there are so many in the world without enough. This is a matter of social justice. Inevitably a move makes me aware that I do, in fact, own much more than I really need to live in this world and stirs up a whole vat of emotional and intellectual issues for me to work through on religious and social fronts.
So where does all of that leave me - other than exhausted from the physical, emotional and intellectual energy that is being drained out of me? Well, the optimistic side of me wants to say that it leaves me cleaned out with plenty of space for new experiences and attitudes - just as my old apartment is cleaned out and ready for new tenants. The tired side of me can only see the residue and debris of life straggling in the corners - all the little things that don't quite fit into any of the other tidily labeled moving boxes, physically or metaphorically. But the reality is, it leave me right in the middle of the fullness of life itself - a fullness that is exhausting, energizing, transitional and transforming all at the same time. A fullness that will never have all of the answers and for the most part only sparks more questions. A fullness that continues to keep my spirit engaged in the act of learning to live and challenging me to keep evaluating that which surrounds me and that with which I surround myself.
