[Faith-talk] {Spam?} Daily Thought for Tuesday, May 10, 2016

[Paul Smith]

Hello and good day to most of you for the second time.  Hope your day 
is going well, by God's matchless grace and His providential care.

As stated yesterday, the article presented now is at least twice as 
long as yesterday's baffling Bible Questions answered, and for this 
reason you just might wish to read it in stages.  Besides, an Internet 
event scheduled for about this time had to be cancelled, so this freed 
up my time.  The title of the article is ""Cluttered Lives" by Diana 
Dworin, rendered as follows and originally appeared in "The Lutheran" 
for December 2012:

The spiritual practice of shedding stuff

In a room near the end of a hallway, chairs form a circle as Eileen 
Stevie waits to greet those who feel overwhelmed.  Once a month at 
Christ the King Lutheran Church, Cary, N.C., she leads a group that 
focuses on a single, soul-searching question:

How can we free up more space for the important things of life?

But Stevie, a professional organizer, doesn't lead a Bible study.  
Instead, she facilitates a de-cluttering support group in the 
Raleigh-Durham metropolitan region that encourages people to strip down 
their possessions and simplify their lives.

"Clutter is a huge problem everywhere in our country," she said.  
"We're consumers here.  We buy things even when we don't need them.  We 
have to get that new TV even if our old one still works.  We save 
things because we think we might need them later or we don't want to 
feel wasteful.

"There's stuff clutter that takes over our houses, and there's the 
"time" of activities that keep us so busy we don't have time to think.  
Then we've got "paper" clutter that piles up all over the place, and 
we've got "mental" clutter--like holding grudges and not forgiving 
others--that can prevent us from moving forward and getting on with our lives.

"Clutter is an addiction--just like alcohol, food, or smoking.  It can 
take over your life."



A clutter-filled world

In the broadest sense, clutter can be anything that clogs our 
opportunity to experience life at its fullest.  Clutter includes 
possessions we don't use, want, or need.  It's the unnecessary things 
we keep--old clothes we no longer wear and toys the kids haven't played 
with in years, or collectibles and knickknacks displayed in our homes.

Clutter also includes the non-essential ways we spend our hours and 
energy on extraneous activities and "busy-ness."  It's evidenced by 
jammed-packed calendars and unfocused idleness, such as aimlessly 
surfing the Internet or logging on to Facebook for hours on end.

It also takes psychological and spiritual forms, from maintaining 
unhealthy relationships to nursing the wounds of hurts from years past.

"We use clutter to try to anesthetize ourselves from pain and fear," 
said Brooks Palmer, author of "Clutter Busting:  Letting Go of What's 
Holding You back" (New World Library, 2009).  "Clutter can be a buffer 
or an insulator for us.  We have it because we're fragile creatures and 
clutter can make us feel as if we're protected."

Palmer says we gravitate toward clutter--a contention that's supported 
by the research of social scientists.

The Center on Everyday Lives of Families at the University of 
California, Los Angeles, recently finished a multi year study that 
documented a staggering number of possessions within the 32 sample 
suburban homes it tracked.  Among the study's dual-income, middle-class 
households with school-aged children, researchers uncovered treasure 
troves of trinkets, gadgets, furniture, souvenirs, toys, and more.  
Seventy-five percent of families' garages had no room for cars because 
of spillover items from the house.

Another indicator of our clutter culture is the surge of storage 
facilities.  There are more than 54,000 self-storage businesses 
nationwide, offering 78 square miles of rental room.  That's 7.3 square 
feet of space for every person in the country, according to the Self 
Storage Association, a trade group based in Alexandria, Va.

What's more, discount stores now devote aisles of shopping space to 
home organization and storage items.  And specialty chains, including 
The Container Store, add locations each year to keep up with consumer 
demand for stuff to hold stuff.

Our preoccupation with clutter also has evolved into a spruce of 
entertainment.  Popular cable TV programs such as "Hoarders and 
Hoarding:  Buried Alive" take viewers into the homes and personal lives 
of people with obsessive compulsions to keep things.

In some respects, our tendency to accumulate clutter traces back to our 
country's founding emphasis on independence and self-reliance.  
Hundreds of years ago settlers filled their homesteads with salted 
meats and firewood to survive long, grueling winters.  Modern suburban 
families now load up at Costco and stockpile toilet paper and 
economy-sized jars of peanut butter with a similar sense of urgency.

Economic cycles and national times of crisis also come into play.  The 
Depression taught many of today's elderly tough lessons about staying 
prepared for hard times and keeping things that might later serve useful.

Our drive to acquire things even became associated with patriotic duty 
when, in the days following the Sept. 11 tragedy in 2001, elected 
leaders urged Americans to go shopping as a way of returning to normalcy.

Times of economic prosperity have catalyzed fevers of unfocused 
consumerism--and now, despite our country's lingering recession, the 
Advent season is inundated with messages to shop and acquire.



Reasons for clutter

"It's no surprise that clutter is an epidemic," Palmer said.  After 
all, we're surrounded by media messages that tell us there's something 
wrong with our lives.

"We're taught from the time we're very young, whether we realize it or 
not, that something isn't right and we need something to make it 
better," said Palmer, who also works as a Chicago area artist and 
commedian.  "Advertisements have an underlying theme that says, "You're 
not OK, but you will be OK if you do this or get this.  It's very 
effective and it's how clutter can get a start."

Palmer finds repetitions of this theme everywhere.  He sees it on 
billboards, on the sides of buses, splashed across magazine pages and 
piled up in email spam filters.  "It makes people feel as if they need 
"stuff" as an insulator against pain." he said.  "People often bring 
thins into their lives as a way to give themselves an idea than they're 
stronger or more powerful than their true, vulnerable selves really 
are.  They start to think that if they get the right mate or the right 
job or attain something spiritually or get more money, they'll be safer.

"But the truth is, stuff doesn't make you any safer.  It's just false armor."

Kate Blanchard, an associate professor of religious studies at Alma 
(Mich) College, agrees:  "When you feel afraid, it's just so much 
easier to be comforted by the things you can see than by the God you 
can't see."

Spiritual director Pamela Czarnota often meets with people who feel the 
draining effects of clutter in their spiritual lives.  "Clutter is 
symptomatic of our failing attempts to satisfy and soothe our souls," 
said Czarnota, who also serves as an associate in ministry at Christ 
the Redeemer Lutheran Church, Brecksville, Ohio.

"We have an inner hunger that is part of us and we're alway looking to 
fill it," she said.  "It's the thing in our being that M. Scott Peck 
(an American psychologist and author of "The Road Less Traveled") 
called "the God-shaped vacuum"--and we try to fill it with things that 
can never really satisfy.

"The world will always tempt us to live a cluttered life to fill that 
vacuum.  It's not that distractions and diversions or clutter trashes 
our lives, but what it does do is that it blurs our understanding of 
the clear purpose that God has in mind for the world."



Our relationship with clutter

The accumulation of extraneous possessions is a topic people of faith 
have grappled with for centuries.  Martin Luther, for example, would be 
floored by the amount of clutter in our lives, Blanchard said.

"In his wildest dreams, Luther probably couldn't have imagined the 
amount of stuff most of us have today.  He lived in a feudal society 
where most of the folks he knew were poor peasants," she said.  "Even 
the richest of the rich in 1500's Germany would have been less well off 
in terms of material goods than your average American who shops at 
Walmart or Target--so clutter as we know it probably wasn't one of is 
major concerns."

"If Luther was speaking to 21st-century Christians about clutter, he 
would probably tell them to read the Scriptures and then trust the 
Spirit to let them know how much stuff was too much," Blanchard said.

"On the other hand, he wasn't totally naive; he bemoaned a Christian's 
love of material comfort and capacity for self-deception," she said.  
"This is where Christian community can be helpful.  Christians should 
think and meditate together on "stuff" in order to become more aware of 
their own feelings about it, to help one another change their 
relationships to it.

Examining the ties we have to our possessions is a yearly event at 
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Augusta, Maine.  For years, members 
have organized an annual "Giant Lawn Sale" of donated items culled from 
their homes.  The items aren't tagged--buyers name the price--and the 
money raised benefits local charities, including food pantries and soup 
kitchens.

During the past decade, church member Cindy Gyorgy has watched 
parishioners jettison thousands of items:  furniture, baby supplies, 
home decor, kitchen gadgets, and more.  "People feel good about having 
their stuff go to people who can use it," said Gyorgy.

The process of shedding clutter has become a spiritual practice for 
Gyorgy.  Each year the sale makes her pause to consider how much 
clutter she keeps--and it's an opportunity for her to discern what she 
can share with others.

Gyorgy said it has helped transform the connection she feels toward her 
possessions.  "I use one coffee mug every day of my life, so do I 
really need a bunch of them?" she said.  "I think about things like my 
hand mixers.  I have two of them, and there's no way I can use them at 
the same time.  It makes me wonder why I have that."

"After a while, when you stop and think about it, it really does 
surprise you how much stuff you actually have that we don't really need 
in our life."

Denise Lee, a professional organizer in St. Louis, helps spur 
epiphanies like this with clients who come to her for help with 
de-cluttering.  Many of them view their decisions to part with 
possessions as a way to dispose of distractions that get in the way of 
peace and spiritual development.

"Faith does come up in this process for a lot of people, and they do 
say that reducing their clutter will help them build up more gratitude 
for things they keep," said Lee, a member of Bethel Lutheran Church, 
St. Louis.  "It can be a very powerful perspective from which to work."



The needed thing

Although experts say our clutter culture is expanding, people of faith 
have grappled with this issue since ancient times.  Open your Bible to 
Exodus 16 and you'll read about God's people hoarding more manna in the 
desert than they needed to get by for the day, said Lisa E. Dahill, an 
associate professor of worship and Christian spirituality at Trinity 
Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.  Trusting in God's provision--and 
not in our acquisitions--continues to be a source of spiritual struggle 
for many today, she said.

"There is sort of a human need and a disordered desire to hoard," she 
said.  "I think there is a fear of the uncertainty of the future, and 
there's a fear that we still hold today of "desert" experiences.  It's 
the fear of emptiness and aloneness, and we do things to try to fill in 
for that fear.  That's one of the reasons we overload our schedules and 
hoard things."

Dahill looks to the story of Jesus' visit with sisters Mary and Martha 
(Luke 10:38-42) for guidance on what's needed for the fullest 
experience of life--and it's not more stuff for our homes or events on 
our calendars, she said.

Rather than distracting ourselves with busy pursuits--even worthy ones, 
such as the household tasks that Martha tackled--we can look to Christ 
for clues on what's needed and what's clutter, she said.  Jesus 
commended Mary for freeing up space during His visit to simply be 
present with Him--essentially to experience a clutter-free life with God.

"It isn't that Martha is doing something bac," Dahill said.  "But in 
this case, whatever she was doing was distracting her and keeping her 
from the one thing that's needed.  This "needed thing" is, in some 
sense, being an ongoing listener to the love that is at the heart of 
our lives, the love that makes all things new.

"The needed thing is letting ourselves be open for Christ to fill 
it--and not for us to fill that space with clutter."

You probably thought we would never get to the end of this exhortative 
article, but we have.  Even though long, I pray that it provided you 
some fruitful things to mull over.

And that will do it for today's thought article.  Until tomorrow when, 
Lord willing another article will be posted, obviously not as long, may 
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and 
collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian 
friend and brother, Paul