“Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all.” – Nathan W. Morris
In April, I celebrated a milestone birthday, my 70th. Every other milestone birthday, indeed, every passing year, was never an issue for me. I saw things getting better, myself more comfortable with who I am, more secure. But this past birthday has been different. It haunts me, leaving me unsettled. Perhaps it is that my own mortality is becoming more real. Perhaps it is because I have to face the fact that there are some things I will now never do, never be able to achieve. Perhaps it is that, physically, I am beginning to see limitations that previously were not there, or I could ignore.
“I am trying to listen to see what this age is telling me,” I wrote to my friend Edie, a kindred spirit who lives in Oregon. She replied: “Take a good long listen.”
“Use the ears of your heart too,” she added.
I don’t doubt the wisdom of her reply.
CALLING MR. ROGERS
When I think of deep listening, I think of Mr. Rogers. He never seemed to rush to speak, but thoughtfully considered what was being said before responding. How different that is from the way I usually communicate. Too often, I am ready to reply before someone’s words have barely left their mouth. That’s not listening!
In recent times, when I had a decision to make, I have learned to call on the Universe, asking God to send angels to guide me and, when I am patient, the answers have come through. But I don’t have a specific question now about a decision I need to make. I just have an unease. Perhaps that is my question: Why the unease? What is Spirit trying to tell me?
In the past, when I had to make a choice –– Do I buy a house or not? Do I take this job or not? –– the parameters were clear. Do I do A or B? What I am facing now is less defined. Hence, Edie’s call for deep listening.
I need to apply the same thoughtfulness Mr. Rogers applied to listening with his ears to listening to my heart –– and more.
MY HOUSE SPEAKS
Lately, I feel as if my house is speaking to me. Everywhere I look, I hear clutter. I bought the house I call home 36 years ago, moving from an efficiency apartment into a standard Cape Cod. So, over the years, I added furnishings and more to what were empty rooms.
Where once my house called to me to fill it, now it is calling to me to empty it. At least, empty it of what I no longer need or want, possessions stuffed into a closet, stashed in the basement, or stored in the attic. And when I do, I find myself taking a special delight in the cleared out space, the orderliness, as if there is more room for my house, for me, to breathe.
Now I am thinking that decluttering my home is not the whole solution.
Meister Eckhart, the 12th century mystic, writes of how “the soul grows by subtraction and not by addition.”1 And I wonder if that is what my soul is telling me with my “unease” about my age: you need to do the same on the interior as you are on the exterior. You need to declutter your soul. And just what would that mean, to do the same clearing of my soul as I am doing with my house?
I recall how an old friend once said he saw me dragging a black bag behind me wherever I go, something I could not appreciate at the time. I want to call him up now and say I finally hear what he was saying.
ICING ON A KNIFE
A writing exercise during an online class recently led to an interesting revelation that may be giving me direction. Our teacher had classmates and me do a free write with this as our prompt: What would I commit to, say yes to, open myself up to, if I knew it could not go wrong?
Suddenly in the process of exploring that topic, I started to write about how once when I was a child, I violated the three-hour fast before taking Holy Communion by licking some icing off a knife. After licking the icing, I thought I was going to hell. Now, of course, I know how ridiculous my eight-year-old understanding of the then required three-hour fast was. But have I truly let my fear of hell go? Perhaps I still believe, deep inside, that I am not worthy of God’s love because of sin.
OLD WOUNDS
In my writing exercise, was the Spirit saying you cannot even consider what you can do until you let go of what is holding you back? By showing up now is the story of my licking that knife so many years ago simply my soul’s way of telling me that I carry baggage that needs to be left behind? If so, that baggage surely includes all the old hurts and fears, patterns and habits that no longer serve, if they ever did, and mistakes that I need to forgive myself for.
Richard Rohr writes “In the metaphor of life as a journey, I think it’s finally about coming back home to where we started. As I approach death, I’m thinking about that a lot, because I think the best way to describe what’s coming next is not ‘I’m dying,’ but ‘I’m finally going home.’”2
If this is true, and I embrace Fr. Rohr’s words as truth, then is the Spirit asking me to begin the practice of packing lightly now so I will not be burdened for my final journey?
TRAVELING LIGHT
I have never gone on a tour with the travel guide and writer Rick Steves, but I understand that if you sign up for one, he requires that you restrict your luggage to one small travel suitcase that you can take on a plane. That avoids any problems of delays due to lost luggage.
Indeed, while I hope I have many years before I take that last trip, why should I not travel through my senior years with as little baggage as possible. It works for Rick Steves and his fellow travelers. Why not me?
I don’t know if this is the sum of what my dis-ease with my age is telling me, but for now, it is as good of a message as any: I don’t need to carry so much with me. I can let go of all that is preventing me from moving forward. I am worthy of God’s blessings.
Until that time when I truly do embark on that final journey, as the Bible teaches, I am to choose life.3 And life is always better when I am not so weighed down.
FOR REFLECTION: What are you clinging to that needs to be put down? What can you let go of to live more lightly, more freely? Will you?
1 Matthew Fox, Daily Meditations, https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2023/11/21/the-mystics-on-joy-thanks-whatever-the-news/
2 Adapted from Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, and Richard Rohr, “Tips for the Road,” Everything Belongs, season introduction, ep. 5 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2023), podcast. Available as MP3 audio and PDF transcript.
3 Deuteronomy 30:19
Top image: Pixabay/C B
Midtext image: Pixabay/eginertex
Side image: Pixabay/Avelino Calvar Martinez
