Simplicity has become an attractive concept to me since I have begun to see simplicity not as the task of “keeping it simple, stupid” but as a discipline, as a journey that leaves fewer footprints in the sand even though this road
sometimes requires more steps. Simply put, the more cares of this world that I place upon my own shoulders, the less time, talents, and energy I have to devote to worship, repentance, reflection.
Last evening my family and I sat around the table discussing what our New Year’s Resolutions might be. I seldom make New Year’s Resolutions because I don’t like to verbally or mentally commit to any act that I don’t truly intend to carry out. Perfectionism often kills resolution, doesn’t it? While prayer feeds resolve…so perhaps my resolution should be to pray more, speak less.
Simplicity isn’t really a more-or-less kind of being, and this has come of late as a complete surprise to me. I find myself on the eve of this New Year’s Eve called to something I can only claim to barely understand. Here I am, writing about a concept which I can’t define, walking on the beach with an alluring shadow. It seems that I can only right now tell you what simplicity is not:
1. A gift which can be captured by declaring its antithesis….but here I go anyway.
2. Debt. Personal, financial, emotional or any other kind.
3. A mirror. I believe simplicity is a lamp…or perhaps a candle. We never get to the crux of anything by staring at our own faces. Or by blogging about it, for that matter.
4. Your parents’ legacy. Parents provide so much, but how often do we ponder the implications of teaching our children that in the living of this life, the immortal is seldom seen as important? I feel that I have trained my own children to learn this lesson the hard way.
5. A theology of bad shoes. Simplicity should not be mistaken for the wearing of frumpy sweaters or as an excuse not to attend to the details. Simplicity is more archeology than it is any other thing. Simplicity is not junk bonds or junk management.
6. Identity. My own preoccupation with the establishment of who I am supposed to be as opposed to the gentle acceptance of the flawed being that I am has created more dangerous clutter in my life than materialism, political persuasion, regional influence, or cultural adherence. There is truly only one way to fit in…and friends, it’s breathtakingly simple.
7. A movement. Or a color. Or the doings of Angelina Jolie.
There is so much more (ironic isn’t it?) that I want to tell you in this blog post about simplicity and my fascination with it. Right now, though, all I can tell you about simplicity without spilling all the beans and creating a logistical mess of what God intended to be a sculpting process…just His hands within my soul…is this….
Here I was trying to accomplish what I could never have accomplished on my own…the right to just be…like the tree in the meadow…to be a part of the restorative in His creation…to rid myself of my own violence and destruction at a level deeper than even the molecular…and He stepped in and paid the price for me….
I can spend the rest of my life, the rest of my New Year’s resolutions attempting to pay Him back, and if I choose that bent, my life is going to subsequently fill up with peripheral nonsense. My relationships are going to suffer. I am going to spend too much of my time knowing myself too well. I am going to build and acquire and walk right past the person who needs me the most in any given moment. I am going to stay incredibly busy and fit and numb.
Yet the thirst for this drink of Gospel, the yearning to be in the center of this great happening, will never leave me. Simplicity is the box that everything I have ever wanted, needed, attempted, failed at, succeeded at fits into perfectly, and simplicity is so much more beyond that box. This New Year, I resolve not set another goal or to ingest another concept, but simply to attempt the impossible made possible by God…the reckless abandon, the “great word,” the genuine acceptance of the gift which leaves me no more room.
Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on.–Matthew 6:25
-this post submitted by Kerri Snell
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