Pentecost 20: Making Room

I have a strange relationship with my stuff.  Partly out of concern for global waste and the environment, and probably because I grew up with a frugal mom, most of my clothes, furniture, books, and household goods are second-hand.  But even though (or maybe because) we don’t have a lot of new stuff, we still have way too much of it..  

Because someone before me owned the stuff I own, you’d think I’d find it easy to pass it on, but I don’t. What if they just throw it away?  I think.  I might need it.  Maybe Phoebe will want that.  I should save that for when kids come to visit.

And yet, whenever I ignore those voices and pack up a box of stuff I no longer need, the minute I drop it off and walk away, every time, I feel a lift.  I feel lighter, happier.  And yet, the next time I declutter, there it is again–that reluctance to let go of my Stuff.

So I read this week’s Gospel with compassion for the young man who comes to Jesus in today’s Gospel, owning everything he needs and yet, still searching for something more.  When Jesus tells him what he needs to do–sell your stuff and use the money to help the poor–he just can’t do it because his Stuff owns him, and there’s no room to let God into that mess.

You might be that person who, unlike me, loves to declutter and live with minimal possessions.  You might look at that rich man as just another incredibly wealthy, incredibly selfish person.   But every one of us has stuff we’re holding on to as tightly as the rich man holds on to his worldly goods, as tightly as I hold on to toys my kids haven’t touched for more than a decade.  I don’t know what that is for you, but I do hear Jesus telling me–us–sternly and lovingly:  hold on to that, and you’ve got no room for the Light to come in. 

We’ll read the Gospel this week against The Quiltmaker’s Gift, a book most of us probably know well because Elyite Gail de Marcken illustrated it.  The joy that the king finds when he learns to give up his stuff is a beautiful and hopeful take on the rich man’s story.   As Jesus says, all things are possible with God, and I love the way the king’s journey to joy begins by giving up just one marble. 

Sometimes, too, we learn to let go in another way, through the losses that we cannot choose. My favorite poem by Mary Oliver is perfect for this week as the maples lose their leaves, and many of us continue to live through the hard losses of this past year. 

In Blackwater Woods Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars  of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,  the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders  of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is  nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned  in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side  is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world  you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it  against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.