Category: contemplative life (Page 3 of 4)

On Tidying and Stuff and Resisting “More”

July 19, 2021 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

I’ve been trying to Kondo my stuff for over a year. This is partly because I have too much stuff and want to minimize, partly because all my stuff is making it hard for me to keep a (relatively) clean house, and because clutter and an unclean house give me anxiety. I’m also doing it because I want my husband and children to perhaps see my example and follow suit. I’m hoping our house in general can become tidier and therefore more comfortable.

I don’t need a house that is uber-minimalist, not by any means. I like piles of books stacked up on desks and shelves. I like random sticky notes stuck all over the place and tons of kiddo art hanging from the refrigerator. I like that we have an art room that is messy and an art shelf that is wonderfully helter-skelter. But what I don’t like is the feeling of my stuff closing in and creeping all around me like a black pudding. I want to be able to breath. And to dust a room without having to lift fifty million things.

So I’ve been Kondo-ing, but it’s going slow. I did the clothes pretty easily, but then I’ve never been particularly attached to my clothing. Books weren’t hard either because I basically kept everything. (Okay, that is an exaggeration, but honestly, I didn’t get rid of many books. They are the objects that “spark” the most joy.)

Paper — the category Marie Kondo says is the easiest — has proven to be the hardest so far. This has to do with the fact that I have a lot of drafts of my writing sitting in boxes, and notebooks from years past, and old magazines and cut outs that I plan to use one day for… something (maybe making zines?), so it’s not just a matter of shredding a bunch of old credit card statements and outdated bills. Also, my kids make art at an incredible level — and they often refuse to throw any of it in the recycling box — so we have boxes and boxes of their drawings and art projects. I want to keep some of their things for sentimental reasons, yes, but honestly, most of it needs to go. I feel bad though because this project was supposed to be about tidying my own stuff, not my kids’. Nevertheless, if I’m going to have any sanity, I need to tidy some of their artwork. Remember, for me clutter = anxiety.

So it’s back to the old grindstone, trying to sort my way through all these papers.

The latest installment of The Convivial Society newsletter couldn’t have come at a better time now that I’m rededicating myself to Kondo-ing. In this issue, Sacasas explores the way our economic system and society program us to want and need more and more stuff, and while our culture is perhaps very good at providing for our material needs, it’s less good at satisfying immaterial needs:

This is one of the most perverse effects of contemporary society. People need food, water, shelter, etc. These are, of course, material needs we cannot do without. Profound suffering accompanies their absence. But there are other critical needs which are nonmaterial in nature and thus cannot be simply manufactured and distributed. Your list and mine of what these might be will differ in the details of the enumeration, but I suspect we would both agree that such needs exist and that their absence also entails profound suffering. Material deprivations manifest materially. You can see when someone is being starved. Nonmaterial deprivations typically manifest non-materially. Someone who looks perfectly healthy may bear a crushing load of loneliness, desperation, or anxiety. I would argue that while modern societies may be particularly adept at the satisfaction of material needs (4), they are also structured so that nonmaterial needs are more likely [to] go unmet. These two tendencies are not unrelated. The relative degree of success on the material front depends upon conditions that undermine the satisfaction of nonmaterial needs.

The newsletter goes into much more depth than I’m quoting here, but what struck me about it was that even though I don’t think of myself as being particularly materialistic, my family’s life is still very much centered around material goods. My kids have a woeful amount of toys, so much so that they have taken over the living room. My husband and I buy entertainment-based stuff all the time: board games, role-playing games, gadgets, gear, books, DVDs, CDs, LPs, etc. I tell myself it’s okay to buy these things because these are the things we like, these are the things that “spark joy,” but what if I asked myself a different question? What if I asked myself whether this new CD or record album or book was necessary to my happiness?

I’m quite confident that my answer, in almost every instance, would be “no.” No, I do not need that CD or record album or book to be happy. I can find joy without it. In fact, we have so many books and CDs and records we’ve never even read or listened to that we could probably spend the rest of our lives just making our way through the stuff we already have. And on top of that, we could probably spend the rest of our lives making our own music and telling our own stories and not consuming anyone else’s at all. My husband and I can both play several instruments. We have musical instruments all over the house. We both love storytelling (and related pursuits like puppetry). We could entertain ourselves and our kids without any consumer products at all (as wonderful as many of them are).

But are we willing to live that kind of austerity? And if not, why not? Is it because when we feel an urge for something new, we know we can satisfy it, and there’s nothing really stopping us? How can we stop ourselves when the newest gadget or gear is just a click away?

My desire for more tidiness is one such antidote to the accumulation of stuff, but as a family, we don’t live an anti-materialist life. We — all of us, myself included — accept the default of our economy which is that if you can afford it, there’s nothing wrong with satisfying your desires by getting something new. After all, that newest DCC RPG product looks fun and we love to play role-playing games, so why not? After all, listening to music is fun and we’ll spend hours listening to that new Fleet Foxes album, so why not? I’m not even saying these products are bad or unworthy of purchase, but when we already have a lot of stuff, are they really necessary? Why aren’t we content with the DCC RPG stuff we already have? Why aren’t we content with listening to the four Fleet Foxes albums we already own?

The lure of novelty, of newness, as well as the fear of missing out, are strong pulls on our desire. Austerity and self-denial do not come easily. You’d think, since we’re Catholics, we’d be pretty good at self-denial, and I guess we are when it comes to things like Lenten sacrifices and no meat on Fridays, but when it comes to the things we really love — the books, and music, and games — then it gets a lot harder to deny one’s wants and be content with what one has.

I have no answer to give. I’m lost in the muddle of trying to declutter and minimize my stuff, but I don’t know if I’m ready to stop buying. Of course, I have to buy some things — food, clothing, toilet paper — but can I call a moratorium on buying entertainment products? Can I spend a year without buying a new book or a new game? Can I spend the next ten years?

After all, we have these places called libraries. I can always just check out books I want to read. I can check out DVDs too. And we have enough role-playing stuff already in our possession to last a lifetime.

In many ways, our desire for more stuff inhibits our ability to create. There’s nothing stopping us from making our own music or inventing our own games. There’s nothing stopping us from even making our own movies.

But of course, creating and consuming are two different activities, and they do fulfill two different needs. There’s input and output, after all. But nevertheless, perhaps we need to do more output to balance the scales.

Again, I’m not sure of the answer. I know I want to reject consumerism as much as possible and help my kids to do the same, but I also know how weak and flawed we are as humans. I suppose all I can do is try. I can keep Kondo-ing, and I can keep resisting the urge to satisfy my every entertainment whim. I can invite my children to create more and consume less. I myself can create more and consume less.

I can try saying, “‘That’s enough, thanks,'” to myself and to the marketplace. I have to believe it will be worth the effort.

Desire Outside of Time

December 31, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

In the moment of fulfillment—in the moment of joy, of play, of love—it is not so much that we feel time speeding by, it is that we do not feel the passing of time. What love and play have in common is that they both lift us up out of ourselves. They redirect our gaze away from our own interiority toward something beyond us.

But then as we become conscious that this moment will inevitably pass, that the time of departure draws near, then our experience of time is such that it appears to accelerate. The more aware we are of the ending, the faster time appears to pass. Again, it is a matter of desire. Although we may still be in the presence of that which we desire, its temporary quality—the looming horizon of finitude—renders the object both present but also soon-to-be-absent. While what we desire remains present to us, its loss now begins to color the experience so that our desire is once more activated, not for the object itself but for its permanence.

L.M. Sacasas, The Convivial Society Vol. 1, No. 19, “Desire Bends Time”

What’s interesting about this is that desire — while it “bends” time as Sacasas states — is tied to our temporal existence. The moment leading up to our desire, the moment of fulfillment, the moment after (the “time of departure”) are all due to our living in time. But what about that which is outside of time, i.e.: God?

As many a theologian would say, God is the fulfillment of our all our desires. And it’s precisely because He exists outside of time, and our uniting with Him in Eternity is also outside of time, that He satisfies us in a way that nothing earthly ever can. Once we have achieved the beatific vision, then there is no more “before desire” or “after desire.” There is only the fulfillment, and we never experience the “time of departure.”

The bending of time that Sacasas correctly observes re: desire, is precisely an effect of what lies at the very heart of what it means to be human. St. Augustine (I think) called it the “God-shaped hole.” We will always feel this bending of time around our desires because we will always be missing the one desire that is outside of time, the one desire for which we were made.

The sin of acedia

December 29, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

In popular thought the ‘capital sin’ of sloth revolves around the proverb ‘An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.’ According to this concept, sloth is the opposite of diligence and industry; it is almost regarded as a synonym for laziness and idleness. Consequently, acedia has become, to all practical purposes, a concept of the middle class work ethic. The fact that it is numbered among the seven ‘capital sins’ seems, as it were, to confer the sanction and approval of religion on the absence of leisure in the capitalistic industrial order.

But this is not just to render superficial and shallow the original concept of acedia as it exists in moral theology; it is to transform it completely.

According to the classical theology of the Church, acedia is a kind of sadness (species tristitae) — more specifically, a sadness in view of the divine good in man. This sadness because of the God-given ennobling of human nature causes inactivity, depression, discouragement (thus the element of actual ‘sloth’ is secondary).

The opposite of acedia is not industry and diligence, but magnanimity and that joy which is a fruit of the supernatural love of God. Not only can acedia and ordinary diligence exist very well together; it is even true that the senselessly exaggerated workaholism of our age is directly traceable to acedia, which is a basic characteristic of the spiritual countenance of precisely this age in which we live.

from Josef Pieper’s On Hope

(via Jeremy McLellan)

I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter

December 22, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

I was reading The Lonely Mailman with my kids the other day, and I started getting wistful about letter-writing. I used to have a pen-pal when I was in middle school. He was Italian and lived in a city outside of Milan. We traded letters and sent each other pictures. He even sent me a mixed tape once! It was always so exciting getting his letters in the mail.

Honestly, getting letters and packages in the mail might be one of the best “ordinary” things we can experience in our lives. The mail comes six days a week, sure, but usually it’s junk or bills. But when we get a birthday card from someone, or an unexpected present, there’s always so much joy upon opening the mailbox and finding this small surprise. Think about why there are so many mail-order subscription services these days. And why people still subscribe to magazines. Getting stuff in the mail is fun. And getting a letter — a real letter, not just a card — from a friend or family member or pen-pal is a particular treat. It’s something wholly unique, and written in someone’s own hand, and bearing their own news and greetings. It’s marked with the stamp of care and time — the time it took to write, the care with which it was written. It really is a great act of friendship and love. In The Lonely Mailman, we see how precious such letters can be. Every creature in the woods is moved to a deeper friendship and understanding due to the letters they receive (I won’t spoil the surprise ending, though).

My other favorite letter-writing story is the one from Frog and Toad. If you don’t remember it (or haven’t read it), it’s basically another sweet tale of friendship, where Toad laments that he never gets any mail. Because Frog is his best friend, he decides to write Toad a letter and mail it to him. Unfortunately, Frog chooses a turtle to deliver the mail, so it takes days to arrive. But when Toad gets it, he’s overcome with joy and gratitude. Getting a letter from a friend lets us know that we are loved.

I think I’m going to start writing letters to people again. Not sure who exactly I’ll write to (maybe my mother-in-law who lives four hours away), but I want to give it a try. I want to have the thrill of receiving something special in the mail, and even more importantly, I want to give someone else that thrill too. I think about what a world it would be if we spent more time writing each other letters, instead of emailing or texting or whatever. It might make us more charitable. Maybe more thoughtful. Definitely more connected.

Watering the garden

August 2, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

What has been my “handmind” activity during “Covidtide”? Baking, perhaps. Making homemade shrubs and hummus. Writing in my notebook.

But I think it has been gardening. Or, at least, watering the plants. (And harvesting the fruit.)

I love the ritual of watering the potted plants and turning the sprinkler on in the raised bed. I love when water squirts inadvertently on my legs and feet, soaking my Birkenstock’s. I love feeling the weather: heat, humidity, breeze, leftover rain, morning dew. I love lifting the big watering can, swelling with hose-water, and pouring its contents over the thirsty leaves until their pots overflow. I love the way the tomatoes smell after they’ve had their drink.

I love the short walk from the kitchen’s sliding door, down the steps of the deck, across the well-trod brown grass — a path I have beaten over these many weeks — around the garden and to the hose. I love that I once saw a squirrel sleeping in the long grass under the spigot. I love that I’ve seen garter snakes and rabbits and dragonflies (and damselflies). I love searching for fresh pea pods amongst the tangle of leaves and stalks that have been their home and their mother. I love eating just one fresh cherry tomato from the vine as I gather handfuls to bring in the house. I love watching the cucumber plants flower, counting the yellow buds and dwelling on the small fruit that have begun to fill out and grow — one end deep green, with white prickles bursting forth all along the length of it — willing each small cucumber to reach maturity, like a mother watching over her children. I even love seeing our almost-ripe strawberries disappear overnight, nibbled and devoured by hungry chipmunks. Someone else is being fed by our garden. I love that too.

Even when the rabbits (or maybe it was a deer) ate the tops of the Swiss chard, I could only be mad for a day or two, remembering that these creatures have no grocery store or supermarket in which to shop. What mattered was the growing: planting the seeds, watching them sprout, watering them and hoping it was enough, and then waiting — with all the uncertainty that comes with it — until one morning, on my daily pilgrimage to the backyard, the broad red-green leaves had unfurled, strong and bright against the brown dirt, and the chard had flourished: a living thing, guided — at least in part — by the work of my hands.