Thinking about Things

 For the past few weeks I’ve been cleaning closets (in truth, finding the floor!), organizing shelves and fixing a broken cupboard. I’ve been thinking about things.

What things do I need? What can I do without? What gravity do certain things hold? All of the thank you notes from Andrew and Whitney (and there are many!). Save. The neatly folded notes that Corrie wrote me through the years, including the notes she wrote me during high school study hall. Keep.

What are the things that have gone into the bags to be sent off to those in need? An over accumulation of books, clothes, duplicates, and practically anything that cannot find a proper place is tied up and ready to be taken away.

Last year I read Nothing Left Over: A Plain and Simple Life by Toinette Lippe.

In it, the author writes of using everything to its conclusion. Finishing leftovers. Using that last dab of lotion or shampoo. Reusing clothes. It is about the simplicity of an uncluttered life. I shamelessly love to read all about simplicity but find it easier keep turning pages than get up and start the doing.

Something from Nothing

 Along the same lines as Lippe’s book I’ve always been a big fan of the Jewish folktale “Something from Nothing.” My spin on making something from nothing has been to take broken china and create something new from the chards.

It doesn’t surprise me to find a bag or box of broken dishes on my front porch when I return home. One friend handed me a broken plate, a gift from her great aunt. In tears, she asked me to make something new from the pieces. Great Aunt Helen’s plate is now a mosaic bud vase.

Lippe says:

 We try to fill the vacuum that we believe to be inside us, but we need to remember that we didn’t come into this life to shop, to chalk up experiences, to amass objects….In truth, it is not the number and diversity of our possessions that are the problems but or attachment to them.

 

When I started making mosaics I realized that broken dishes are simply objects needing a new life. The energy of possession that the object once held is transformed. Now when a dish breaks I ask: what will this become?

Living More with Less

 My landscape shifts. What I need to accumulate is space.

 Space to breathe,

to be with God,

to listen.