Sacred is the Pause

"Sacred is the pause

that brings us into stillness."

~Macrina Weiderkehr

The summer is flying by quickly. I hardly know where it it going...

I have not spent much time writing this year, but it has been a time of transformations none-the-less... 

During the last few months many of my friends have lost parents or dealt with their illnesses, and as many of us stare down a 6th decade or find ourselves already residing there - the reality of mortality stares many of us in the face.

So, it is a time to pause. To think. To re-evaluate our lives. To take stock of our journey thus far - the direction we have taken - and ultimately, to consider the weight of our possessions.

Sacred is the pause, indeed...

In these last few months, of change and transformation for many, the very act of deeply simplifying has beckoned...

I have roamed room by room - and drawer by drawer - divesting myself of things - sometimes brutally - only to roam in the same environs again and remove even more. It is my intention to live as "Zen-like" as I can - so that I can open closets and drawers and see very few things - and yet to be able to immediately see what is in there - and know that these things are there only because they are truly needed...

I am a good way on the road there...

How do we get to this point in our lives - where we become so overwhelmed by a lifetime of possessing?

I think back to all those years of purchasing things I did not use - that got put away - and lost in the process - some of them supposed status symbols, and other items just things I didn't even know I had. I have revisited memories of files, notes, letters, and cards, before they made its way into a recycling bin.

Months ago, I read the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering by Marie Kondo, at a dear friend's suggestion, just as I was in the midst of disposing of much. The book seems to have taken many by storm.

This journey towards greater simplicity has become an imperative. Disposing is at times incisive - and my actions almost surgical. One thing gets pulled out - something else gets left behind...

Do I really need this or that?

Or, as Kondo suggests - we should ask of each item as we touch it: "Does it bring me joy?" If it does, you keep it. If it doesn't, you thank it and send it on to where it may be needed.

I feel like I am doing my son a favor. He will have less to go through and dispose of. A friend who has much recently told me, it is for her nieces and nephews to worry about it all...

But, I feel that all these "things" stand in the way of whatever the next step in my life is.

As I went through books yesterday, I picked up Miracles of Mind, and just happened to read this:

"For a person to be able to regularly access [a] harmonious relationship with the universal field of energy, he or she is likely to lead a simplified life, unencumbered by multiple activities or numerous stressful interactions..."

I guess I was meant to find this. Simplicity enables one to truly embody a life of healing.

I long for greater simplicity - to live more gently on the earth, and in my home monastery, as I cultivate more deeply my own pilgrim heart.

But that, is another entry altogether - a growing desire and need for pilgrimage, and not totally in a traditional sense!" Stay tuned!