SHEDDING THINGS
From a certain point onward in our lives we begin to accumulate things, often without really realizing it.
Like the rooms in our houses, every day that we live, our internal rooms also fill up with more and more stuff: valuable things, toxic things, and junk. We all carry a lot more baggage now than we did at seventeen and this makes travel difficult, especially the travel that is asked of us as we get older, namely, the journey to become a gracious older woman or man, an adult, an elder, one who has aged gracefully, can bless the young, and let go of life without anger or silly clinging so as not to end up an embittered, old fool, but a happy, holy fool.
Julian of Norwich states that we will cling to God only when we no longer cling to everything else. Richard Rohr agrees with that, but expresses it this way: As we get older, he submits, the real task of life, both in terms of human growth and life in God, is to begin to shed things, to carry less and less baggage, to slim-down spiritually and psychologically to match the meagerness of the possessions we had when we were seventeen years old and could still put all we own into one little suitcase.
"Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I go back again. The Lord gives and the Lord takes. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
Adulthood is contingent upon appropriating that.
To read more click here or copy this address into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/
www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser
www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser
No comments:
Post a Comment