At the End of the Day?

What makes up a human life? I am sorting through things in my life in order to arrive at a greater level of simplicity. Yesterday in order to prepare for the tax season filings, I threw away seven years worth of check stubs and old barely readable receipts from 2008-9.  But I also found old check book covers, registers, medical records, etc., and all of them went into the recycle bin. I kept a few of the Hans and Judy account deposit slips, but the majority went into the trash bin. This morning I feel rather bleak. I feel sad, as if part of me was thrown away as well....as if part of my life was thrown out without a second thought. What is it that makes up my life anyway?

I remember the circumscion we underwent when we left Oxford. I had help in making decisions about what to keep since it meant moving to a much smaller house. Literally a ton of things were thrown or given away. One loss in particular was a set of anthropology booklets put out by Eugene Nida, Donald McGavran and a few other "fathers" of the contemporary missionary movement. They were my peculiar treasure. I remember the first time I found these booklets in Hans' library. I was starving for knowledge, having been a missionary for several years and virtually powerless in my endeavors. Finding these booklets was like finding THE cure for cancer. But 2010 came and they had to go. I was no longer teaching missiology and my life was taking a turn to the unknown. And so they were tossed along with all the other bits of our life. I had already transferred these particular booklets several times in the last twenty years. It was their time.

But ten years worth of binders with tax information soon followed, as well as 1040's, 990's and hundreds of duplicate check binders. Also included were enough books to fill a garage and then years worth of the journal we published for ten years. On one hand it was liberating to free from the weight of these possessions, but each one was also connected to a precious memory. It was painful, so I didn't look as the girls tossed things about.

I remember when Charlie Brown died and we thought we were helping the widow by getting rid of an old ugly couch that she had hated, but had been a particular treasure to him. He had brought it with him from the east coast in the move to El Paso. The moment we pulled out of the driveway with the old thing, she said, Well there goes Charlie! The couch was like Charlie himself!

The personal effects of my first husband, including his body having been donated to science, don't exist anymore. Perhaps a tiny pair of handcuffs that he wore as a necktie pin is all that remains. At first he left all of his political science journals, some clothes, but over time that has been absorbed by the dust,  left behind in the trek through the wilderness. Things you just can't carry it with you. The journey is too hard, too long, too hot, and too treacherous in some places. You must get rid of things that weigh you down. But...it's you is that being left behind, pieces of you.

For months before Hans died, he spent hours cleaning up his computer unbeknownst to me. Later I went to look for his drafts and they were all gone. I sure he thought he was doing me a favor, but I felt robbed, cheated of "the stuggle to compose" his sermons and his courses. But I am doing the same thing today—going through all the bits and pieces of my thought life written on scraps of paper all over the office.  These scraps might be meaningful to my kids someday, but today they are just a heavy weight on my shoulders. Perhaps I need to rethink these things, maybe these scraps are not mine alone, but belong to the ones I leave behind. In any case, I shall organize them and spin my story the way I would want them finally perceive the culminulative life of their mother.

I think about the clothes that I have given away and I  miss them. It's not that "I might need them someday" but that "I might miss them someday." There was a me that is gone and I can longer retrieve her. It so strange that when you hold up a dress to give away, at the time, it is just an "old thing" but years after it is gone, it is part of who you used to be.

 The personal effects of Hans have been moved from his old desk to the stand next to my bed, just as they were when he lived—in a sort of carefully crafted chaos. His towel, razors, boots and undies all remain in his closet. His library remains intact. Nothing has changed in that regard. His hats grace the tops of the bookshelves, his wallet, watch and glasses are in the glass cabinet. Why do I do this? Because this is all we have left, his robe, his clothes, his pitiful shoes. Yet the Scriptures say that blessed are those who die in the Lord, for they have ceased from their labors and have entered into their rest, having their works go with them, part of the fruit that remains. That's all we can take with us, our works. Our works are the things deemed of eternal value, not wood, hay or stubble. But for me, his life, my life, is embedded in these things, because memories are attached to them.

 As I look at my jewelry bin, I think everything I have brought into this house is an item which has the potential to become one of those things I attach to and therefore at some point must suffer its loss.  What do I want my remains, my "effects" to be? Well perhaps the things I imparted to others of a more "spiritual nature" such as my words or my intellectual works. Although Henry Nouwen is dead today, his spirit lives on because his words are available. So too are the words of Art Katz. This is the intellecual properties of men who were prophets to their own generation and their words remain. They were actually the words of God spoken through men who were the oracles of God, which is why their words remain. I pray that mine may be like that as well.

 So I want my physical possessions to get smaller and smaller and my thoughts, hopefully, to get larger and larger and written down in such as way that my heart may remain with you. For everytime I read from Henri or Art is like they are speaking to me from beyond the grave. These words were the substance of their lives and the fruit of their suffering as they came to know God in deeper and deeper ways. I don't know if I will teach anymore, perhaps my days of service are over in the spoken realm, but I can write them down and if they are God's words, they will remain.

In a sermon recently given, someone said, "The poor have no history." I pondered this statement until I understood its meaning, which is to say, that the poor live and die without a legacy. They have nothing to give their kids, no inheritance, no riches, they are raised out of the earth and return to it as faceless people not having created a history, a story, to leave their children. Better had they not even been born. I wonder if my generation will leave behind a legacy of riches or simply no legacy at all. Have we eaten all the grain of the fields and leave nothing for our children? Then perhaps we really are the church of Laodacia? Having thought we were rich we were really poor.

What will I leave my children? I hope in the physical it is just dust.  In a book I read not too long ago, Journey of Simplicity, Traveling Light, were listed were the personal effects of:

Thomas Merton: Timex watch, one pair of dark glasses, tortoise frame, two pairs of reading glasses, plastic frames; two Cisterian leather bound brevaries; one rosary (broken); one small icon on wood; Virgin and Child. A one room hermitage with desk and chair, books and firewood for heating.

Father Fossima: russian monk and elder of the monastery: narrow iron bedstand; strip of felt for a mattrew; candles in the corner; a reading desk; a cross and the Gospel.

Ephraim M'kiara (Kenyan mountaineer and elder in the Pentecostal church of East Africa: battered leather bag; huge bible; thin blanket; piece of hemp rope; small package of food; kitchen knife to cut footholds in ice; a thin jacket and barefoot.

Bilbo Baggins: a borrowed dark green hood; a borrowed dark green robe; alot of pocket hankerchiefs; pipe, tobacco, walking stick and money.

Bill Washovwitz (New jersey backwoodman, born again Christian): sturdy saltbox in the woods; enameled cabinet and kerosene stove; small table, sleeping bag; kerosene lamp, rifle; lined writing paper, papers with words written on; Bible correspondence course; huge bible and dictionary.

Jesus: a loin cloth and his disciples.

Frank O'Malley (greatest educator of our time): Lived at the university dormitory, a bed lumpy with books; old essays by students, old books by former students; old checks from student repaying loans, never cashed.

Mohandras Gandi: two dinner bowls; a wooden fork and spoon; diary; prayer book; eyeglasses, three porcelain monkeys speak no evil, hear no evil, hear no evil; watch, spittoon; letter opener; two pairs of sandals.

Yet all of these men and women changed the world—having given their all for the cause of others.

Well, you don't want to see my list. Me and Emelda Marcos would be sisters. Not to mention the number of devices I currently own. So I am going to continue to purge and also think about these things. What is mine and what belongs to the future? I don't want to leave only rags behind but neither do I want to be shamed by the extravagance of the western lifestyle.

 These are not simple things to sort through, but clearly, our true riches are in the love we shared with others and perhaps the wisdom....or the life we modeled for others in pursuit of the pearl of great price!