My wife and I are students of minimalism in pursuit of the uncluttered life. However, on any given day, there is a drawer, a cabinet, a closet or some room that can be de-cluttered. It is never-ending quest. Where can we reduce clutter in our lives? Just about anywhere.
The normal rhythms of life constantly contribute to clutter. No matter how good I set up my filters, spam clutters my email inbox. We accumulate shopping bags with each trip to the store. Books we’ve read and will never read again fill up shelves. Dog toys are strewn around the rooms of our home. Souvenir pens, extra birthday cake candles, and unused plastic forks accumulate in kitchen drawers. Receipts from the store, records from the veterinarian, and daily-arriving tax documents suddenly generate a pile on my desk. Dumbbells litter the floor of the garage gym after a workout. One bedroom closet is cluttered with items from decluttering efforts that we intend to sell or donate.
Where can you reduce clutter in your life? Do it right where you are. Put something in its place. Throw something away. Add an item to the donation pile. Sort the mail over the recycling bin. File away the important receipt.
Don’t think of reducing clutter as a destination. It’s a journey.
I believe my grandchildren ask themselves this question every time they come to our house. From the minute they walk in the door they are foraging for snacks. Immediately before and after supper, they stand and look in the pantry or refrigerator in search of a snack.
“Can I have a cheese stick?” Cheese sticks have always been a popular snack at our house. But you better have the right ones. If I offer them cheddar, they will want mozzarella. And vice-versa. The swirly combination cheese sticks are usually a safe bet.
In different seasons of life they have preferred different snacks. Mini Oreo cookies were popular for a while. Sometimes they wanted chocolate, other times vanilla. One granddaughter would eat the cream centers and leave the cookie shells behind.
Trail mix is another popular snack. It’s not as healthy as it sounds, since their version of trail mix was mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and Craisins. Of course, they would eat the marshmallows and chocolate, and leave the dried fruit behind.
Fortunately, the grandchildren all liked fruit. They often choose an orange, apple, or banana. Apples used to be a good grab and go, but now it has to be peeled and sliced up for them. If the kids find out we have strawberries, they will consume them in a sitting.
Chewy fruit snacks have always been popular, too. The word fruit justifies eating a little bag full of sugar.
Me? More than anything else, I reach for nuts. Cashews, peanuts, or mixed nuts are often my snack of choice, especially in the evening watching television. During the day, apples and oranges are the first thing I see when I open the refrigerator, and I might reach for one of them. A few Christmas cookies are still calling my name from the garage freezer, and it’s only fair that I indulge them as well, right?
When we took our five-year old grandson and his two sisters to a playground, they climbed on the playscape, slid down the slides, and swung on the swings. Now what? “Give me a mission!”
The last time my son had brought his kids here, he challenged them with a scavenger hunt to keep them occupied for a while. Now they wanted a quest to accompany every outing.
As we discovered, it didn’t have to be complicated. There’s always trash around, so I said, “Go find six water bottle caps.” And off they ran. A few minutes later, they laid out a nice row of plastic caps on the picnic table.
“What’s the next mission?”
Life is filled with short and long term goals any of which could be classified as a mission. But I think this prompt intends to uncover an overarching purpose for one’s life. The mission shifts from graduating and getting a job to raising a new generation. Once they graduate and get jobs, another generation comes along to grandparent. But now my current mission is figuring out a meaningful retirement.
In his children’s novel Mathilda, Roald Dahl wrote, “I didn’t know where I was going until I got there.” I like this line. It fits my present mission as I explore relationships, improve skills, understand time, and ponder my mission on any given day.
When the mission is figuring out my mission, anything is possible.
Today’s WordPress Bloganuary prompt is “What colleges have you attended?”
I got my undergraduate degree from Franklin and Marshall College (F&M) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. F&M is a small liberal arts college with an enrollment of 2,000 when I attended. All the professors were Ph.D’s, and the college offered no graduate programs.
My high school physics teacher, Nick Ignatuk, really pushed his alma mater, which is why I applied to F&M. I chose it over Bucknell and Penn State because they offered me more financial aid.
When I graduated high school in 1975, only about half the class went on to college. The rest got jobs, having completed a business curriculum or learned a trade. Since I graduated near the top of my class and was accepted by a competitive school, I had an inflated opinion of my academic prowess.
The rest of the freshman class at F&M had also finished near the top of their class. I was blessed with a healthy dose of humility as I began my classes. Many of my classmates were pre-med and pre-law, and they were smart and motivated. Everyone in my Calculus 2 class had skipped Calculus 1 with AP credit. Some guy in my European Studies class used the word ennui when describing slides of ancient ruins. I still don’t know what he was talking about. After failing the Chemistry midterm, my pre-med friends tearfully dropped the class and changed their major to Biology. Pre-law classmates in my dorm changed their majors when the government midterm got the best of them. The first basic accounting test knocked some of my friends on their butt. This was the real deal.
I had good high school teachers, but my college professors were off the charts. They were brilliant, eccentric, and published. Most had written the book we had to buy for the class.
I received a good education, but as I’ve written before, I learned more at the college radio station, in the band, and from fraternity life.
After I graduated and started my first job at Bell Labs, I was encouraged to pursue my master’s degree in electrical engineering. From the Asbury Park, NJ, area, I commuted to Rutgers in New Brunswick a few times a week and took a couple of electrical circuits classes. The professor didn’t really captivate the hundred-person lecture hall. And my heart really wasn’t in it. I did so-so, and then moved to Texas.
A few years later, I attended Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, IN. I got my M.Div. there and began a new career in full-time pastoral ministry. My classmates at seminary were from all over the country and a variety of backgrounds. Some students had relocated with a house full of kids. Others were right out of college pre-seminary programs. At least half were second career like me.
My seminary professors were amazing, brilliant, and well-published, too. They also really cared about the students, their families, and their faith. The faculty made it possible for us to not only graduate, but serve in parishes all over the world.
Waite for it... 