In a recent article called “Withering into Truth,” Parker Palmer reflects on his upcoming 78th birthday and presents us with six things he has learned in his almost eight decades of life. All six are important but number five stood out for me this morning.
“Most older folks I know fret about unloading stuff they’ve collected over the years, stuff that was once useful to them but now prevents them from moving freely about their homes. There are precincts in my basement where a small child could get lost for hours.
But the junk I really need to jettison in my old age is psychological junk — such as long-time convictions about what gives my life meaning that no longer serve me well, notably my work. Who will I be when I can no longer do the work I love that’s helped me hang onto a sense of self for the past half-century?
I won’t know the answer until I get there. But on my way to that day, I’ve found a question that’s already giving me a new sense of meaning. I no longer ask, “What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to hang on to?” Instead I ask, “What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to give myself to?”
The desire to “hang on” comes from a sense of scarcity and fear. The desire to “give myself” comes from a sense of abundance and generosity. Those are the kinds of truths I want to wither into.”
It is true that as I get older I too think differently about the things that I want to give myself to and it is helpful to do that thinking out of a place of generosity and abundance. Those words are echoes of Walter Brueggemann’s amazing sermon on the theology of abundance and the myth of scarcity. It is both our literal basements and our figurative ones that fill up with clutter, fill with the things we are hoarding. To what end? If we lived with a greater sense that there has always been enough, and always will be enough, we would be travelling more lightly on this journey we are on together.