You don’t have to simplify to the radical level of my Mennonite friends who travel by horse and buggy and plow with mules and bake their own bread and grow their own food and strive to live a lot like the Christians in the first 300 years of Christianity did, or take off to Belize to live on a really, really small newspaper pension and some life savings and wings and lots of prayers but admit it–we can all use some stripping down, downsizing, simplifying, decluttering our homes and lifestyles and emptying our hearts, minds, bodies and spirits in the process, making space for that old Holy Spirit to lead us like she led You-Know-Who in his time on earth, as well as the early Christians.
Reflections for this, Day 7 of Lent, in which we coin and define a new word for Mr. Webster to add to his dictionary:
“Lenting.”
Think about the following thoughts if you will . . . . and by all means reply here, or at Facebook, with your own thoughts about a definition(s) for “Lenting.”
“Asceticism is not that you should not own anything,
but that nothing should own you.”
— Ali ibn Abi Talib
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust consume and where thieves
break in and steal;
but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust consumes and where
thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also.”
— From You-Know-Who,
His Sermon on the Mount,
Matt. 6: 19-21
I think I’ll define “Lenting” (with some Jitterbug theology asides thrown in, of course) as:
(a) simplifying one’s life in order to grow in deeper relationship with Christ and get one’s life priorities in order.
(b) emptying one’s mind, body, soul and spirit of all things negative, all things that sap one’s energy and diminish your capacity to live what is genuinely “the good life,” or what Christ described as “the life more abundant.” (And he wasn’t talking about the abundance of $$$, or not only about $$$.)
(c) liberating yourself from needless possessions that may have you locked up in little prison cells of fear and anxiety of losing it all and thereby seeking more and more money, more and more possessions and more and more “stuff,” all of which give you a false sense of security even as you believe you are adding layers of surefire security around you and your family. (See Matthew 6: 25-34, surrender your fears and anxieties and worries and medicate on going with the flow, free and easy like the beautiful lilies of the field, how they neither toil nor spin.)
Feel free to contribute more definitions of Lenting to the list, with your own spiritual asides and thoughts, here or at Facebook.
