A good friend, a nun respected for her wisdom, once told her retreatants, “If there is anything in your closet or wardrobe you have not used for a year, it does not belong to you. Get rid of it. Give it away.”
It is good advice on how to simplify my life. Anything I have not used for quite sometime goes out and is given to others who will have need of it. It is also good advice that I simplify my life. I have learned not to be anxious about the small stuff. But even the big problems I worry about are not worth breaking sweat over. I have to remind myself often to just bring enough for the journey.
As I enjoy my senior years, I am learning that there is really little that I need to worry about. In fact, there is just one question that I keep on trying to answer these days, “Do I love enough?” I know this is God’s will for me and that should be enough provision for the journey.
O God, we ponder your mercy within your temple.
~ Psalm 48
Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two
and gave them authority over unclean spirits.
He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick
–no food, no sack, no money in their belts.
They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic.
He said to them,
“Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave from there.
Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you,
leave there and shake the dust off your feet
in testimony against them.”
So they went off and preached repentance.
The Twelve drove out many demons,
and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
Mark 6:7-13