It does happen to be my birthday, although it wouldn't have to be to write this post.
I am losing steam. I find myself being grateful that raising my children is behind me, that my education is behind me, that my ten years of traveling and and living in different countries is behind me. It is maybe because of all that? that I am getting so tired.
Friday my daughter and I spent two and a half hours at what had been my storage porta box and is now the family porta box. We were sorting through boxes, deciding what goes to Good Will, what gets taken home for further storing, what gets put in the back of the box and left for the next generation (granddaughter) to deal with someday. Thankfully my daughter is strong and she is also very good at organizing things. Many of the boxes I was not able to lift and she was right on top of them, moving them around and putting that box is order. When we left it had a shape and form as well as substance and content.
And my body hurt everywhere. I went home and was in bed by about 6:00 p.m. I can't do heavy lifting anymore. In reality I never could but I was at least able to survive long days and in traveling times, sometimes several changes of plane in different countries in a 24 hour period. Not no more.
Yesterday, Saturday, I got a call from my daughter asking if I could come and help her sort months and months of Tupperware out. She is a Tupperware Consultant and has recently moved up to Manager. These are good and wonderful things and at the same time she has a toddler who looooovvvveeeesss getting into mommy's boxes.... So I went and spent several hours with her working on that project. I think I made it until almost 8:00 p.m. and again I could hardly move. I got in my car and drove the whole five minutes to get to my own place and was in bed pretty darn quick.
Friday I began thinking about (not for the first time) about death and about what remains behind when a human being dies. Yesterday the United States lost a great Senator, John McCain, to death, which rather intensified my thinking process.
We of course leave behind our bodily remains, whether by cremation or burial. We also leave behind our earthly remains. In the United States it is likely that even a homeless person whose possessions can fit into a shopping cart has something to leave behind. Most of us own something. A change of clothes perhaps, maybe a sleeping bad or a battered tent. On the other end of the spectrum people leave behind houses full of stuff. Some of that stuff may be very valuable, some of it may not. Book collections, china and silver collections, clothing, cars, etc.
I have been sorting through and downsizing, and upsizing, and downsizing for approximately fifteen years. First I left a house and had three porta boxes. I also gave a great deal away, desks and cameras are two things I remember, and they went to Good Will. As I left the country to follow God in first discernment, and then as a Mission Co-Worker, I would return each year to sort through those three porta boxes. Every year. It gets old really fast.
And yet there are things that are really hard to let go of this side of Glory. Books, family pictures, family furniture. It is both things that are mine in the here and the now, like the books; and things that connect me to the past and the folks who have gone before me into Glory, like pictures and furniture.
Now I am down to what is in my apartment and what is in a part of the storage unit, the porta box. For this lifetime I may have given away as much as I am able to do without breaking my heart. Books are just a part of my blood. I have given so so many, even in China I left boxes and boxes of books at the Chinese Pharmaceutical University where I taught Oral English, and left books with Chinese friends there; English books that would be dreadfully hard for them to obtain on their own. I have ethnic clothes that were tailor made for me in different countries. Many are gone because of circumstances like the Civil War in South Sudan where everything in my apartment was lost because I could not return to claim it. And yet I have the clothes that were made for me later on in Africa.
There is so much treasure on earth here in the United States. And then there are people in countries that live through Civil War or who are innocent victims of war being done to them. Like South Sudan and Yemen. In those cases truly all a person may have are the clothes on their backs.
When we die we leave behind our fleshly body. AND we leave behind our earthly remains. Those remains include all of the things that in our mortal, perishable existence we collected, loved, shared, willed to the generations that follow us, or felt burdened by because how does one let go of paintings that one's mother has painted, or beat up tables that belonged to a grandmother?
There is clearly so much more that could be said on this topic, this is just a beginning. I must now get ready to go to church. As an ordained pastor in the Seattle Presbytery I have the honor of helping with the installation of another female pastor into service in a church here in the presbytery today. Even though Presbyterians do not have the Apostolic connection as some other denominations do, non the less we pass on traditions and those things which through our God, are not mortal and are not perishable. This is something that we will leave behind when we die as well. Being part of a faith tradition is to be a part of the past, the present and the future. To leave behind earthly remains, and to leave behind heavenly treasures.
And there is the gift.
I am losing steam. I find myself being grateful that raising my children is behind me, that my education is behind me, that my ten years of traveling and and living in different countries is behind me. It is maybe because of all that? that I am getting so tired.
Friday my daughter and I spent two and a half hours at what had been my storage porta box and is now the family porta box. We were sorting through boxes, deciding what goes to Good Will, what gets taken home for further storing, what gets put in the back of the box and left for the next generation (granddaughter) to deal with someday. Thankfully my daughter is strong and she is also very good at organizing things. Many of the boxes I was not able to lift and she was right on top of them, moving them around and putting that box is order. When we left it had a shape and form as well as substance and content.
And my body hurt everywhere. I went home and was in bed by about 6:00 p.m. I can't do heavy lifting anymore. In reality I never could but I was at least able to survive long days and in traveling times, sometimes several changes of plane in different countries in a 24 hour period. Not no more.
Yesterday, Saturday, I got a call from my daughter asking if I could come and help her sort months and months of Tupperware out. She is a Tupperware Consultant and has recently moved up to Manager. These are good and wonderful things and at the same time she has a toddler who looooovvvveeeesss getting into mommy's boxes.... So I went and spent several hours with her working on that project. I think I made it until almost 8:00 p.m. and again I could hardly move. I got in my car and drove the whole five minutes to get to my own place and was in bed pretty darn quick.
Friday I began thinking about (not for the first time) about death and about what remains behind when a human being dies. Yesterday the United States lost a great Senator, John McCain, to death, which rather intensified my thinking process.
We of course leave behind our bodily remains, whether by cremation or burial. We also leave behind our earthly remains. In the United States it is likely that even a homeless person whose possessions can fit into a shopping cart has something to leave behind. Most of us own something. A change of clothes perhaps, maybe a sleeping bad or a battered tent. On the other end of the spectrum people leave behind houses full of stuff. Some of that stuff may be very valuable, some of it may not. Book collections, china and silver collections, clothing, cars, etc.
I have been sorting through and downsizing, and upsizing, and downsizing for approximately fifteen years. First I left a house and had three porta boxes. I also gave a great deal away, desks and cameras are two things I remember, and they went to Good Will. As I left the country to follow God in first discernment, and then as a Mission Co-Worker, I would return each year to sort through those three porta boxes. Every year. It gets old really fast.
And yet there are things that are really hard to let go of this side of Glory. Books, family pictures, family furniture. It is both things that are mine in the here and the now, like the books; and things that connect me to the past and the folks who have gone before me into Glory, like pictures and furniture.
Now I am down to what is in my apartment and what is in a part of the storage unit, the porta box. For this lifetime I may have given away as much as I am able to do without breaking my heart. Books are just a part of my blood. I have given so so many, even in China I left boxes and boxes of books at the Chinese Pharmaceutical University where I taught Oral English, and left books with Chinese friends there; English books that would be dreadfully hard for them to obtain on their own. I have ethnic clothes that were tailor made for me in different countries. Many are gone because of circumstances like the Civil War in South Sudan where everything in my apartment was lost because I could not return to claim it. And yet I have the clothes that were made for me later on in Africa.
There is so much treasure on earth here in the United States. And then there are people in countries that live through Civil War or who are innocent victims of war being done to them. Like South Sudan and Yemen. In those cases truly all a person may have are the clothes on their backs.
When we die we leave behind our fleshly body. AND we leave behind our earthly remains. Those remains include all of the things that in our mortal, perishable existence we collected, loved, shared, willed to the generations that follow us, or felt burdened by because how does one let go of paintings that one's mother has painted, or beat up tables that belonged to a grandmother?
There is clearly so much more that could be said on this topic, this is just a beginning. I must now get ready to go to church. As an ordained pastor in the Seattle Presbytery I have the honor of helping with the installation of another female pastor into service in a church here in the presbytery today. Even though Presbyterians do not have the Apostolic connection as some other denominations do, non the less we pass on traditions and those things which through our God, are not mortal and are not perishable. This is something that we will leave behind when we die as well. Being part of a faith tradition is to be a part of the past, the present and the future. To leave behind earthly remains, and to leave behind heavenly treasures.
And there is the gift.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.