What I'm giving up for Lent: buying books, clothes and music.
I know, all of those are good things. They are so good that I have waaaaay too many of all three. My bookshelves are overflowing, and I have three or four stacks of books sitting on the floor of my bedroom. My closet is chock-full, mostly stuff I bought at resale shops or got as gifts, but still . . . . And let's not talk about music. I have CDs stashed in every room in my house, as well as my car, and then there's the I Pod and the laptop. You get the idea.
So I am practicing what Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) called the Spirituality of Subtraction. He was a Dominican priest and mystic in German who said the spiritual life has more to do with subtraction than addition.
We are so shaped by our capitalist, consumerist worldview that we think of everything as an object for our personal consumption. We add more to life, even in the area of spirituality. More services, more scripture, more sacraments, and more good deeds.
It's dangerous to bring that attitude of consumption to our religious life. Lent is about letting go, Lent is about doing without, Lent is about releasing our attachment to things.
So I'm finding a lot of freedom in this Lenten discipline. I recycle all the catalogs that arrive, I delete all the enticing emails from Amazon, and I borrow other people's music instead of buying my own. My toughest day so far was going to DSW Shoe Warehouse with my daughter to buy something for HER. Somehow, I resisted the temptation to get something for myself.
With the free time and money I have from "subtracting" clothing, books and music from my shopping list, I can make a more generous contribution to our One Great Hour of Sharing Offering. How beautiful is that?
