Fencing Bear at Prayer

Still on the decluttering jag .  Highly recommended.  Best cure ever for thinking that you don't have enough stuff.  Started with the five-foot shelf of books, have moved onto the linens, yoga props I never use, odd ornaments that don't fit with our decor, VHS tapes (yup, we still have some of those, just no player), games my son has outgrown, models nobody will ever make.  Have plans to cull my clothes next weekend, but first there is the hallway's worth of stuff to take to the Cathedral Shelter today.  Cannot describe how liberating it is to be free of so much stuff that I and my family neither want nor need.  Better than going shopping.  Better than having a house.  Case in point: I've played the piano not once, but several times this week, and I started knitting a scarf with the kit that I bought at Christmas. Starting to think that maybe St. Francis was onto something.  Just maybe.

I'd have one, maybe even two, if I lived, say, here. Or here. But I don't. I live in an apartment. A very nice apartment, mind you. Even a four bedroom apartment. But the fourth bedroom is really more of a wannabe bedroom for the maid, not a proper bedroom where family members might stay. And the third bedroom is necessarily a study, so that leaves only two, one for my husband and me, and one for our son. Ergo, no guest room. We had a bed, well, a futon couch in the maid's room, which was amazingly comfortable, almost as comfortable as a real bed. But it more or less filled the room once you pulled it out, leaving no way to get into it other than diving into it from the doorway. Not really a situation you would want to put, say, your mother into. Not a proper guest room at all. So we sold the futon and plan to make a little sitting room out of the fourth "bedroom." Now, if anyone comes to visit, we're going to have to put them on the couch in the liv...

One hesitates to announce instances of spiritual progress because what, after all, if they aren't? Or what if the very act of announcing them ensures that one will fall yet again back into one's old bad habits? But there is something that I've been thinking about this past week or so that does seem to indicate at least a modicum of improvement in my outlook on life and, therefore, possibly, just possibly in the state of my soul. It has to do with stuff. I've written before about how I have spent years thinking that the thing that I needed in order to feel like I had finally "made it" professionally and socially was a house . Even as I write this, the twinge is still there, and I do have to confess to a lingering sense of envy as I walked my puppy round the mansions in our neighborhood this past Sunday morning. But.... But even as I was looking just now at the photographs of the mansions for sale , what I am noticing more is not so much their size, but ra...

I want a house. No, I don't. Houses are trouble. They have roofs and furnaces and plumbing that all are in constant need of repair. Their property taxes are higher and, if you are lucky enough to live in the suburbs, they have lawns to mow.[1] They're lonely because you don't have anyone walking above you or playing loud music through the walls. Some of them are no bigger than the apartment my family and I live in now, and the ones that are bigger are simply too big, all that useless space.[2] Plus, of course, having a house is just one step closer to utter damnation , because, as you know, most people in the world would kill just to live in an apartment half as nice as the one we have. Who am I to imagine that I deserve a better place to live when most of the world's population lives in cardboard? Okay, so that's a bit hyperbolic (but only just). Actually, I'm not sure whether I want a house. I like our apartment. It has character and style.[3] It...