October 22, 2013
There's something especially satisfying about leaving the office late on a Friday afternoon with the desk clear and the Inbox empty, at least for a while. Despite ongoing resolutions to go paperless or file stuff away more diligently, the absence of clutter simply doesn't happen that often. During the week, pretty much never. Issues and ideas, both crucial and unimportant, take paper and digital form and spread across the work space. And it's not a whole lot less cluttered at home.
The significance of all the stuff that accumulates and fills up the space of daily existence was brought home to me this past week. My father-in-law passed away after an intense and mercifully short battle with liver cancer. On Saturday, my brother-in-law and I worked through the file cabinets and drawers in Dad's office to bring order to the many details that he had long taken care of for his family. It seemed a mammoth task but turned out to be pretty easy. Bill had approached his personal financial affairs in the same way he approached daily life – clear, logical, unfussy. Bill's office was a reflection of the man himself and reinforced for me the value of keeping things simple.
It's very Xaverian. A colleague shared recently that one Brother he knows was moving to Maryland from another state. All his stuff fit in a couple of boxes. Such simplicity is at odds with our culture's pervasive push to gather goods to satisfy ourselves. Our students are assailed with the relentless messaging to consume the latest game and gadget, food and fashion. It's not easy to choose to dispense with all the stuff that clutters up our lives.
The Xaverian Brothers remind us that simplicity "frees the heart, the mind and the soul." Being Xaverian in this way runs counter to the culture: "The Xaverian Sponsored School community makes simplicity a way of thinking, feeling and acting in order to offset the modern tendencies of materialism and consumerism, which can minimize the spiritual values of God's kingdom."
Whether it's the stuff we are convinced we have to have or the stuff we have and don't know what to do with, it's hard not to agree with poet Stephen Dobyns: "It's time to stop this tiptoeing around, to stop being the property of our property." Simplify.