Possessions

"Sheer poverty never made anyone more peaceful; extreme but voluntary austerity is often the flip side of extravagance. The mark of successful detachment from possessions is not how few of them we have around us, but how little space they occupy in our minds." - Maggie Kramm

The above quote, with which my yoga teacher finished our class on Monday evening, captures perfectly something that I've been trying to say for over 20 years. In our society we tend to measure success, or our capacity for happiness, by how much "stuff" we have. I have to say that there are very few of us who can resist that temptation, and you need not count me in that number. The 71 square miles of the city of Plano is home to one of the most prosperous populations in the world, and we all enjoy the bountiful material fruits of that prosperity.

On the flip side there are many people in the world (especially in the world of religion) who seem to believe that there is something inherently wrong with material possessions. Though I have often noticed a gap between teaching and practice, they often speak about the evils of possessions, with the implication that there is something inherently more spiritual about poverty or austerity. That is a position, it appears to me, that is much easier to espouse when one is not, in fact, extremely poor. And I don't think it would receive a lot of affirmation from those who are.

In my mind the best Christian teaching on this subject comes from the words of Jesus in the 6th chapter of Matthew:

"Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

In other words, when it comes to possessions, the key is not how much we have, but "how little space they occupy in our minds." As we grow in our spiritual journey the goal is for God to fill our minds more and more completely with pure love, with all else becoming secondary. Ironically, as that happens, we become free to truly enjoy our "things" for the simple reason that we possess them rather than the other way around.

Don Underwood