Whose Stuff is This, Anyway?
“I don’t think Jesus’s warnings about having too much ‘stuff’ (building bigger barns, etc.) were meant to induce guilt or warn of divine punishment. I think they were more like statements of observable, objective fact: the more stuff you have the more energy you spend on the stuff you have. At some point you really can’t have a healthy spiritual—or even physical—life if you’re expending your energies on what you buy, locate, lose, relocate, maintain, and eventually replace…
A good question for me to revisit frequently is on what terms I ‘own’ what is ‘mine.’ To hold my possessions with a more open hand is a good Lenten practice, if only to remind myself that both sharing and selfishness are habits that can become reflexive. To hold what I have in trust while I am able to use it to good purpose, to share it with those who enter my home or my circle of acquaintance, and to pass it on when it may be put to better use elsewhere is a way of staying in the ‘flow’ of the Spirit.”
— Marilyn McEntyre, Where the Eye Alights