Some things that I learned about living lightly from the recent Christmas/New Year holiday season are:
- Love deeply – The most important thing is the loving interactions among family members. It goes beyond presents. Sure, we gave gifts to family members and received some nice ones, but the most important part of Christmas was reconnecting with family, learning what’s been going on in their lives, enjoying their company – even though some of it had to be by Zoom because of distance.
- Overall Shopping Strategy – Our family limited gift buying through each person being assigned a family member to buy a present for. (The kids were exempt from the name drawing.) Still, I pass on this classic shopping trope that applies to most shopping that doesn’t involve necessities like food.
*Wait a day.
*Consider a One Month Ban on anything new.
*1 in/1 out.
*Don’t go into debt.
*Make a list. - Cleaning up before and after – I did a lot of house cleaning in prep for out-of-town family visitors, BUT, I surprised myself by realizing that after everyone left, I had even more deep cleaning to do. I vacuumed more intensively, sorted through old stuff and now have an even cleaner, less cluttered house. It took time,but Hey! we were snowed in some of the time anyway.
- Uncovering stuff for others – All the sorting revealed a supply of some new socks plus quite a few lightly used winter socks, gloves, and caps plus a blanket to be passed on to those in need during these cold winter days.
- BUT…Cleaning my home is not enough. This only goes so far – I’m reminded that now that the snow days are ebbing and we can get the car out of the garage, it’s essential to resume and expand my service to those in need. Sure, I’ll continue tutoring and working at the local soup kitchen, but I really need to push myself to multiply my social justice efforts to reach more people; more systemic change. How about you?
- Looking ahead – All of the above leaves my office space still needing serious pruning of old work files since I am no longer doing many marriage and parenting workshops. Hmmm. This project still feels daunting. Maybe this Lent…
