Around here, not surprisingly, the month of November is known as Philippine’s month. Her feast day is November 18. In line with Philippine’s character, and in honor of her month, I want to focus today’s letter on the value of simplicity.
By simplicity, what I mean is paring down one’s wants. Some might say, living with less. The question is, why would we value less, desire less or seek for ways to live with LESS?
From a spiritual perspective, it is often claimed that each of us has a hole in our heart. The effect of that hole is that we have a natural and deep yearning to be HEART-FILLED. If, as adults, we think that having more things is what fills our heart-hole, or makes us happy, we may want to GIVE our children MORE, presuming that more things will fill their heart-holes. Of course, we want our children to be happy, so why would we NOT give them more?
Christ’s message to us is helpful: Our heart emptiness is not satisfied by things! Despite our intellectual agreement to this, consumer culture lures us to live as if more is better.
So, here is my challenge to all of us. As we struggle with helping our children grow in resiliency, inner strength and deep joy, perhaps we allow our children to experience the “more” of that proverbial “less”!
In so doing, we allow the heart-space to be God-filled. Therein lies human nature’s deepest joy!
Helping to facilitate this space and this experience for our children would indeed be the BEST gift we could EVER give them.
— Maureen Glavin, rscj
