Tag: renunciation

Death Cleaning of the Soul

We have had a major medical challenge.  My husband had a bad fall, which turned out to have been precipitated by a heart attack.  We came home after surgery and a few days in the hospital, only to have to rush back a week later.  Things are better now (which is why I can post this blog), but they are not the same.  I am buffeted between my feelings of gratitude that the love of my life has survived, and my mourning for the way our life used to be.

In the midst of all this and during long hours in the hospital, I finally read the two books on my list by Margareta Magnusson, one about Swedish death cleaning and one about old age.  Both are worth reading, and both insist on the need to peel things away as we get older – tangible things (belongings) and intangible things (beliefs and rituals).  They were good books to turn to as I strove for a way to deal with the hard realities in front of me.  Downsizing of the household is almost impossible, as we all know.  In my case, further physical downsizing is for some later time. Downsizing the soul is harder yet, but necessary in the present moment.  Parting with roles, rituals, and habits is harder than parting with Grandma’s china.  I like to think, however, that it could also be more rewarding in the long run.

We are not used to thinking of losing things as good.  I recently read a book by James Clear about how to use our habits for big gains, how to accrete knowledge and success into our lives a little at a time.  Like most self-help books, it focuses on increases and ignores the possibility that loss could be a good thing. For the latter proposition, one has to look at wisdom literature of all kinds, where renunciation is often seen as a positive thing, a necessary step toward contentment, happiness, and peace.

For example, Joko Beck said that Zen was a process of “wearing away,” or erosion rather than accretion.  We have to let go what we think we know, habits of mind we have acquired. The Tao reminds us:  “Learning consists in adding to one’s stock day by day.  The practice of Tao consists in subtracting.”  Christianity has a similar message.  Jesus told the rich man that “if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor.”  At other points in the Gospel, he tells his followers to give up their adult ways and become like children.

The poets have much to teach us in this regard too.  Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” purports to teach us how easy it is to lose things – homes, keys, people:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

But Bishop ends up admitting that loss can also be catastrophic:

 

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 

Philip Larkin, in “The Winter Palace” says that he is done with learning:

Most people know more as they get older:

I give all that the cold shoulder.

Larkin’s tongue is firmly in his cheek, but he bounces off a truth about the value of discarding what we have, what we know, and what we think we know:

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage

To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.

My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

 

Both poems are worth reading frequently – one to remind us that loss is inevitable but not easy, and the other to affirm that loss is not all bad.

In reading Magnusson, it also occurred to me that our whole culture could use a Swedish death cleaning, that the Earth might have a chance if we stripped down and lived within limits.  In a recent article (“The Cross and the Machine”) about technology and religion, the wonderful Paul Kingsnorth puts it well:

Every culture that lasts, I suspect, understands that living within limits – limits set by natural law, by cultural tradition, by ecological boundaries – is a cultural necessity and a spiritual imperative.  There seems to be only one culture in history that has held none of this to be true, and it happens to be the one that we’re living in.

We’re human beings with limits in a culture that recognizes no limits.  No wonder it is so hard.

So these are just some musings about loss from a new caregiver and a rapidly aging person, who is coming up against the limits of her situation.  I know that limits can be good, less is often more, and worrying is almost useless, but I sometimes still succumb to despair.  I have to read poetry, write in my journal, contemplate Spinoza, talk to others, and take heart.  And I do these things, but – as Elizabeth Bishop says in the end – it is not always easy.  Slowly my husband is improving, and we are getting used to our new limits.

I have written elsewhere about paring life down.  You might look at my blog, “A Diminished Thing?” from several years ago, and my short story “Nothing New.”  Needless to say, any advice is welcome.

 

Shrove Tuesday

Tuesday (February 13) is Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday – called “fat” because it was the last day Christians could eat up all the rich stores in their pantries before Lent, which started the next day. It is also called Shrove Tuesday, because the faithful were encouraged to think about their sins in advance of the penitential Ash Wednesday. Shrove is a form of the verb shrive, meaning: “present oneself to a priest for confession, penance, and absolution.” Perhaps, in some traditions, that literally meant going to the confessional in preparation for participating in the Ash Wednesday service. In any case, one was to be cleansed from one’s sins either by acting them out and eating them up (Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday) or by getting them absolved through repentance and confession (Shrove Tuesday) – or perhaps by doing both (acting out and then getting forgiven).

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the first Monday of Lent is Clean Monday, when both the soul and the household are thoroughly cleaned. Perhaps this is related in some way to the practice of spring cleaning. In any case, the idea is to sweep the decks and enter Lent with a clean conscience and a clean house.

Because it is related to Easter, Shrove Tuesday is a “moveable feast,” dependent on the celestial lunar calendar rather than what is called the “civil” calendar – but which is really the Gregorian calendar (named after a the pope who instituted it, so it is not entirely civil!). Hemingway used the term for the title of his Paris sketches: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.”  As we age, we might think about what were the moveable feasts in our lives – memories which can enrich us. Of course, there are also memories that bring regret. For those, perhaps we need the cleansing of Shrove Tuesday or Clean Monday.

In earlier times, old age was seen as a time for repentance and making one’s soul right. Widows and widowers often joined convents and monasteries. In the Prologue to The Rule of St. Benedict (c. 530), aspirants to the monastic life are cautioned that “our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds.” The Buddhists have a tradition of older people “going forth” into a form of psychological homelessness in preparation for their death. It was a time for renunciation and, perhaps, mental reconciliation.

In our culture, renunciation in old age often takes the form of downsizing. Clearing house is, perhaps, a form of shriving. Tag sales are held, children are encouraged to take Grandma’s china, thrift shops receive our donations by the bagful. The accumulation of a lifetime is evaluated and distributed. And such adjustments also require psychological recalibrations, cleansing of false ideas about who we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going.

As we enter Lent, it might be well to think the need for cleanliness of all types. The story I have posted today (“Shrove Tuesday”) takes place in a laundromat, a “Temple of Clean,” where old meet young, and everyone is “shriven of their sweat and dirt and filth until the next week. It is where our transgressions are rinsed away, spun into filaments, and tumbled out into the upper air.”

Possessing That Which Was Mine

A few weeks ago there was an op-ed piece in the Sunday Times by Ann Patchett entitled “My Year of No Shopping.”  It was one of those wonderful instances where the title told you exactly what the article was about, and Ms. Patchett did actually spend a year without purchasing anything but necessities (and books, but this aside might be redundant) and without perusing catalogs, tramping through malls, or (and this might be the chief benefit) surfing the internet. Now, Ms. Patchett is only fifty-four years old, young to be thinking about trimming her sails (see Emerson poem here), but wise enough to know that there must be a time to step back. Ann Patchett finds many of the things that she thinks she “needs” somewhere in the house – for example, she unearths enough lip balm and face cream to last the duration. But she finds other things, too – such as a renewed appreciation for what she already has – and a ton of time to think about and do other things.

As we age in this era of technology, information, and consumerism, there is a constant pressure to keep up – not to be the old lady who not only has no idea about all the things her iPhone can do, but has one that is five generations old. I thought about this quite a bit a while back, in a way that overlaps with the methodology and reasoning of Ms. Patchett. And I did what I often do when I am mulling something over – I wrote a story. “Nothing New,” is attached here. I have not practiced what my protagonist resolves at the end of the story, but I have become more conscious and reflective about what new things I take into my life. And if you continue to read my blog about life and aging, you will realize I believe more in reflection than I do in action and more in retrospective contemplation than I do in further mental accumulation. More on this later.

This may evoke Philip Larkin’s sentiments in “Winter Palace”: “Most people know more as they get older; / I give all that the cold shoulder.” My motivations are slightly different than Mr. Larkin’s, however. Mine are more akin to those of Borges’ prisoner “The God’s Script,” who has no access to the new and is thrown back on what he already knows:

Impelled by the fatality of having something to do, of populating time in some way, I tried, in my darkness, to recall all I knew…. Gradually, in this way, I subdued the passing years; gradually, in this way, I came into possession of that which was already mine.

And, unlike Ann Patchett, I might also limit books. In another one of Borges’ stories, a wise man from the future tells a man from the past that “it is not the reading that matters, but the re-reading.” As we age, we cannot possibly keep up with the best seller lists, recommendations, treasures in the remainder pile. As Ecclesiastes reminds us: “Of making many books there is no end.” But there is an end to life and there is a time for review and reflection – and, perhaps, for a limit to the new.