"God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction."
(Meister Eckhart)
Time has a way of adding things to our lives.
Literal things; objects,
but also commitments, obligations, appointments, activitites, responsibilities ...
added and added til our lives are over-full,
stuffed to the gills,
crowded ...
My living room was that way.
And because I lived in it every day, I couldn't see it.
My eyes were dimmed.
My soul felt crowded.
So I asked my thoughtful, keen-sighted daughters to start to subtract
the things they thought no longer served the room.
An entire roomful of stuff developed in another part of the house,
filled to the brim with excess from my living room.
Then we either gave it away or put it away.
Today, I am sitting in that living room,
and it is so bright,
and beautiful,
like the clean-scrubbed face of a child.
Because I allowed my girls to subtract
what I had added without much thought,
the room
now
sings.
What might we need to subtract from our lives
so that our
souls
might
sing again?
So our souls might find God?