“I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet.” Mahatma Gandhi

Yesterday I gave away a jacket that I bought at the Gap more than 20 years ago. Many times over the last 10 years when I’ve gone through my clothes to see what I am willing to give up, I’ve considered that jacket, deciding to hold onto it. Along with the jacket that was destined for the Rescue Mission here in Albuquerque, I filled up three 13-gallon bags with trousers and shirts. Some of the trousers were left over from my professional life—a time when I didn’t hesitate at dropping $100 on a silk tie or a commensurate amount on a pair of slacks or a blazer or suit. As if these leftovers are gold, I’ve hoarded them, for the last 12 years. But, as life would have it, the moths had a field day one year early in these 12 years. No surprise about the love of moths for wool—or rust that corrodes and ruins and “thieves that break in and steal” (Matthew 6: 19). In fairness to the truth, some of the clothing had already found its way to some thrift store or donation box.

Over the years, along with the periodic need to just clean things out a little, disasters of one kind or another have beckoned to my closet. I remember well Hurricane Rita from the season of 2005 that particularly affected the Gulf Coast. I boxed clothes, boots and shoes and took them to the center in a small town some 45 miles north of my home in rural east Texas. Any time, any season is a worthy time to edit one’s closet, in spite of what my frugal Texas German mother used to caution me when I was in one of my moods to thin out my closet. I wouldn’t be getting rid of everything—an exaggeration, of course—you might wish you had that stuff one of these days. She advised regarding her own clothes that she no longer wore—”you can give it away when I die.” That’s what we did, and we did it with gentleness and mindfulness.

A sense of mindfulness has been a part of every effort I’ve made to thin out my closets—which I now have both in Texas and New Mexico. In spite of these efforts, the closets remain too full—the clothes, the boots and shoes, still too many. Excess upon excess, even though by comparison I’m probably not as serious a culprit as I imagine. Regardless, excess is still excess.

At this time of the year we are reminded of the role consuming plays in our lives. I’ve walked the aisles of Walmart. With only modest exceptions, my humble efforts at gift giving are not defined by the perceived needs or wants of my family, however. Even though we have many individual needs, all of us have shelter and food, and most importantly we have each other. I’ve shared my own gifts in buying coats for kids as part of the campaign of one of the television stations here in Albuquerque. Toys for Toys, a cash donation for one of the food pantries, lap robes, socks and body lotion for residents of a nearby nursing home, shirts and socks for a senior whose name was placed on the Christmas tree at Walmart, excess from my closet for a homeless shelter—that’s my list. It’s not enough. It can never be enough. I’ll do my best to accept that.

Recently in the news, much has been made over the New York policeman who spent $75 on a pair of boots and socks for a barefoot homeless man. As it turns out, all is not what it seems. The man is not homeless, and even though he received a pair of boots and socks, he is shoeless once again. His circumstances are way more complicated. Apparently he hid the shoes because they are “valuable”. And, of course, the turn of events of the story have once again given anyone who wants or needs to justify his or her reasons for not reaching out to the poor, the homeless, those in need. In an opinion piece by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Senior Religion Editor for the Huffington Post: “Yes, we have a responsibility to ask the questions of why people are poor, to lobby for better treatment of the poor, to support agencies that who [sic] have expertise with the poor, but we also should be inspired to give directly to the poor. Not because it is the most effective, but because the direct encounter with those who are suffering, and the courage to give without controlling how it is received is important for our own spiritual well being.

The homeless man in New York responded to the policeman’s “offer to buy shoes by saying ‘God bless you’. When we overcome our city honed instinct of isolation and suspicion to do an act of kindness and show compassion to the stranger it is, in that moment, a blessing experienced by both the giver and receiver.” (I need to add that this instinct for isolation and suspicion is in no way limited to something that is “city honed”. Cynicism thrives way beyond the boundaries of the city.)

Mr. Raushenbush goes on to conclude, “In this messy world, that is more than enough.”

Read the entire story:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/should-we-give-a-homeless-man-shoes_b_2245506.html

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

No, it’s not rural New England. And no, it’s not Santa Fe, or Taos. This beautiful stand of Big Tooth Maples greets you at Fourth of July Campground and throughout the 4.8 mile, 1100 foot climb in the Manzano Mountains, east and just a little south of Albuquerque. On this particular hike, which includes Cerro Blanco Loop, autumn produces a sea of red, orange, and yellow.

In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and the Beautiful, Sonny, the young Indian who owns and manages the hotel, advises one of his guests who is appalled by what she has discovered once she gets to Jaipur: “In India, we have a saying—everything will be all right in the end,” he explains. “So if it is not all right, it is not yet the end.”

Though morning speaks of fall, the rose is still in town...

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

At 10,678' the first signs of Fall

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Buddhist Proverb

"A rose by any other name...

..would smell as sweet." (from Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare)

A Pilgrim's Progress

In the early 1990s, a popular billboard seen on Houston freeways advertising the Houston Chronicle classifieds pictured a twenty-something guy, lotus position, and the slogan, FOR SALE—ALL MY EARTHLY POSSESSIONS. As I prepared to leave for a trip to northern New Mexico that summer, this billboard was on my mind, and I thought, “One of these days….” Actually I longed—longed for something I couldn’t define, but the longing felt like the lifting of a heavy, heavy weight from my shoulders. That must have been 20 years ago--long enough for a child to have been born and enter early adulthood; two decades, five presidential elections; lots and lots of changes.

In the barn I call home in Texas is stored a large Rubbermaid tub full of the leftovers of a series of t-shirts I had designed over the few seasons that I gathered with a small group of other like-minded people for a little antiques market in Fayetteville, Texas. This market happened twice annually during the season that is generally known as Round Top, one of the largest and best known antiques markets in the U.S.

FOR SALE—ALL MY EARTHLY POSSESSIONS read those t-shirts. What had begun as a heartfelt and gut-felt response to a billboard some 10 years earlier made its way onto clothing for anyone to take notice of. Frankly, I don’t think many people did notice it. Maybe that’s a merely complicated reflection of the mentality that grips our consumer-oriented world. Some did get it, though, and commented, smiling, “I love your t-shirt”. Some even wanted to buy one—ode to buying something.

At the heart of the billboard advertisement, the t-shirts, the stories reported in the media about the people who sell off everything, by choice, to lighten their load and put things in to some supposedly better perspective—better, at least, it seems for those who make such choices—is a longing to get to our center. We all have at least an inkling of what our center is. It’s where our heart lies, it’s one of the chakras, it is God, the Divine, the Source. During times of natural disaster, people who lose their homes and what many would consider everything important poignantly offer thanks that the lives of family and neighbor have been spared. That’s what matters.

For the better part of six years—since shortly after our mother died in 2007—I have been back and forth with myself over letting go of an accumulation of stuff—hoarding may be the definition of some, but it’s not Post cereal boxes. How do you let go of stuff, regardless of its value? In the meantime, I have actually increased my holdings while letting go of some of the material goods I have that are worth something to someone else of my ilk. One way of changing our landscape is to put our stuff before the public en masse and hope for the very best. And finally, that is what I have done. The auction was September 15, 2012, on the eve of my 69th birthday. As I write, I know only the preliminary results of this auction. Some of the prices fetched were way more than I had anticipated. Other prices were painfully low. But it’s done. Yesterday I felt on edge during the day. I received text messages from friends at the auction, some 900 miles away, saying “things are going great,” asking if I wanted to know what a particular piece brought. I was lulled into a false sense of jingle in my pocket from where I sat in picture book weather at a local park, listening to the New Mexico Philharmonic, smiling at young families and old people—even older than I—and frisky pooches on leashes out for a morning romp.

Last night I went to a play with a friend, a little blue even though I was relieved for the auction to be over. That doesn’t sound like letting go, does it. Of course, my mobile phone was turned off for the 2-1/2 hour performance. When I powered it up later, there was a text message with a photograph from two friends who had been at the auction. Earlier in the day they had sent a picture of the “packed house”. Now, late in the evening, they were telling me, “We found our shirts.” “What a prophet…” FOR SALE—ALL MY EARTHLY POSSESSIONS, indeed. “Thank you for reminding me of that twinkle of hope that planted itself in my dreams seven years ago. Your message and picture of our t-shirt brought a smile to my face.”

So as not to misrepresent my chosen circumstances, yes, most of what I have accumulated and treasured for three or more decades has gone on to others who seek material treasure and choose to own it for awhile and make money from it. By no means, though, am I done with stuff. We all start somewhere, and we are starting and starting and starting. And hopefully, along the way, we are saying, “thank you”. Oh, yes, yes, thank you.

It’s a long journey for some to sit in the lotus position. I haven’t perfected my technique yet. But I’ve said for several years now, “I’m going to start selling my collection. I don’t need to own all these things. And I don’t want to leave the job of dispersing them to someone else.” The advice I heard a few years ago, “Harold, just because you love something doesn’t mean you have to own it,” must be true and right. Or did she say, “…you don’t have to buy it”? As I heard my mother say sometimes to a friend who could also speak a little German, “macht nichts”…translates “makes no difference”. At some point, it doesn’t matter. Instead of a special meal with a healthy price tag, you’d rather just have some cheese and crackers—maybe even a store-bought 4 oz. container of strawberry jello. How forward thinking my mother and her friend were. I am a pilgrim, and my journey continues.


A Pilgrim’s Progress—Albuquerque, NM (September 16, 2012)
R. Harold Hollis

Father Mother God

Dwell in my heart.

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies."

(George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron, 1814)