The Things They Didn't Carry
Required reading for English students is Tim O'Brien's poignant short story, "The Things They Carried" about soldiers in Viet Nam. The items the soldiers carry on their missions and treks and death journeys are symbolic of their lives in the states, their dreams, their burdens, and the mistakes of the war. I recommend it highly if you haven't read it.
A close friend died this week. I am going through some very strong emotions; these emotions are mixed with feelings about struggles at work and news today that Rachel Held Evans, so young, died. I don't think I would have agreed with all of her writings, but she was taken too young and had a promising career and ministry.
My friend's survivors (I'm being obscure here) asked me to come and look through some of her things that I might want before they sold them in an estate sale. My friend had been very ill for many years (a fact in this equation that is making her death even more a struggle for me, as I write about elsewhere) and bedridden for the last two or three. They have a beautiful house but right now it's, for obvious reasons, a mess as her survivors prepare for the next transition.
As I walked through and surveyed the house, I thought of the Tim O'Brien story. If the soldiers' items symbolized so much, what do the things we don't carry with us into the afterlife symbolize? Why do I hold on to such things so vociferously, so desperately, not just grasping and clinging but clawing them to myself? Especially for Christian believers, whose Savior spoke so much about the transience of these possessions?
Someone will be left to deal with them, and they will not want to. That is the pure and simple (although Oscar Wilde said that the truth is never pure and rarely simple.) We know that millenials don't care about our knickknacks. All my things will be owned by someone else, and as Jerry Seinfeld is quoted as saying, all material possessions are in the process of eventually becoming someone's garbage.
As for my friend, I got a beautiful purse and a suitcase full of books (of her many books, although I own more than she did!)
Please don't see this as judgment on anyone. See it as a reflection on where we are in this moment.
A close friend died this week. I am going through some very strong emotions; these emotions are mixed with feelings about struggles at work and news today that Rachel Held Evans, so young, died. I don't think I would have agreed with all of her writings, but she was taken too young and had a promising career and ministry.
My friend's survivors (I'm being obscure here) asked me to come and look through some of her things that I might want before they sold them in an estate sale. My friend had been very ill for many years (a fact in this equation that is making her death even more a struggle for me, as I write about elsewhere) and bedridden for the last two or three. They have a beautiful house but right now it's, for obvious reasons, a mess as her survivors prepare for the next transition.
As I walked through and surveyed the house, I thought of the Tim O'Brien story. If the soldiers' items symbolized so much, what do the things we don't carry with us into the afterlife symbolize? Why do I hold on to such things so vociferously, so desperately, not just grasping and clinging but clawing them to myself? Especially for Christian believers, whose Savior spoke so much about the transience of these possessions?
Someone will be left to deal with them, and they will not want to. That is the pure and simple (although Oscar Wilde said that the truth is never pure and rarely simple.) We know that millenials don't care about our knickknacks. All my things will be owned by someone else, and as Jerry Seinfeld is quoted as saying, all material possessions are in the process of eventually becoming someone's garbage.
As for my friend, I got a beautiful purse and a suitcase full of books (of her many books, although I own more than she did!)
Please don't see this as judgment on anyone. See it as a reflection on where we are in this moment.
Comments