Possession #61 - Car

A recent study shows that the average American household owns 2.3 cars. We just bought our 4th. I'm just about having a fit owning 4 cars for 4 people. It seems outrageous. And yet, of course, I have my perfectly reasonable justifications. With two kids off in college in two opposite directions from our home, we have sent them both off with a vehicle so that we don't have to take several hours to pick them up and drop them off at both ends of vacation times. One college vehicle is a cheap used car we bought for just this purpose. The other is our oldest vehicle that has now been moved into the "cheapo" category. We also wanted a more fuel efficient car to make these long trips to visit kids. But still...4 vehicles for 4 people? It seems excessive.

Most of us have become quite adept at justifying purchases like ours. And I don't want to dismiss all those justifications. The reasoning seems pretty good. That's what makes them justifications and not simply self-deceptions. Still, when simply owning one vehicle pushes me into the category of the top 10% in wealth among the world's people, I pause. I pause. Why me? Why do I get to have such luxuries in my life? I'm certainly not more deserving. I try to hold lightly to these things - to my justifications, to my guilt, to the possessions themselves. Hold on lightly...no grasping.

Possession #60 - Dining Room Table

One of the objects I'll always remember from my parent's home is the big dining room table. It was constantly expanding and contracting with its extra leaves in order to accommodate friends, family and other assorted guests. So, when we started adding furniture to replace the crates and loose boards that made up our grad school housing, we found a nice oak expandable dining room table. I can't say it gets quite the use as my parents' table, but it's an object with an intention - to make our home a place of welcome and hospitality. Unlike my parents' table, it also serves other purposes: Daily mail sorting table, family game table, music stand, and bill sorting surface. Any big flat surface in a home is bound to accumulate lots of assorted stuff. Luckily it gets too much traffic to gather dust.

Possession #59 - Navajo Blanket

We have collected a number of pieces of native american craft. Who knows why certain kinds of art appeal to one person and not to someone else. Maybe our artistic wiring works like personalities - each one unique yet all of them grounded in the human experience. I'm not sure exactly what my artistic personality is, but it has more than just an aesthetic component. Like other kinds of things, artistic things are more than just brush strokes, color choices or composition. They have...dare I say...soul. Maybe that's why we like these things. They bring something else along with them.

Possession #58 - Pillow

I'm a big fan of sleep. I've rarely had trouble falling and staying asleep which caused minor moments of consternation during the infant crying in the middle of the night years. Naps are also one of life's gifts which I regularly take at least once or twice a week (almost always on Sunday afternoon). One thing, however, is important to my entire sleeping process - the proper pillow. A bad pillow can ruin a good night's sleep and leave behind a crooked neck for a week. So I almost always bring a pillow along with me when I travel. I'm currently off on a sermon-writing retreat (slight pause for blog posting) and it's going much better knowing that tonight I'll have a familiar pillow to go with the unfamiliar bed. Maybe pillows are just the grown-up version of the stuffed animals we kept with us as kids - a mildly comforting bit of familiarity. Whenever I travel, it's good to bring a bit of home with me in the form of some object to keep me connected to that which I love. Sweet dreams!

Possession #57 - Cow Bell

When both my wife and I were ordained, my father (also ordained) gave each of us a cow bell. The bell is intended to be a reminder of our callings as leaders. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of being the bell ringer of the herd, although the off-tune clangyness of the bell sounds about right. Leadership is always a delicate balance between leading and allowing one's self to be led. Every once in a great while it feels like I get the balance somewhat right. Nonetheless, I keep the bell hanging around on the off chance that it might come in handy for some bovine adventure.

Possession #56 - Bread Maker

Labor Saving devices always seem like a good idea at the time. Like these turn of the last century irons designed to put fancy ruffles on the sleeves of shirts...I'm sure they made someone think they were zipping head long into the future! Likewise, my bread maker makes wonderful bread with little effort, but sometimes I wonder if I'm losing something without all the messy flour and effort-full kneading. Sometimes, it seems like more effort might be a better idea than less.

I'm ever so slightly annoyed by those clever and cute AT&T commercials which have little children expounding on the idea that "Faster is better than slower" and "bigger is better than smaller." Yes, perhaps, at times...yet the march towards so-called "progress" is rife with pitfalls. Many of us now see that faster and bigger come with a cost which we are willing, at times, to pay. But sometimes not. For now, I'm keeping the bread maker.

Possession #55 - Digital Clocks

The largest digital clock in the world is on top of a tower in Düsseldorf, Germany. What I don't have in size, I make up for in quantity. It actually took the combined brain power of the entire family to track down all the places in the house where we have digital clocks. I gave up wearing a wrist watch a couple years ago because of the relative ubiquity of clocks. I don't suppose it would make much sense today to have a song that asks, "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?" How can you possibly ever be that far from some object beaming the correct time for you night and day.

Of course this poses a particular challenging issue on evenings such as tonight when the clocks are supposed to change. I'm not sure I can quite remember the secret formula for changing each individual clock...what a blessing it is that some of them change all on their own! Don't forget!!