Road to Fifty Reflections: Day 22

Inner Freedom: Throwaway culture vs Minimalism from a Franciscan Lens

Lately, I’ve been sorting through my things again... boxes of old art supplies, unused clothes, little trinkets that once meant something but now just gather dust. I tell myself I’m decluttering, but sometimes it feels more like circling around my attachments, moving them from one place to another without really letting them go.

As I do this, I can’t help but think about the kind of world we live in... Pope Francis calls it a 'throwaway culture.' We buy, use and discard without much thought. Not just things, but sometimes even people, time and moments. We rush to replace what’s broken instead of mending it (🙈🙊 this is so me) and we numb the ache of emptiness by acquiring more.

But maybe what I’m learning, slowly, is that SIMPLICITY isn’t about throwing things away. It’s about receiving and cherishing what truly matters. It’s not an act of rejection, but of reverence. 

St. Francis didn’t live simply because he despised things --- he lived simply because he had discovered something far greater... the Pearl of Great Price. Once we find that, everything else naturally falls away.

Maybe that’s what God is teaching me through this quiet process of cleaning and letting go. To resist the throwaway culture not just by owning less, but by loving more... with care, with gratitude, with freedom.

Perhaps holiness begins there... when we stop discarding and start cherishing, when we finally learn that to live lightly is to live in love.

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