Decluttering

Do You Need To Do Some Decluttering?

Decluttering

Hello Elementary Friends,

The sermon series at my church, Saint Andrew UMC, for the weeks leading up to Easter is called "Decluttered."  

The series is focused upon the fact that spring is often the time of year that we need to do some cleaning and organizing around our house.  The season of Lent, in a similar fashion, is the time to declutter the things in our lives that keep us from living an abundant life.

Before I heard even one of Mark Feldmeir's sermons on the topic, I spent some time thinking about the act of decluttering.  It drew me to thinking about how we, as Americans, have a tendency to think we must surround ourselves with "things."  We then get so many "things" that we don't know what to do with them all.  We run out of room and we then have to move into a bigger house or we have to start the difficult tasks of determining what to get rid of to make room for more things.  

When will it stop?  Lots of research points to the concept of First World vs.Third World problems. So - just a little review on the three groups of countries (which is rather outdated at this point in time).

Blue - First World          Red - Second World          Green - Third World

From Wikipedia:

The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO, or the Communist Bloc. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the First World, while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies represented the Second World. This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political and economic divisions.

The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia.  Third World has also been connected to the world economic division as "periphery" countries in the world system that is dominated by the "core" countries.

Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition of the Third World. Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World countries were extremely poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil, India and China.  Historically, some European countries were non-aligned and a few of these were and are very prosperous, including Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland.

Over the past few decades since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term Third World has been used interchangeably with the least developed countries, the Global South, and developing countries. However, this usage and the concept itself has become outdated in recent years as the term wrongly represents the current political or economic state of the world.

 The problems that we have in middle and upper class America have the tendency to make us very ill, but they are not looked at with a feeling of sympathy by citizens of most other parts of the world.  Even though Australia would be considered a First World country, the people there do not seem to need to have the magnitude of possessions that we seem to think we need.  We accumulate and accumulate and make ourselves sick.  We have so much food that we have obesity problems.  We compare ourselves to others and then feel that we will never measure up.  

Here is a listing of First World vs. Third World problems:

Real First World Tweets

1.  "I just watched 'Inception' on HBO On Demand and found out immediately afterward that there is HBO On Demand HD." 

2.  "I'm trying to text while at a red light, but I keep making all the greens."

3.  "The conveyor belt at Wal-mart wasn't turned on tonight, so I had to move my items toward the scanner by myself."

4.  "My dishwasher broke, so now I have to wash up by hand while I wait for it to be fixed."

5.  "My girlfriend keeps texting me while I'm playing Angry Birds."

6.  "I ate too many breadsticks at Olive Garden and now I can't finish my steak."

7.  "I don't have enough dip for my chips, but if I open another container, I won't have enough chips for my dip."

8.  "One pillow is too low, but two stacked is too high."

9.  "My iPod died while I was at the gym, so I had to exercise without music."

10. "My mom never bought me Lunchables. I guess that's why I didn't have any friends in elementary school."

11.  "I have a wardrobe full of clothes but nothing to wear"

12.  "Ran out of hot water and had to shower in the morning instead of before bed."

Third World Problems and Facts
from Elist10.com
Elist10

1.  Poverty

Poverty means living on $2.50 a whole day and extreme poverty is living on a $1.25 or less. Around 1 billion of these people are innocent little children, infants. According to the UN approx. 22,000 children die each day in these countries due to poverty.

2.  Hunger

More than 870 million people of the entire third world population have no food to eat or a very precarious food supply i.e. more than the population of the US and the European Union combined. Pretty much the entire undernourished population of the world lives in third world countries, like Africa, Somalia and many more, some even unheard of. 60 percent of these hungry are women, 50 percent of pregnant women in developing countries lack proper maternal care, resulting in over 300,000 maternal deaths annually from childbirth. A third of all childhood death in sub-Saharan Africa is caused by hunger related diseases, around 2.6 million deaths per year, one child every five seconds.

3. No safe drinking water

More than a billion people do not have adequate access to clean drinking water and estimate 400 million of these are children again.

4.  No electricity supply

That is around 1.6 billion people who do not know something like electricity exists. They are technically still living in Stone Age, no computers, no internet, no appliances, just nothing.

5.  Agriculture

More than half the population of all the developing nations in the world depends on Agriculture or farming for survival and for at least two meals a day. That is almost 75 percent of the world’s poorest people, approx. 1.4 billion women, children and men. However, the even more intriguing fact is that 50 percent of hungry people are farming families. A lot of internationally acclaimed projects are carried out every year in order to train and empower these people from such countries to at least to help them learn to live off Agriculture.

6.  HIV/Aids and Other Diseases

HIV is on the verge of becoming the greatest epidemic some of the third world countries have ever seen. Around 40 million people are living with Aids. 65 percent out of them are women. According to a research about 90 percent of all children and 60 percent of all women affected by HIV are living in the sub-Saharan Africa. About other diseases, well more than 11 million children die each year from preventable health issues such as malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

7.  Lack of Effective Healthcare

Women, children and men that die every year just because of lack of preventable health care services seem only to be increasing. More than 800 million people have no access to health care, and that’s just a rough calculation, there might be hundreds of thousands not even recorded. As health care isn’t readily available everywhere in the world, this is why most of the entire world’s population dies of silly preventable diseases like common cold and diarrhea.

8.  War

Most of the countries that fall in the third world category or the ones that are developing are either facing heavy duty corruption or buried deep under the ashes of war. Civil wars, cold wars, war on religion and so on, are fought no matter how low or pitiful the country’s condition, you might be wondering how? Well it just happens to be the policy of certain country’s to help these third world countries at the time of war for arms and ammunition and medic and supplies for the army just so they could live through the war and pay an even huger amount of debt. Something really inhumane, isn’t it? Well countries like the US, China, Russia have these ill-traits of supporting war.

9.  Pollution

Air, water or earth pollution is threatening the lives of, not only people in the third world; but everyone on this planet.

10.  Social and Cultural Exclusion

Social exclusion is basically the state where people lose their self-confidence and bury themselves into deeper and deeper wretched poverty along with greater isolation. With no social and cultural framework, a country can go haywire due to complete loss of morals and ethics from the society.

So - it makes me feel rather selfish when I worry about small slightly uncomfortable first world issues when the vast majority of people on the earth are facing much more dire and difficult challenges than I have ever faced. I only took a few clothing items to Australia and only five pairs of shoes.  One of my students said this to me just before my birthday - "Mrs. Hankins - I think Mr. Hankins should buy you a new dress for your birthday since you only have one!"  Of course, I was rather tired of those items by around August, but it proved something to me.  I do not have to have 40-50 different choices when I get dressed in the morning.  As a matter of fact, since I have been home from Australia I have gotten frustrated some mornings because there are so many choices.  It has encouraged me to cull clothes that I don't wear and really look at each item and decide "Do I like it, does it fit, is it in style, is it comfortable, will I wear it again?"

The freedom that we feel with we unburden ourselves with too much stuff helps us clear our minds and hearts to make room for living a purpose-filled life.  I am certainly not an expert in the act of decluttering - as a matter of fact, it is amazing to me to see how much is written on the subject.  Living the minimalist lifestyle and having that capsule wardrobe seems to be the current trend.  I don't think I will ever go to that extreme, but it has really gotten me thinking about it since my return to the states.  What do I really need to live a happy, healthy, purposely productive life?

In Mark Feldmeir's sermon series he has focused upon the following concepts:

"As spring approaches, we all tend to get the urge to clean.  We air things out, sweep corners, scrub floors, wash the windows, clean out the fridge, pull the weeds.  “Spring-cleaning” is a ritual for renewing our homes.  But our homes aren’t the only places in need of deep cleaning and decluttering. Over time, misplaced priorities, bad habits, old grudges, the shame of sin, misguided fears start to pile up, weighing down and cluttering our souls like spoiled leftovers and expired milk in the back of the fridge.

This Lent, we’ll do some spiritual spring-cleaning as we prepare for Easter.  We’ll seek to declutter our souls of unhealthy, unholy commitments and attitudes that weigh us down and keep us from living free, joyful lives."

Here is a listing of the inner burdens that we have tried to declutter from our lives over the past 6 weeks:

Control, Expectations, Hubris (excessive pride or self-confidence), Envy, Enemies, and Power

Here is a link to the Saint Andrew website where you can find podcasts of the sermons.  I can promise that they will feed your soul leading into Easter Sunday.  Enjoy!

Decluttered Sermon Series Podcasts

This quote from the "Expectations" sermon especially touched me:

"When you commit your trust to God, and give your heart to whatever it is that God calls you to do; when you surrender your expectations about how you think your life is supposed to unfold, and say yes to the mystery; when you pack your suitcase for a place that has to be believed to be seen, you'll find a life that transcends your wildest expectations - and a God who will not fail you."

As we lead into Easter weekend, I wish you all an opportunity to do a little decluttering of your own. Just maybe - you will uncover a hidden treasure within yourself!