Downsizing is a First World art that accompanies aging. Some folks postpone downsizing, which is one reason Public Storage (PSA), Extra Space Storage (EXR) and Cube Smart (CUBE) thrive. Yesterday, I spent some time downsizing my modest library. After an hour or so I had two dozen books boxed for donation, with an equal number on the “must read now” shelf.
A yellowed paperback is first on the “MRN” shelf: A History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism, by Paul Tillich, Carl E. Braaten, ed., copyright 1968. The $4.95 price was less than one cent for each of its 550 pages. The inside cover reveals my signature, with “CT 301, October 3, 1974.” It was my second year at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.
Two prior year classes, Church History and Systematic Theology, were combined in a new class, Christian Thought, for which I volunteered to be a colloquy leader. It was a wise repetition, made more delightful by a new faculty member, Don Saliers, still young at 88, still a treasured mentor.
In 1974, Paul Tillich helped me discover something I’ve learned (and forgotten) many times since, that Everything is Connected, and Everything Belongs. From Tillich’s section on The Platonic Tradition:
“The idea of transcendence, that there is something that surpasses emperical reality, was prepared for Christian theology in the Platonic tradition. Plato spoke of essential reality, of ‘ideas’ (ousia) as the true essence of things. … God is the spiritual sphere. … (Another) point in which the Platonic tradition was important was its idea of providence. This seems to us to be a Christian idea, but it was already formulated by Plato in his later writings. It was a tremendous attempt to overcome the anxiety of fate and death in the ancient world. … providence … gives us the courage to escape the vicissitudes of (life).”
Tillich wrote about the courage to be, which (I believe) includes the courage to downsize, to be free.
ted.today 