Wisdom at the Bottom of the Bag

I recall reading, a few years ago, the comments of a graduate school professor about a particular student he had been supervising. "Doesn't integrate well," wrote the professor. He was talking, of course, about the student's limited ability to bring the insights and learnings from his or her various courses into conversation with one another. Each course of study, in the student's mind, remained compartmentalized, isolated from each of the others, resulting in a mish mash of often conflicting thoughts and convictions.

I've thought about that description often since first hearing it, and how it indicts so much of our culture these days. Failure to integrate. Putting forward conflicting convictions without even noticing the intellectual or moral collision. What we claim as values and assert as priorities often bear no resemblance to the actions we choose. It could, I suppose, be simple hypocrisy -- that we talk a better game than we actually play -- but I think it is more disturbing than that. I see little evidence that we even recognize the disconnection.

This weekend several men from our congregation participated in a denominational gathering of men. Checking in, we were each given a "goody bag" of stuff -- the usual pencils and pens and pins and emery boards, luggage tags, key rings and brochures conventioneers have come to expect. There was even a hat; some were lucky enough to get a T-shirt left over from some community event last year. All that, and, of course, a program booklet.

After the evening session, back at the dorm where we were staying, we emptied the bag for a closer inspection. The pens all seemed to be in working order -- and I'm always running out of or losing pens; the pencil and nail file could come in handy. I wasn't sure why we men were receiving brochures detailing the need for, and the steps involved in, breast self-examinations, but the city map could come in handy. I didn't really know what to make of the plastic heart-shaped thingy with the retractable cord, but it had a belt clip so I'm sure it's cool.

And then two last things fell out. A sticker and pin.
"Use Less Stuff" they said. There, at the bottom of all this stuff was the counsel to "Use Less Stuff." All I could think about was that professor's critique: "Doesn't integrate well."

Back home now, I've put a couple of the pens in my desk drawer, assigned the emery board a place in the bin next to the clippers, put the sticker on the refrigerator and the pin on my dresser to serve as a reminder, and the rest I'm throwing away -- trying my best to integrate what I've learned...

...to use less stuff.