Sustenance...

My brother has become a minimalist.  It is something of an irritant for some members of our family.  It is also not quite understood.  I make no claim to truly understand, as we have never been very close, but I do understand, intimately, his need for and response to visual rest.  Minimalism creates the ultimate visual rest in the home.

I sometimes joke that I am waiting to hear that my brother has sold himself.  No!  Not that way!!  By this I mean, he has sold ever so much of his possessions, first downsizing and then minimalizing his home.  He desires empty walls, empty surfaces, and sparely furnished rooms. He could, quite happily, live in a spare room for the rest of his life ... if that room were isolated from the rest of the world.  I do not believe he would enjoy a tiny home, but he would be the perfect candidate for thriving in the space.  Maybe one with vaulted ceilings, space around the property, and a short walk from the ocean.

In his journey, he encountered Marie Kondo and her philosophy of Tidying Up, a combination of downsizing and organizing to free one from home management so one can enjoy a richer, more full life.  I confess that I tuned him out the first few times that he talked about her.  But then I found her series "Tidying Up" on Netflix and watched it.

I admit that I started and stopped the first two episodes several times, because I found some of Kondo's processes a tad ... out there.  However, as I eventually plowed through the series, the repetition of the show's format helped me better appreciate the scope of what she has to offer.

Take the giving of thanks.  Kondo teaches folk to give thanks to the articles of clothing, household items, and other possessions that are being donated or discarded.  Thanking a shirt?  That's just plain silly, I thought.  But then I learned a significant reason behind teaching homeowners to do such:  it helps them deal with the guilt that can arise in donating/discarding things.  Ah!  How smart! I thought, having watched many episodes of A&E's "Hoarders" in years past.

In thinking more deeply upon this concept, I realized that the giving of thanks is rather important in downsizing/discarding!  I mean, you don't have to give thanks to the inanimate when the Author of the gift of those good things you have been using is animate:  God!  I had already been working on giving thanks, audibly, when I realized I had received something good, be it tangible or intangible.  This was just another level of being thankful.

Thinking such thoughts and watching episode after episode, I started thinking, rather deeply, about the Lord's Prayer and what "daily bread" means.  I came to understand it to be mean much more than bread or rather food!  [Go ahead and laugh at me, if you will over such simplicity of thought.]  I began to see daily bread as all that we are given to live this life.  My pausing to give verbal thanks grew in frequency as pondered the concept as I went throughout my days.

Well, recently, I ended up talking about it with a doctor of mine.  And I came smack up against my lack of word knowledge for all my word nerdhood.  You see, as I was talking, my doctor said, "daily bread means sustenance."  No!  I wanted to shout.  That's not what I mean at all.  It is ever so much more.  Instead of shouting, I tried to explain, but my words faltered and confusion crossed her face even as she was trying to encourage me to keep trying.  I covered my disappointment by moving on to a different facet of learning from Kondo's show:  that of joy.

Once home, I tried to write about daily bread in one of my many abandoned blog posts and got nowhere.  It was not until a week or so later that I thought to look up the word "sustenance."  Lo and behold, my doctor was right!  Sustenance means the maintaining of someone or something in life or existence.  Yep!  That is exactly what I was trying to say.  After chasing down the definition of words for several days, trying to figure out where I went wrong, I finally hit upon the word I thought that she was saying:  subsistence.

Subsistence is a minimum level of existence.  That's the difference ... the development ... in my understanding of the Lord's Prayer watching Kondo's show brought about.  I had always thought that, when praying, we were asking for a minimum level of existence to just remain alive in this world.  However, I now believe that the daily bread God provides for us is sustenance level, not substance level.

It isn't just a roof over my head, although sometimes that is the case.  It is this roof at this time in my life.  I needed a higher roof ... and a more spacious roof.  I needed such to be able to move past being triggered 24/7 with my PTSD.  I could talk more about why I believe that my Good Shepherd provided this house for me in how it is helping me survive mentally, as well as physically, but I am shy about sharing such thoughts.  I wonder and worry that they might be veering into the scope of being sacrilegious (or whatever word is the right word there because I am not certain sacrilegious is the right one) and I do not want that.

But I do know that God does not desire for us a minimum level of existence.  I know this because He did not create a minimum level of existence when He created the world.  I always, always marvel that some of the most beautiful colors in all of creation are in the fish inhabiting the ocean depths man does not see.  I marvel at the varied hues of green in this world, the varied hues of all colors in creation.  I marvel at the beauty of flowers, but also the beauty of leaves.  I am, after all, a sucker for any and all variegated leaves in creation. But it is not just the colors of leaves that causes my wonder.  The shape and texture and structure of them catches my eye and my praise.

ARGH!  I just know that I am fumbling and bumbling my way through what I am trying to say.  Simply put, there is such astounding beauty and almost ineffable variety in creation that there is no way that anyone could describe this world as minimalistic.  It is a world overflowing with ineffable riches.

My daily bread includes medical care.  God has provided me, here in Fort Wayne, the best medical care I have experienced in my entire life at a time when medical care is a great need.  I have doctors who genuinely care about me.  I have doctors who are knowledgable about my conditions that are generally unfamiliar to those in the medical field.  And I have doctors who both understand and are willing to work with my limited means and ability to afford such care.

If nothing else communications the expansion of my understanding, I know know that the daily bread God has provided is a therapist who sees and hears me, who is knowledgable about both chronic illness and sexual abuse, and who does not charge me the $40 co-pay I owe for each visit.  Having one of those would be a blessing.  Having all three is a veritable miracle.  It is certainly far beyond the minimal need and certainly adds to what I need to continue my existence in this world.

I feel like a Holy Roller (something to be avoided at all costs growing up in the Bible Belt) saying, "Thank you, Jesus" throughout my day.  But I do.  I think speaking it and hearing myself speak it is important for me ... for my benefit, rather than the benefit of anyone else who might ever hear me.

I feel like a dolt for conflating sustenance and subsistence and trying to tell my doctor that she was wrong.  More and more, I find myself opening up the dictionary (opening up Google) just to see what the actual definition is of a word that is one that I know.  I do this because I have developed a standard of knowing that requires my ability to define the word for someone else, not just use it in a sentence or understand a sentence in which it is used.  And I do this because my brain is failing.

I am not sure if I have crafted a coherent post about daily bread.  I would not, were I pressed, admit to any such thing.  But perhaps my communication stuttering here is still sufficient to get the meaning across.

I am thankful for my brother and for Marie Kondo, because I am thankful for the impetus to delve into the meaning  (or really the concept) of daily bread.


PS  I will crow that conflate is a new word for me and the first time that I have both understood it fully and been able to use it.  I follow several rather intelligent folk on Twitter and it is a word that has oft been used by many of them.  Although, when I learned the meaning of ubiquitous, back in the dark ages, the teacher using it explained that when we learn a new word it is oft seemingly ubiquitous because we begin to notice the new word when we are reading.  However, it often is not actually ubiquitous because we, as readers, skip over words that we do not know when we can understand the meaning of the sentence from the rest of the words.  In all likelihood, the word has been prevalent in prior reading, too.  I had been struggling to fully grasp "conflate," but having conflated those two words, I finally grasp the meaning of "conflate," as well as sustenance!