12/01/23 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

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Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

Clutter. Is it my age, or is it the age in which we live? Clutter seems to dominate my life. Preparation for the Advent season seems like a good time to conquer the immense amount of stuff that hangs around my life like Jacob Marley’s chains in A Christmas Carol.

Most of you have seen my small office at school. When I arrived in 2017, I inherited a large desk and credenza. I managed, over the years, to fill every open space with piles and books, and reports and all manners of stuff with which I needed to attend. Even under my desk, I started to store so much that I barely had room for my legs.

I have replaced the desk that, at times seemed like a coffin, with a small writer’s desk that my wife bought for me a few years ago. My job does require a lot of papers and forms, but they don’t all have to sit on top of my desk! Without the giant desk, I don’t have to keep two feet of laminated wood between my guests and me. Since I have gone to the smaller model, I have found that my circular file fills up quicker than ever.

I have four email addresses: my personal one, my cdeducation account, my OLP account for student communication, and an account for my work as a board member of Yay Bikes. Among the four, but mostly the first two, I receive over 300 emails a day. They don’t just come to my computer; they invade my phone and my wristwatch as well. Most of it is junk. I addressed my Gmail account first. I had over 250,000 emails, dating back from the turn of the century when I was jimsilcott@hotmail. Did you know that on the margin there is a tab called “promotions?” I had never noticed it before. Deleting all those old ads and invitations to buy everything on the planet reduced the number by two-thirds. In my cdeducation account, the one to which you communicate with me, I am trying every morning to eliminate everything that is not directly related to some function of my job here. Hopefully, it will keep your important email from getting lost amid promotions to buy the latest educational product that will make all of our students geniuses.

At home, when I turn on the television, I am faced with hundreds, if not thousands, of choices to wile away the hours. Lately, I have limited those choices to sports, the old movie channel and YouTube. No, I don’t watch cute kitten videos. YouTube has decided (correctly) that the videos I most want to watch are videos about history, documentaries, and an occasional movie—only black and white, please!

What does all this have to do with Advent? For me, it seems that striving for a simpler life leads me to a simpler approach to my day, which leads me to simpler opportunities to reflect, to dream and to pray. It is my desire during these weeks leading up to Christmas, that, having a decluttered heart helps me to be more open to Christ’s presence in my life. I will never even get close to living like a monk in his solitary cell, but I can strive to spend more time on what is important in life: friends, family and God. For me, all three get lost amid the clutter.

I am sure that there will come a day when I must declutter again. Life is just messy, and messes accumulate. But for now, the chains are off, and I am ready for Advent, prepared to welcome, in a new way, Christ into my heart.



Having said all that, please know that I do not consider the following items to be “clutter,” and I defend their accumulation by declaring that they keep me sane. For some of you, it might be your kitchen and all your gadgets; for others, your tool shed. For me, it is my books and my bicycle-riding accoutrements. You can never have too much of either, right? As I said, I will never be a monk!

Jim Silcott