Faith and Values: Evaluate the stuff(ing) of your life
If it was inside, it’s called stuffing. Stuffing is my favorite T-day dish, regardless of where it was cooked. Yum!
But “stuff(ing)” has so many other usages, doesn’t it? Everyone has “stuff” – often so much stuff that we need a storage shed to store it, or the cars sit in the driveway so our stuff can occupy the two-car garage. Or “stuff” is a catch-all word that points to things we have or do. All kinds of stuff.
“Stuff” was even the word used 37 times in some older English translations of the Old Testament when referring to yarns and linen. It wasn’t used in the New Testament, but “things” was used some 542 times as a catch-all word that described a variety of, well, stuff.
The things Jesus spoke of in Matthew 6:33 referred to food and clothing that we tend to worry about. Or in Mark 4:2, Jesus “taught them many things in parables…” So “things” here suggests ideas, wisdom and values. Good stuff of life? “Things” and “stuff” seem interchangeable, don’t they?
Back in the 1520s, an Old High German word, stopfon, was translated as “stuffing” and meant material used to fill a cushion. The stuff(ing) of life today certainly fills much more than a cushion.
It seems the stuff(ing) of our lives often tries to fill emotional and spiritual fear-holes in our lives. Overreactions, super-size diets, obsessive-compulsive actions are only some of the behaviors we use to stuff the voids in our lives.
A well-worn piece of wisdom comes from a Native American story:
One evening an old man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.’
The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”
The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Have you ever heard the choices we make symbolized so simply, so uncomfortably truthfully? I don’t think I have. Every one of us has these wolves competing inside of us every day, maybe even every moment.
Call the good wolf and the evil wolf whatever you wish. The challenge goes well beyond our labels.
With all due respect to this powerful story, I suggest we don’t feed just one wolf or the other. When we think in only either/or ways, it’s tempting to pretend we’re feeding only one wolf. But it is very clear to me that we feed both wolves.
So I have one further question to ask: What do you feed each wolf? Both wolves are fed daily by the choices we make with our thoughts. What we think about and dwell upon will definitely appear in our lives and influence our behaviors.
With virtually every breath, we make choices about what to feed our inner companions. The diet we offer each goes a long way toward determining which wolf grows strong and which wolf weakens.
Do we concentrate on a compassionate, grace-full diet, or one that feeds our willingness to make negative assumptions about ourselves and others (read “judgments”)?
What are you stuffing your wolves with?
Just asking you… and myself!
The Rev. Paul Graves, a Sandpoint resident and retired United Methodist minister, is the founder of Elder Advocates. He can be contacted at welhouse@nctv.com.