As a child I had a practice of making sure blank pieces of paper were completely filled with words or doodling before I threw them away. The nuns at school taught us to consider the starving children in Africa and Asia when we were tempted to waste food, but they said nothing about paper! No one back then thought about wasting paper! They also didn’t throw things like toys, household appliances or gadgets into the trash. Most things could be fixed when they broke, or could be used for parts to fix something else or create something new. Things were built to LAST, so the idea of “waste” wasn’t something we talked about much.
The one seemingly disposable thing I DID use as a kid was paper. It not only seemed wasteful to throw away blank paper, it felt WRONG, almost irreverent. I felt something sacred in the “things” of the world, in paper, and it followed that everything required my respect.
I believe I came to this sense of appreciation by absorbing a deeply sacramental attitude toward the world and all of life. It was a direct result of learning that simple, ordinary things like water, oil, candles, fire, bread and wine had the power to draw us into a deep awareness of God’s presence in the world, in the community and in me. (more…)