The gift of space

Moving my office from the Quaker Meeting where I have pastored to my already full house has been a challenge! I have a couple of chairs left and a nativity set somewhere and I will be done! Now that it's all in my house I look around and a familiar, yet disturbing image surfaces...the person in the parable of the great pearl that has so much stuff in his house there is no space left at all.

I have such good stuff! But....I want to live simply and uncluttered...like Godly Play stories: an economy of words and gestures. Just the essence, not the extra, detracting, watering down that so often characterizes how we talk and live so much of the time. What can we leave out and have all we need? Quite a bit I think these days, quite a bit. It is a gift to give ourselves and the children the "just enough" that ensures that there is plenty of space and actually guards that space by our careful intention to not fill up the space....so that there is plenty of room, lots of room.

It takes a courageous storyteller not to fill up the space.

What are your challenges in telling stories (or the stories of how we live) that are full of space and grace?