Margins

 I recently read a book called, "The More of Less", a Christian approach to decluttering our homes and our lives. It's not my first "getting your $hit together (and having less $hit) will improve your life"-type book (nod to Marie Kondo), but as with most things, what is at the front of my attention is what I usually ponder. 

What I really started thinking about is spare time. Sure, there's some old possessions that need to be sorted and largely chucked, but what I want, really want, to streamline is my calendar. 

I just returned yesterday from a two-day, mid-week, annual parish camping trip. Attendance on any given day always waxes and wanes, but the attendence this year was definitely down. My daughter was the only kid to attend the whole time. The chief organizer had even considered canceling, but decided it was too important to forgo. "Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in their midst", we recalled from the gospel. When wondering about the numbers, it was concluded that folks were just too busy. Instead of looking at it as busy-ness, which is always around, I started thinking about it as margin.

What is margin? Imagine that flat piece of loose-leaf paper with the thin blue lines and the three holes on one side. Towards the edge of the right and the left were a light red line. Outside the middle is the margin. When you're taking notes, you stay inside the red lines, but if you run out of space, you spill to the margin. 

The margin effect isn't precisely a matter of time, either. When we look at families, it's the time and effort and resources combined that will be required of the responsible parent to participate. Maybe the time piece works, but the effort piece is large. Maybe the mental or physical effort is too big, on top of work or illness or other commitments. Or maybe the cost is prohibitive, which plays into margin as well, particularly for folks living paycheck to paycheck. 

We tend to have very full lives, but the fullness isn't the problem, necessarily. It's the lack of margins. With 40 hours of work in a typical worker's week and maybe mandatory overtime coupled with a 6 day a week sport commitment for some student athletes, many American families are writing on the paper from edge to edge. 0 margins. It's unsustainable. 

What do the margins do? They give us time to help someone in need (The Good Samaritan clearly had some margin). They give us time to really engage with our kids. To parent slowly and intentionally and well. They give us time for organizing and thought and recovery from the other tasks. They tend to be the places we put tasks that really feed our souls, like reading, writing, gardening and creating. Margins allow us spontaneity. They allow us rest. Margins are biblical, too.

God in his infinite wisdom knew how challenging human life is. He knew that to survive (think early man here) we would need rest even when we would think we'd need to keep working towards survival. The Bible talks about rest a lot. He gives us a commandment to take one day a week off. It's a gift, not a requirement. 

I've been blessed with some margin. I'd like to grow mine. It's a rare week where I have much slack, but I usually have some, that I usually industriously fill with chores and fun. (This blog is brought to you by my early morning margin). What can I do to grow my margins? What can we do as a society to grow our margins? What would we use the space for? Take a deep breath and ponder.