Clutter is an inevitable part of my life - whether it's piles of papers on my desk, clothes draped over a chair, or a mess of ingredients on the kitchen counter whenever I bake or cook.
So I pause in Kathleen Norris's book, The Cloister Walk. She is describing the trees in Dakota. They are so rare that they stand out in the bleak landscape.
Comparing the inside of her Dakota home, with its "abundance of books and papers" to the simple beauty of a horizon with one tree, she writes:
A perfectly simple room, with one perfect object to meditate on, remains a dream until I step outside, onto the Plains. A tree. A butte. The sunrise. It always makes me wonder: What is enough? Are there enough trees here? As always, it seems that the more I can distinguish between my true needs and my wants, the more I am shocked to realize how little is enough.
(p. 296)
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