COLUMNIST: Wit & Wisdom

He built a fort for himself as part of the English garrison in what is now the beautiful tranquil County Armagh hamlet of Charlemont. And that’s where he ended his days.

It is said that as he was dying at the age of 43 he sat on his veranda overlooking the rolling green hills of the land that we now call the Orchard of Ireland, and he cried: ‘O Charlemont, Charlemont, why must I leave thee?’

Like most of us, Lord Mountjoy had invested his life in acquiring property, power and status.

He was ‘Lord of the things’, and when it came time to leave them all behind, it broke his heart.

That is the great deceit, the hollowness of materialism; devote yourself to the here and now, amass your wealth, tear down your barns to make room for bigger and better ones, hold tightly to what you’ve got; until one day the awful futility of it all will dawn on you; there are no pockets in a shroud.

In my later years I have come to highly respect the lifestyle of Saint Francis of Assisi. He was born into a wealthy family, but at an early age he saw through the futility and impermanence of material wealth – pity the man whose only wealth is money.

Perhaps the young Francis read and was impacted by the words of the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Don’t store up treasures on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal... for wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.’

What Jesus was saying is this; live a life of giving, a life of letting go of things, a life that’s not all about ‘me, me, me’ and you’ll be much better equipped for the final letting go. But it’s counter cultural, for all the way through our lives we’re encouraged to imbibe the dominant values of our society; make it your goal to achieve, to own, to accumulate, to conquer, and we trample over those weaker than ourselves to get to the top.

We think it a sign of weakness to yield, we stamp our feet and demand our rights.

‘You’ve got to be tough! You must win! Letting go is anathema.’

Maybe Paul the apostle summed it up best: ‘True godliness with contentment is itself great wealth’

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