Several years ago I attended an eight-day retreat, just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The theme of the retreat was conscious dying.
One day, Roshi Joan Halifax guided us through a very lengthy meditation in which we contemplated the end of our physical, personal life. She gently asked us to imagine the future, which held the moment of our death. Roshi proposed that, some time in the distant future, years from now, you are going to die. Looking at that moment--far in the future from the present moment, she asked us to consider: What is still undone in your life. What is there still to do?
After meditating on those profound questions for quite a while, she moved us on. Now, she said, imagine you can see your death coming--in just three years. What is still undone? What is there to do?
Our contemplations continued like this for what seemed a long time--the future moment of death moving closer and closer.
As we approached the six-month mark until our deaths I thought, ‘Well, I still have time to write a few letters to old friends and family members—people I wish to thank for being in my life or people I need to apologize to.’
Then we contemplated having just three months to live, and my imagination pulled the circle of my life in closer and closer. Now, I just wanted to be with my closest family and dearest friends, and visit a few places of beauty.
Imagining I had just one month left, I began to let go of the fantasy that I could organize all the photos still not in albums. I made a wonderful meal for my loved ones and spent long stretches of time quietly drinking in their faces and gazing at the trees and the stars. With just one week left before the moment in the future arrived when I would die, Roshi asked again: “What is left undone. What is there to do?”
Now, I suspect that the correct answer was, “There is nothing left to do but to be, to breathe, to meditate on the Divine, and to consciously meet this breath, this moment….” Which is, I believe, the point of the teaching.
But I am such a beginner on the spiritual path. As I got down to D-Day (Death –Day) minus one, I had such a prosaic insight… “Oh dear!” I thought. “I need to clean out my closets!”
You may indeed laugh. It is laughable to imagine that this would be the thought, the burden pressing on my heart as the moment of my death approached… It is telling.
Even more, it is asking:
What was this impulse about? As everything else was stripped away from my life, and my death loomed in my imagination, what was it that called to me from the dark to be cleaned out? What needed to come into the light, to be unpacked, assessed, repaired, or let go of?
The desire to clear out our closets and our clutter has strong, deep parallels on physical and spiritual planes.
It is a new church year, September again. School has resumed. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is just passed. It is Yom Kippur in the Hebrew Liturgical cycle. Ramadan in the Islamic. Seasons of fasting, atonement and renewal. There is no better time to take a look at the clutter of our lives and start sorting: what to keep, what to clean or repair, what to let go of.
We all have a lot of stuff in our lives. One of my favorite bits of wisdom comes from a one-liner by comic Stephen Wright: “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”
Indeed. Where to put all our stuff is a huge problem for many Americans. Unless you live in one of the homes featured in Architectural Digest or House Beautiful or Real Simple…Have you every thumbed through one of these magazines while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room? They feature these enviably stunning rooms.
But there is something that always strikes me as I study the glass-topped coffee tables that have nothing on them except a beautiful flower arrangement or a single object or oversized art book… I always wonder: Don’t these people get any mail? Where is all the paper that seems to accumulate in a 24-hour period at our house?
These pictures of pristine homes may be beautiful, but they are not reality for most of us.
Of course, neither is enlightenment…yet we still strive towards that.
Those stylish magazines feed my dream of being organized, of having as William Morris (1834 - 1896) wrote in 1860, “…nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
Discerning what is useful or beautiful is a very individual and personal process. It is in the eye of the beholder…There was a recent New Yorker cartoon: The living room walls are covered in sketches of children with large heads and saucer-sized eyes. The wife says to the husband: Just because you collect them does not mean they are collectibles!
And what is useful? Lots of things can swim in that wide sea of possibility! Useful as in: can you make something with it? Or will it make me feel better? More secure? Invulnerable? Immortal?
Paring down to a life that is blessed with only that which is useful or beautiful is—while a laudable goal—an exhausting process…
Our STUFF is loaded with energy—some of it quite heavy and negative. And sorting through it requires a deep and potentially draining assessment process. On the good news side, letting go can free up space and energy for more to flow into our lives.
Unfortunately, that’s also the bad news…
Once we’ve cleaned up or cleared out, the flow of stuff does not stop. It is inexorable. More will flow in.
I have a junk drawer in my kitchen. And I know I clear it out periodically. Tossing the random batteries, the take out menus and paper wrapped chopsticks that came with the last take out order. The weird collection of key chains and name tags and magnets and pumpkin carving knives….I clear it out, but it is never empty. Something goes back in the very same day and soon it is filled to jammed again….
The innumerable self-help authors who write about clearing clutter encourage us to see our junk drawers and “In” piles and “To-do” lists as symptoms of being human, and thus to view them and ourselves with compassion. We live busy lives that are cluttered with information and thoughts and feelings and experiences and STUFF.
What we need is to cultivate habits and practices that will allow us to take it—one step at a time, to a manageable level, to a place and a spaciousness that gives us room to move and breath and stretch and thrive. Albert Einstein encouraged Three Rules of Work:
Out of Clutter, Find Simplicity; From Discord, Find Harmony; In the Middle of Difficulty, Find Opportunity
In the midst of our culture-wide difficulty with clutter, some people have definitely found opportunity…Professional organizers!
No space at home for all your stuff? Then you may be like one in 10 Americans who now rent self-storage space…! An email from Space Clearer Stephanie Vogt, author of Your Spacious Self noted that:
“The storage container business is bigger than McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Burger King all put together (the total market value is 145 billion dollars).
When Lew [my husband] and I were clearing out our self-storage space this summer, I met a priest who had been spending the last hot month slowly clearing out his unit. His parents had died and all their STUFF came to him. He had no room at home, so he put it in a rented storage space.
Every week, he went to the unit and took out a cart load of boxes, which he brought home and carefully sorted through, making piles of keep, sell, give away, throw away.
It may not have been hard for you or me to look at his parents’ stuff and see what was objectively useful or beautiful, but we are not the keepers of the stories, the memories that imbued each object. He may have been, for all we know, the last keeper of the story. The only one who knows why mother pressed that rose in her diary, or the hilarious story of how the cut crystal dish came to have that chip, or that the blurry image in the small creased photo is of your late brother—and the only one to have survived the fire….
Now is the time for turning…There is no better time than now to begin peeking into the closets of your life and begin making some assessments and making some piles.
Fashion magazines and reality TV shows give some pretty good closet cleaning advice. Every season, go through your closet. What is in there that is useful or beautiful? What fits you and the life you want to live? That stuff goes in the keep pile.
Are there things that might be great to wear if only they were cleaned up or repaired? Try them on during this sorting process. If they need a new button or a seam or hem fixed, put them in a second pile—and then take care of them.
Are there items that when you try them on you think: oh no! This is just not me! Or, it just doesn’t fit me anymore? Perhaps it is worn out, used up. Or was a case of poor judgment in the first place. Then put it in the third pile—let it go, get rid of it.
Who knew that fashion and the life of the spirit would run so parallel?
Do you possess talents and traits that are useful and beautiful? Bring them out into the light. Let the world see them shine in you. They make you look fabulous.
Are there relationships that need to be repaired, restored, or cleaned up? Now is a good time to take care of them. Get professional help with the tears and dirt if you don’t feel up to doing it alone. There is help for you if you ask.
And that third pile is where those less than attractive habits or heart clutter go. The stuff that needs to be dealt with more dramatically--let go or disposed of. Carefully and compassionately bring out those old resentments, angers, hurts, and betrayal that have been hanging out among the dust bunnies of your spirit…It will be tiring, draining work. But when they are cleared out, there will be more light, more air—more spaciousness in your life.
As we went through the process of moving this summer, I found it exhausting. Not just the physical labor of packing and lifting and cleaning and clearing, but assessing the inherent or attributed value, usefulness, or beauty of things. What could go? What should be given away? What should I not even burden anyone else with and just throw out?
The strain of this process caused me to ask: Why is this so hard? I came to see how some possessions are like a mirror to the soul; a physical reflection of who I imagine I am or long to be—or used to be. I am slowly coming to understand that I am not my stuff…and that having stuff is no protection against the stresses and hurts of the world. Or from my mortality.
I also saw how some of my clutter represents my fears. I have piles of paper in my life: articles I tear out from journals and newspapers that I plan to read and digest, or at least underline and then file away in a retrievable place. I desire to have the information when I need it--for a sermon, let’s say. In an age of information overload, I am afraid I will not have the information I need. If I don’t have the information, I might not appear as intelligent, wise or helpful as I wish to appear….My books, my papers, my clutter protects me from my deep fear of being inadequate in the eyes of others.
How much of our stuff is like that? The just in case I need it someday stuff? And how much of the spiritual stuff that clutters our minds and burdens our hearts represents our fears about who we have the potential to be—there in the dark, in the closet?
Are we less than generous? Are we not as kind or patient as we’d like to be? Are we given to patterns or habits we pray to change?
Of course! If any one of us here listening never again had to clear out the clutter of our hearts, the junk drawers of our souls—I would be amazed! Inspired by you, but surprised…
But I am just as inspired knowing that we are not yet clutter-free. We are not yet perfect, and we come and give thanks for our imperfect lives, and share our imperfect gifts. It’s knowing that we long to be like Architectural Digest coffee tables or kitchen counters in the spiritual depths of our beings: clear, uncluttered, useful…Ready to meet this moment, this breath, in peace.
Now is the time for turning.
As you enter this new season, take time to look at the clutter of your life. Go into the closets of your Blackberries and wall calendars. Look at the busy-ness jammed in there. In our fast-paced 24/7, 21st century lives, let’s make time to re-assess our priorities. Let’s reallocate time to reflect our heart’s need for loving connections, for right relationships, for Sabbath and play.
A fresh, new page in the book of life awaits you. It is already clear, uncluttered. Consider choosing one thing, one way to lift up what is useful or beautiful in your life this year. One way to clear out or repair or let go. Write it down to remind yourself, to inspire yourself to your high resolve.
May your new year be one of spaciousness. May you be free from the stuff that clutters your heart, or weighs you down. And may it be written that your year is blessed with good life, good love, good all… Blessed Be. Amen.
Benediction:
A new heart is given to you, a new spirit put within you!
As we go forth from this holy ground,
may our deeds inscribe us in the Book of Life,
and may they be blessings for the generations. Shalom. Amen
