Life

On Organizing One’s World

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 17 Comments

Slipshod or Precise?

Messy or Neat?

Planned or Random?

Just what DOES your dining room table look like? Yes, I know, the only excuse for a messy dining room table is tax time… and ahem, yes, it’s soon upon us.

messy tableYes this is what the dining room table usually looks like. I thought about cleaning it off just for this photo shoot. But that would be putting a better face on me and my organizational skills than I deserve, and it might put undue pressure on you, the reader, to look around at your own house and wonder why you don’t measure up.

We usually eat at this table so (except at tax time) it can’t be too filled with junk. But I do admit that some evenings I have shoved stuff to the side just to make room for two plates. Sighs loudly. 

So I confess to being a disorderly, organized person. An ex-librarian for goodness sakes, and now a secretary! Files must be in alphabetical order, but the desk is often messy. I go in fits and starts. Stuff collects until I can’t stand it and then I go on a binge of organizing and throwing away, shredding, filing… Last year as we took tax stuff to our new accountant, I was rather nervous that in one of those binges, I had shredded important documents that she would need.

Indexing! said the librarian. Organization! 

And so, in an effort to start 2017 in good form and Organize My World (starting with paperwork) I’ve cleaned and re-organized the kitchen cabinet, my clothes closet, my nightstand, and I am seriously working on my own attitude toward busy-ness. I’m reading Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald (which has been on my unread bookshelf for four years now…) and it is speaking to me loud and clear.

MacDonald’s book is definitely about one’s private world, which is the heart of our moral compass, our self-esteem, our values, our conversations with God, our souls. Yet I can’t help but think if our outer worlds are messy, it must, in part, reflect our inner world.

“For me the appropriate metaphor for the inner spiritual center is a garden, a place of potential peace and tranquility. This garden is a place where the  Spirit of God comes to make self-disclosure, to share wisdom, to give affirmation or rebuke, to provide encouragement, and to give direction and guidance. When this garden is in proper order, it is a quiet place, and there is an absence of busyness, of defiling noise, of confusion.

The inner garden is a delicate place, and if not properly maintained it will be quickly overrun by intrusive undergrowth. God does not often walk in disordered gardens…”

garden statue
And in the next chapter, he continues the garden metaphor…

“Few of us can appreciate the terrible conspiracy of noise there is about us, noise that denies us the silence and solitude we need for this cultivation of the inner garden. It would not be hard to believe that the archenemy of God has conspired to surround us at every conceivable point in our lives with the interfering noises of civilization that, when left unmuffled, usually drown out the voice of God. Those who walk with God will tell you plainly, God does not ordinarily shout to make Himself heard.”

(My copy of this book was published in 1985 — way before the electronic revolution changed the type and amount of noise in our lives).

I long for simplicity — an end to clutter — both in my outer and inner worlds. I long to get rid of paper, unnecessary choices that complicate life, and I long to be the type of person who puts everything away in the correct place when I’m finished with it… Or, at least remember where I put it so I don’t have to spend twenty minutes searching for it.

“God does not ordinarily shout to make Himself heard…” That bears repeating, doesn’t it? And the still small voice is hard to hear when distraction, busy-ness, and clutter fill your heart, your mind, and your life.

Clean your house — and while you are cleaning, pray.

Weed your garden — and while you are weeding, listen to the birdsong.

Read your bible — and while you are reading, think on who He is and how to best honor Him in your life.

And for goodness sakes, clean off that dining room table — and while you are organizing, sing.

Ordinary Days : a letter to my future self

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

light behind the storm clouds
Dear You,
Remember that rainy September day?
The cloud-filled sky and the freedom
from the sun’s tyranny?
No need to finish up summer today.

You gave yourself permission
to bake bread and make
a long slow simmering stew,
pore over knitting patterns
and write a poem to the future you.

You wanted to write in longhand
(not that there’s anything wrong with Pages or Word
or an online thesaurus)
but a letter deserves a pen.
There was that old found notebook and
There was your old found self in the pages.

Gardens you have planted — elsewhere.
Prayers that have been answered — somewhere.
Wisps of words you loved — written there.
Lists of books to read that now,
here in the present future,
were read in the long ago past.

And there was that quote from Chesterton
about the best book he never wrote…
You’ve written yours.
Begun in one life, finished in another.
It changed and grew with you
as you changed and grew.
Mais plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Blue sky behind gray clouds
Have you been grateful for your two lives—
three or four, really if it comes to that—
Have you been grateful for the sameness of those lives—
the sky, the stars, the seasons, the circles, the cycles?
for that sameness enables us to see
the unpredictable unexpecteds
the extraordinary exquisiteness
the glorious graces
of those ordinary days
that make unordinary lives.

Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.
–G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Moments

/ Apple Hill Cottage / 9 Comments

Reblogging this from November 19th a couple of years ago…It’s just a reminder to count your blessings and give something to your local food pantry sometime soon…

Today I worked for the food bank from 8:45 to 2:15.

5 1/2 hours. 330 minutes. 19,800 seconds.

Plenty of moments to get a photograph.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t get a picture of the little boys singing and riding the rocking horse in the nursery.

I didn’t get a picture of two truckloads of food being unloaded.

I didn’t get a picture of volunteers packing food in boxes.

I didn’t get a picture of people waiting for their turn to get food.

I didn’t get a picture of the lady who broke down crying because Thanksgiving was so hard for her.

I didn’t get a picture of me praying with a woman who had just lost her grandson.

I didn’t get a picture of the ladies who got belligerent when they didn’t get commodity boxes because they made too much money.

I didn’t get a picture of the laid-off coal miner who said he’d never had to ask for help before, but his wife had just died of breast cancer, leaving him an out-of-work single dad with two kids under five.

Instead I got a bleak picture of poverty.

People just like you and me who have been handed a rough deal. Some are grateful for what they have; some are angry; some are barely dealing with it. They are vets, diabetics, seniors, men out-of-work because they hurt their back, women who were making it okay until they took in their son who lost his job and his girlfriend and her three kids. It goes on and on…

I was the intake person. The person who told them they made too much money to get a senior commodity box (for a household of two the line is drawn at $1,736 per month); the person with whom three people  cried; the person who heard the political diatribe about the (*&^% in Washington who don’t know how to run the government. The person who filled out the forms, did the paperwork, read them the rules, and wrote down their income. $350 disability + $369 in food stamps for a family of 7…

I got home at 2:30. Not glad that I had helped, but burdened with the cycle of poverty that I saw only a small glimpse of today.

My moments.

I have three clocks that tell me the moments. A green clock that matches my kitchen; a bird clock that chirps the hours; an expensive bedroom clock that shines the time and temperature on the ceiling…

Moments

And yesterday? I went grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. I went to two grocery stores and the beer store and mildly complained at how much everything cost. But my pantry is full; there are a few little extra luxuries for Thanksgiving dinner; and I still have some money left. I’m going to donate some of it to the food bank, and I suggest you do the same. To make someone else’s moments a little better.

 

and I’m grateful to have a full pantry and some money left over…