Where Does this Belong?

We have become cluttered again. The dresser surface in the bedroom is littered with miscellaneous receipts and Post-it notes and pocket change; the table between our living room chairs has become a repository of plastic newspaper wrappers, rubber bands, books, cords associated with this or that piece of technology, and CD's that need to be returned to the library. The wicker tray on the ottoman where we keep recent magazines is mounded and spilling its now well out of date displays. The dining room table is strewn with mail, crowded on one corner by a revolving string of one delivered shipping box or another.

In our defense, some of this disorder represents the usual flora and fauna that flourish in the wake of travels out of town. The piles of mail are inordinately deeper, and the necessarily focused attention on all the backlogged work-related responsibilities leaves little time or energy for the backlogged ones at home. We have stored the suitcases back in the basement, but subtler residue of recent travel isn't hard to find.

But the deeper truth is that every now and then we have to do a "gut check." Time goes by. Hours roll end over end. Days dawn and then darken. Calendars fill. Before we know it we are moving through our days rather than actually occupying them with any adequate degree of attention or appreciation or grounding. And then stuff stacks up. "I'll get to that tonight" becomes "have you recently seen...?" -- fill in the blank with the bill or note or button or book of your choice. After awhile we hardly even notice the disarrayed accumulations.

Until one of us -- OK, until Lori -- calls a halt to our self-induced blindness, insists that we remove the mental cataracts and actually look around us, and invites us into the Divine work of bringing order out of chaos. To be sure, our chaos isn't primordial, and the ordering won't likely take six days, but it will be interesting to see what new creatures emerge from the process.

And we will enjoy the glorious -- and decidedly neater -- sabbath that follows.