Clutter is a spiritual issue

Posted on February 2, 2024 by seriouslyseekinganswers

When I began spiritual direction several years ago, one of the first assignments my spiritual director suggested was to come up with an image that best symbolized my current spiritual condition.

A vivid image came to mind almost immediately. I saw myself buried under an avalanche of clutter – piles and piles of papers and boxes and boxes of miscellaneous stuff. I transferred the image in my head to the computer screen using Photoshop. (I always love a good excuse to play with Photoshop.) I promptly named the image Clutter Mountain.

As I created this image, I realized the clutter in my life consisted of more than paper and other physical items. I tossed a to-do list onto the pile, and added a computer with the words “Click Bait” on the screen. I threw in a bag of chips to symbolize my all too frequent stress-eating. Underneath the papers and boxes, I placed several boulders with labels on them – fear, resentment, pain – to represent the steady stream of anxieties and other intrusive thoughts that kept me awake at night and pre-occupied during the day. I added some baggage for good measure.

Sticking out of the pile were my arms, which juggled several balls in the air – family, friends, volunteer work, the house. I added a rope to represent the tug-of-war over my time and my personal values caused by competing demands and continual conflict. Some of the balls had dropped and rested on the ground at the bottom of the heap – my writing, self-care, God.

I remember wondering how God would react to the image I’d just created – was I about to provoke a bolt of lightning? Then I reminded myself that God already knew what was going on and might even be glad to see me acknowledge the reality of my life at the time.

When I showed the image to my spiritual director, I half expected her to supply some relevant Bible verses about the Godliness of cleanliness and self-discipline. Instead, she looked the graphic over for a moment, then asked, “What stands out for you?”

I pointed out the “God ball” at the foot of the clutter pile. God was there, of course, but after creating this image, I could see very clearly how clutter blocked my spiritual path.

For my next homework assignment, my spiritual director challenged me to identify all the different kinds of clutter clogging up my life. I made this list:

Physical clutter. Piles of paper covered nearly every surface in my office. My closets bulged with clothes and shoes, some of which I hadn’t worn in years. Boxes and boxes and boxes marked “miscellaneous” remained stashed in the basement from our last move more than seven years earlier. And I didn’t even like to think about the mess in the garage.

Computer clutter. I could spend hours at my computer playing solitaire, mindlessly surfing the Internet, responding to click bait that sucked me into celebrity gossip, reading “news” articles about political name-calling, and getting locked into fights about culture war issues with friends, relatives and even total strangers on Facebook.

Calendar clutter. Some of the commitments on my calendar truly mattered to me – “date nights” with my husband, visits with family or friends, community volunteer work. But too many of the other commitments overwhelming my schedule had crept onto my to-do list because I couldn’t seem to say “no” to people.

Nutritional clutter. Junk food temptations beckoned constantly. Supermarkets and even so-called health food stores offered cereal with sugar as the first ingredient, highly processed trans-fat-laden “dinners” I could pop into the microwave, and whole aisles of cookies and candy. Restaurant buffets, family gatherings and church potlucks featured entire tables of desserts.

Mental and emotional clutter. Finally, there was the steady stream of anxieties, regrets, unresolved conflicts, grudges and resentments that kept me pre-occupied during the day and awake at night. These seemed to be hindering my spiritual growth most of all.

The list reinforced for me that all this clutter was indeed a spiritual issue. When I put junk food into my body – the temple of the Holy Spirit – it clogged my arteries and accumulated as extra pounds around my waist. The mindless Internet-surfing and solitaire games sucked hours and hours out of my day that could have been better spent connecting with other people, taking a walk, or doing just about anything else. Endless ruminating about resentments interfered with my ability to love my neighbors as myself. Excessive trivial demands on my time zapped energy needed for genuinely important commitments. And when the physical clutter in my house was out of control, my whole life felt out of control.

Sometimes it seemed as if my life had been reduced to crossing items off endless to-do lists – my to-do list for volunteer work, my to-do list for household chores, my to-do list of personal self-care routines, my to-do list of urgent matters, even a master list to keep track of all the to-do lists. This elaborate system of lists was suggested by the day-planner I carried around constantly and jokingly called “my conscience.” I constantly juggled so many balls in the air, I was convinced I had to keep these multiple to-do lists or I wouldn’t remember to do simple things like brush my teeth. Despite all the to-do lists designed to help me hold myself accountable for how I spent my time, I couldn’t seem to keep up with the demands.

Ecclesiastes 3:6 reminds us there is “a time to keep and a time to cast away.” With that in mind, I resolved to make decluttering one of my priorities. After writing down all those areas of my life that felt not-so-well ordered, I shared the list with my spiritual director.

Instead of incorporating my “God ball” back into the rotation of balls I was juggling, my spiritual director suggested I might want to leave it where it was for the time being. “Just sit with it,” she said.

Back at the drawing board (Photoshop, that is), I retrieved my Clutter Mountain graphic and painted my “God ball” gold. I then pictured myself crawling out from under the clutter pile and sitting next to the golden “God ball” with my eyes closed and my back to everything else – a cup of warm coffee in my hands and my cats at my side.

Of course, this meant the other balls I was juggling would drop, at least temporarily, I told my spiritual director when I showed her the edited graphic.

“That’s okay,” she said. “Those other balls will still be there when it’s time for you to get back to them. They’re not going anywhere.”

Over the next few sessions, she challenged me with additional questions, including this one: “Do you ever doubt God’s existence?”

Could it be that I was distracting myself from these tough questions with all the to-do lists, the frantic scheduling, the endless accumulation of “stuff,” and the mindless Internet surfing that cluttered my physical space and unquieted my mind? My spiritual director thought I might be onto something. And yes, she assured me, it was okay to question my beliefs. Starting with, did I really believe there was a God? Why or why not?

I revisited these images recently while reviewing my spiritual progress. I was gratified to see that I actually have managed to make some improvements in the years since I first began spiritual direction.

My spiritual director recommended I devote one hour each weekday to sorting through the physical clutter in our house. While I still haven’t achieved my dream of a perfectly clean house with a place for everything and everything in its place, our house does stay looking presentable most of the time.

After the pandemic shut everything down, deleting a number of commitments from my calendar in the process, I’ve been very selective about adding them back. I’ve managed to set better boundaries with my screens as well, nearly eliminating the solitaire games and resisting click bait at least occasionally.

I’ve developed a healthy eating plan that replaces much of my previous junk food diet with fruits and veggies, whole grains, spices instead of salt, and more home-cooked meals. While I don’t adhere to the plan perfectly, I have been steadily improving, especially since being diagnosed with diabetes.

The spiritual direction process itself has been beneficial for tackling mental and emotional clutter. One thing that really helped was giving myself permission to ask all those “God questions” some folks might think I shouldn’t be asking. And once I started taming my to-do list by setting better boundaries, I found myself feeling fewer resentments.

Alas, I can’t say my life has become completely clutter-free. Most of those boxes in the basement labeled “miscellaneous” remain. I still catch myself mindlessly surfing the Internet from time to time and clicking on bait like “21 celebrities who have gone to prison.” Or I find myself saying “yes” to a new commitment when I really should say “no.” And I’ll plead guilty to harboring an itty bitty resentment now and then.

In other words, this decluttering exercise hasn’t been a once-and-done proposition. When the physical and spiritual clutter starts piling up again, and the tug-of-war over my time and my values threatens to resume, I still find the images to be a helpful reality check.

As they say around the tables at 12-Step meetings, we seek spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. One day at a time.

Spiritual progress

Posted on January 31, 2019 by seriouslyseekinganswers

A little over a year ago I found myself at a spiritual crossroads.

My husband and I attended church almost weekly, and I had read the Bible from cover to cover, along with shelves full of books on religion and spirituality. Yet I still found myself asking the “big” or “ultimate” questions. What do I actually believe about God and why? What is God’s purpose for my life? What are my values, or what should they be? How do I live my life in a way that is consistent with my beliefs and values?

Several factors led to this renewed questioning. The transition in focus and priorities prompted by my retirement. The “time is limited” epiphany that comes with being 60-something, losing loved ones and developing chronic health problems myself. Questions about faith and a church’s true purpose raised by reading the Bible and serving on my church’s evangelism committee. The internal tug-of-war over my own values brought on by the increasing divisiveness and polarization in our society.

I made a commitment: Develop a better understanding of God, so I can fulfill God’s purpose for my life, discern what my values should be, and live accordingly. Toward this end, I engaged a spiritual director to help me explore these “ultimate” questions and reorder my beliefs and values as necessary. Seeing a spiritual director does not replace going to church, of course – it’s a supplement, rather than a substitute. Spiritual direction is a one-on-one partnership in which one Christian helps another grow in a personal relationship with God.

I must admit the idea of working with a spiritual director made me a bit nervous at first. While I hoped this person would ask the hard questions, I didn’t want someone who would merely push me to adopt their own belief system. I needed this person to be nonjudgmental and open to the idea that I was questioning all kinds of dogma, from the spiritual and religious to the political and ideological.

My spiritual director, thankfully, has been patient as I grapple with questions some would say I shouldn’t even be asking. For the past year, we have met monthly for one-hour sessions. She offers a variety of suggestions for homework assignments, allowing me to choose which ones I might find most helpful. She recommends various reading materials as well.

I had already developed a morning meditation ritual – sitting in my recliner in front of the fireplace with a cat in my lap and a cup of coffee by my side while I journal about my priorities for the coming day. I began using this time to write out my thoughts and insights generated by the homework assignments. I’m a rather “visual” person, so I’ve also used imagery to describe what I’m experiencing at any given moment.

One of my first assignments: Come up with an image that best symbolizes my present spiritual condition.

I created a Photoshop image of myself buried under a mountain of clutter and added a rope to represent the tug-of-war over everything from my time to my personal values caused by competing demands and continual conflict. Underneath the papers and boxes and to-do lists, I placed several boulders with labels on them – fear, anger, pain – to represent the steady stream of anxieties and resentments that kept me awake at night and pre-occupied during the day. A pair of arms juggled several balls in the air – family, friends, volunteer work, the house. More balls had been dropped and were nestled on the ground at the bottom of the heap – my writing, self-care, God.

Using the graphic as a starting point, I listed those areas of my life that felt not-so-well-ordered. My relationships. A messy house. Our finances. My frantic, overloaded schedule. Health issues ranging from aches and pains everywhere to heart problems, along with my inability to sustain a healthy eating plan for more than a few days at a time. My writing, which seemed to languish. My emotional life, which often left me feeling like a walking bundle of anxieties and resentments. The suspicion I entertained from time to time that my life had been reduced to crossing items off endless to-do lists. My spiritual life, with all those questions and doubts.

I shared my “laundry list” with my spiritual director and showed her the graphic. I described the chaos that seemed to permeate my life, stemming from my own challenges with organizing skills, my talent for procrastination, my difficulty saying “no” to demands on my time, and my penchant for getting sucked into other people’s dramas. Repeated efforts to get my life under better control often left me feeling more frustrated than ever, I confessed.

My spiritual director listened to this litany without negative judgment – at least none that I could detect. Looking the graphic over for a moment, she asked, “What stands out for you?”

I pointed out the “God ball” at the foot of the clutter pile. God was there, of course, but after creating this image, I could see vividly how clutter of all kinds – from endless STUFF to excessive commitments – blocked my spiritual path.

I half expected her to supply some relevant Bible verses about the Godliness of cleanliness and self-discipline. But instead of helping me incorporate my “God ball” back into the rotation of balls I was juggling, my spiritual director suggested I leave it where it was for the time being. “Just sit with it,” she said.

Back at the drawing board (Photoshop, that is), I pulled up my Clutter Mountain graphic and painted my “God ball” gold. I then imagined myself crawling out from under the junk pile and sitting next to the golden God ball with my eyes closed and my back to everything else – a cup of warm coffee in my hands and my two cats at my side.

Of course, this meant the other balls I was juggling would drop, I told my spiritual director when I showed her the edited graphic. “That’s okay,” she said. “Those other balls will still be there when it’s time for you to get back to them. They’re not going anywhere.” She suggested I spend an hour each day tackling the clutter – just one hour – and leave the rest for the next day.

Then she asked me, “Have you ever questioned the existence of God?” She didn’t flinch when I said, “Oh yeah. More than once.” One of the things I’ve liked is that she’s continued to be nonjudgmental. I’ve been able to talk about things like my history of church-hopping (and religion-or-spiritual-tradition hopping) and I’ve even been able to acknowledge occasional doubts about God’s existence without getting a lecture.

I went to work on the clutter, using my spiritual director’s recommended one-hour-per-day approach. While I still have a long way to go before achieving my goal of “a place for everything and everything in its place,” slowly but surely, I’ve gotten my house to a point where it is at least presentable enough to invite people over from time to time.

I set a boundary with myself regarding my schedule. Before adding a new ongoing commitment to my calendar, something else must come off. Some of the commitments really mattered to me: time with my husband, a meal with family or friends, singing in the church choir. But several other commitments had crept into my schedule because I should have said “no” and didn’t.

As I continued taming my schedule and tackling the endless clutter – one hour and one day at a time – a flash of insight occurred to me. A little epiphany, one might say. Could the question of God’s existence be what I was distracting myself from with all the to-do lists, the frantic scheduling, the endless cleaning and the mindless Internet surfing that cluttered my life and unquieted my mind? My spiritual director agreed that I might be on to something.

For most of my life, I had leaned toward the idea that there probably was a God. Yet, those pesky doubts did creep in from time to time. I didn’t voice them to anyone, though. If the folks at church ever doubted God’s existence, they certainly weren’t letting on.

I confessed to my spiritual director that what I really wanted was that “blinding light” experience the Apostle Paul had on the road to Damascus, or the burning bush Moses encountered. I wanted to be like those people who saw the blinding light or the burning bush, just knew what they knew about God, and had their mission in life spelled out for them.

She recommended I use part of my morning meditation time to be completely quiet. “Listen for God’s voice,” she said.

Well, the blinding light hasn’t happened for me – at least not yet. But what has happened is nearly as amazing.

One thing that became glaringly apparent when I tried to quiet my mind and listen for God’s voice was the level of resentment and anxiety that continually filled my thoughts – much of this prompted by a not-for-profit organization I was heavily involved in. For several years I had dedicated an average of 5-10 volunteer hours per week to this organization and contributed thousands of dollars.

The organization was not church-related, but its program served a cause dear to my heart, and I had previously thought nurturing its development might be a significant part of God’s plan for my retirement years. However, warring factions within the organization seemed more focused on vanquishing each other than they were on the mission. The leader personally targeted me and others whose competence and dedication threatened his sense of power.

After five years of relentless conflict and escalating abuse, I had to admit this organization’s dynamics were never going to change. And no matter how worthy the cause, I was doing untold damage to both myself and my other relationships by continuing to participate. With much sorrow, and after consulting with my spiritual director, my pastor and a valued mentor, I walked away.

My husband was so happy with this decision, he celebrated by taking me out for supper at my favorite seafood restaurant. I could literally feel the tension flow out of my body as I tied up loose ends and turned tasks over to others. I’ve dropped 15 pounds since I resigned from the organization because I no longer feel the need to counter stress by opening the refrigerator door and mindlessly stuffing my emotions with junk food. My schedule opened up considerably.

Then I walked outside. Dismissing the existence of a God is tempting when so many people who claim to speak in God’s name spew hatred for their fellow and sister human beings while committing assorted hypocrisies and evil deeds. Denying God’s existence gets even easier when watching one terrible event after another unfold on the news. But I’ve found it’s almost impossible to deny the existence of a Creator when I’m outdoors with evidence of God all around me.

So, to ward off those nagging doubts that surface from time to time, I try to get outside as much as possible. Regardless of the weather, I like to start my day by feeding the birds (and squirrels) while my morning coffee brews. During the growing season I tend a garden and several flower beds. I take walks along an amazing tree-lined bike trail that runs beside a creek near our house. Strolling through our backyard, the bike path or a neighborhood park admiring the flowers and snapping wildlife photos sure beats watching the news and arguing with complete strangers on Facebook. Immersing myself in nature’s majesty continually reminds me there is an ultimate Creator.

My spiritual progress may seem agonizingly slow to anyone reading this. But for me, finding a way to effectively address my occasional doubts about God’s existence is HUGE. Summoning the self-respect and courage to walk away from an abusive situation has also been an enormous step in the right direction. As they say around the tables at 12-Step meetings, we aim for spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.

Time to fasten my seatbelt and embark on the next leg of my spiritual journey.