Friday, November 7, 2008

The Value of Disorder

I just decided that I need to write on this because, damn it, I seem to have a lot of disorder in my life and my deep faith tells me that there is a reason for everything. Yes, everything. The socks on the floor that had a match for a total to two seconds after they made it through the front door, the piles of jackets, toys, backpacks, the book case over stuffed with stuff come on you know what I mean, right? Maybe not, I know that there are people with neat houses who do not clean all day long. Seriously. How they do it I think is a state of mind.

I think maybe disorder tells us something about our lives. It gives us an external clue of when we are on the mark and when we are not.

It is not only whether there is a mess but also how we feel about the mess. There are messes that we look at and know there is order just underneath not very far below the surface of what we see. Then there are messes that do not bother us at all because we look and instead of a true mess we see our choices made and accepted. We went to visit the grandmother an hour away instead of doing dishes or took our child to ballet after work. These messes are temporary, we can feel it in our bones; it is when we despair and the mess seems permanant that we should look at the clutter and disorganization as a clue to an inner state that needs our compassionate attention.

What does your environment tell you? How do you listen?

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