New Day

Ash Wednesday

“At start of spring I open a trench
in the ground and I put into it
the winter’s accumulation of paper, pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors…To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench…
Beneath that seal, the old escapes into the new.”
Wendell Berry

Today is Ash Wednesday in the liturgical calendar. It marks the beginning of the season of Lent; forty days before Easter. Lent is supposed to be a time of atonement for the sins and excesses of the past year. Having just returned home from the Coast where Mardi Gras has been in full swing for a week, I can tell you that atonement is going to be necessary for some. I honestly don’t pay too much attention to such things, not being Catholic, but this Lent, I will be leading a study called Simplifying the Soul, based on the book of the same name by Paula Huston. Each day during Lent, we will read a meditation and complete an exercise designed to clear out our living spaces and our lives of excess ‘junk’.

I met a woman over the weekend who told me about her cherished collection of Mardi Gras beads. She has been going to Mardi Gras for years and each year collects as many of the colorful, plastic beads as possible. Her collection has grown so huge that she has had to box up and store the accumulated stash in her attic. As I listened to her speak of this, I couldn’t help wondering what on earth that was all about. Mardi Gras beads are cheap, valueless, and don’t really change much from year to year. She wouldn’t be able to say, ‘I got these beads in New Orleans, and these in Mobile’, because they would be indistinguishable. When I asked her the question, she just shrugged, ‘I just like them.’ I imagined her children finding the boxes of crumbling beads after her death, and feeling mystified as to why Mother would store boxes and boxes of beads in her attic. I could see them tossing those carefully saved and stored boxes into a dumpster with a muffled curse.

Today, I will go into my own basement, figuratively and literally, and drag out boxes of saved nonsense. I will unpack and say goodbye to all the outgrown clothes, charity greeting cards, excess kitchen utensils, candle-dripped bottles from the 70’s, empty green vases from florists and other detritus from my past and take them to the thrift store. I will also say goodbye to all the drama and foolishness that has been bottled up in my heart and soul; all the little grudges, all the small indignities and unkind thoughts and words. I will bury them in the past and look forward to the future without baggage and without bondage.

Clear out a junk drawer today. Give away everything you haven’t used in a year. Wipe away the accumulated dust and start anew.

In the spirit,
Jane