Closed burden basket, ca. 1900. Weaver unknown, Mashpee Wampanoag.
This seems like a good time of year to share part of a thoughtful post by Dwayne Melancon at Genuine Curiosity:
Our visiting missionary was talking about how we are called to leave behind things that make it more difficult for us to live the life we want to live. The "things" we need to leave behind are sometimes physical, but he asked us to broaden our perspective to include relationships, grudges, and so forth. ...And Kimberly Southall shared this quote from Ephesians 4:31:
Definitely got me thinking about how I can clean up some of the spiritual / emotional clutter. For example:
- Who can I forgive (or ask for forgiveness) and get past a grudge?
- Who can I apologize to and make amends?
- Do I have any relationships where it's time to move on and stop trying to "make it better?"
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.Katherine Gibson delves into emotional clutter in her wonderful book Unclutter Your Life. Here's just one quote:
Beth Skala talks of the Native American's burden basket. "It's the mental and spiritual clutter we carry. Our burden basket contains regrets, unfilled wishes, addictions, failures, memories of abuse, unresolved issues, and guilt. We can bend under its weight as life tosses more in, or we can set it down and examine what's in it and choose to unload some of the weight."I wish all of you an uncluttered life in the year ahead.
[Burden basket photo from The Language of Native American Baskets]
2 comments:
Yes. Professional organizer Jan Wulling (in Eugene, Oregon) asks the question, “What’s stuffed in my heart?”
And in Judaism, we have the new year tradition of Tashlich, the casting off of our “sins” (my quote marks) into the nearest body of free-flowing water. Usually this is done by emptying our pockets of lint and crumbs, “symbolically shaking loose [our] sins of the past year so that they could be swept downstream” (from Arthur Waskow’s Seasons of Our Joy).
By the way, both Katherine Gibson and Beth Skala are lovely women. I enjoyed a long, lovely conversation with Katherine during one of my visits to Victoria, and consider Beth a friend.
Happy New Year, Jeri!
Claire Josefine
author of The Spiritual Art of Being Organized and
Following Raven, Finding Ground, A Road Trip in Search of Home
Founder/moderator of Simple and Sustainable Organizers Yahoo! Group
www.clairejosefine.com
Happy New Year to you to, Claire!
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