thesoulpurposedotorg

I made a mess today in spite of all my good intentions, not an unfamiliar experience. The mess happened in the most sacred space in our home. I have a little space on the top floor of our house that is my meditation and worship space. The central feature is a beautiful quilted wall hanging made by a parishioner for me in 1995. An antique chest passed down to me from my great grandmother is covered in a prayer shawl I used for many year. Three jarred candles top this along with mementos of the spiritual journey. The purpose of such a space is to utilize muscle memory and mental repetition to ease the discipline of daily meditation.

It works for me, sometimes too well. As I light the three candles to begin my daily practice, I speak “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And when we have a power outage, I light the emergency candles and speak the same words without thinking! For decades now, the Jesus Prayer has been my mantra. Sometimes I resist the phrase in the last part: “have mercy on me a sinner”…well, just the words “a sinner.” My monkey mind goes off in another direction as it argues “sin, that just means missing the mark….why is that so bad….and I’m not that much of a sinner….” Yeah, right. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy.

This conversation with the multiple strands of thought that go on in my mind at any one time, even while practicing a familiar ancient prayer was on my mind as I finished my prayer time today. As I looked up, I noticed that this space needed some cleaning. I kept the chant music playing as I went downstairs to get a basin of soap and water and some shears to prune the plants on either side of the chest. Pruning accomplished, I moved the plants to get at the windows which were smeared with the sap of plant leaves and began to apply elbow grease. As I stepped back to examine my work, I stepped right into the basin of sudsy water which completely spilled over like a waterfall over the loft wall down onto the sofa and carpet below. What a lovely clean mess!

I rushed down the spiral staircase to gather towels and didn’t know where to start! Throwing a towel on the sofa, I climbed back upstairs to sop up the source. Using my feet to move the soapy wet towels around I was able to clean the whole floor. And I remembered again that although sin simply means missing the mark, that in itself truly makes an awful mess. As I cleaned up the leather sofa I noticed all the dust that I had previously ignored. The damp towel from my mess became a useful dust cloth and I remembered all the times in my life when God has used my messes to set something else right. When I tried to quickly make my messes go away I just made another mess. God used even that.

I’d so much rather just get everything right and never miss the mark. That will not happen in this lifetime. Lord, have mercy on me, mess maker, mark “misser”, yes, sinner. Have mercy.