This is the tenth post in a series about spirituality, time, and place and how our stories play out relative to these realities. Find the previous posts here:
You Are Your Stories
Own Your Story
Is Now Really All We Have?
Where Did You Come From?
Where Are You Going?
A Bigger Story
Where Are You Now?
Healing Sick Spaces
Creating Sacred Spaces
Our stories are not abstract ideas. They are the reality we live every moment of every day. There are always elements of our stories over which we have no control. Some may be major plot points while others are tiny detours. But in general we get to choose what story we live. The tragedy is that many of us don’t exercise that power to choose. We are shaped by stories that we have not chosen to write, which we do not own and in which we do not feel we belong. We go from experience to experience, crisis to crisis, moment to moment reacting but feeling powerless to create our own narrative. We struggle to learn the lessons of the past or to draw inspiration from the possibilities of the future. And we can’t even begin to think about locating ourselves in a story that is bigger than the challenges of each day.
Every part of our story is located not just in time but in space. Yet, we are often blind to the way our locations affect us, and how the places through which we move shape and change our stories. It is inevitable that some of the spaces we will have to navigate will be sick, and some will be sacred to us. But, if we aren’t able to shape our spaces they will shape us in unexpected and possibly unwanted ways.
CHOOSING WHAT WE BRING INTO OUR STORIES
I suspect that we all struggle with the temptation to fill our lives with clutter. There is the physical clutter of filling our spaces with so much stuff that we hardly have space to breathe. There is the temporal clutter of having too much to squeeze into the time we have available.There is the mental clutter of too much information and too many decisions and choices to process. There is the relational clutter of too many people to impress and consider. There is the spiritual clutter of sorting through all the voices calling for our devotion, while also sifting through our own story to make sense of our lives. It can all become exhausting and overwhelming.
In the light of this, what difference might it make to our lives if we were more intentional about what we bring into our stories? This would mean being more deliberate in choosing what parts of our past shape and influence us, what future fears and hopes we will prepare and aim for. It would mean being more aware of where we choose to go and how much time we spend in sick spaces as compared to sacred spaces. And it would mean being aware of what we allow into our physical, mental, relational, emotional, and spiritual spaces. I believe that living with this intentional awareness can help us make sense of all that clutters our lives and release anything that doesn’t belong.
What difference might it make to our lives if we were more intentional about what we bring into our stories? Click To TweetDECLUTTERING OUR STORIES
So how do we put this mindfulness into practice? How do we make decluttering our stories a consistent and spiritual practice? Next week I will explore this in more detail, but here are some quick suggestions to begin with:
- Identify and remove the clutter. Clutter is anything that takes up space (physically, temporally, mentally, relationally, emotionally, or spiritually) but adds no value to us. When we are able to see the things that are cluttering up our stories, we can start the work of removing them.
- Arrange the space. Some of us love organisation and order. Some of us prefer more chaotic and deliberately disorganised spaces. This does not just apply to physical spaces, but to spaces of time, and mental, relational, emotional, and spiritual spaces. Whatever our preference, it can be helpful to be aware of how our spaces work, what makes them feel open and welcoming to us, and how to create space for what is important.
- Sacredise the space. Decluttering is not just about removing things. It is also about being intentional about what we bring in and include in all of our different spaces. It’s about ensuring that our location, our time, our mind, our heart, our connections, and our spirits are filled with enough symbols, images, silence, music, scents, and rituals to make our lives feel more meaningful and more connected to our core values and priorities.
What ideas do you have for decluttering our stories? Why not share your thoughts in the comments below and let’s learn together!
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Thank you John for all that you have going at Evofaith.
A few years ago I made a choice to declutter the passage way in our home.
I just love family photographs. I was continuously adding new frames with photos to the wall. Looking at it one day I decided that I have run out of space. I felt it was just tooo much.
So I made a painful choice and removed all the frames from the walls. I rearranged the photos in different places in albums and on cloud etc. While going through all the photos I experienced so much joy and sadness, some memories were painful and others filled me with hope.
We painted the walls…it took a whole day to remove all the Hilti nails and cover the wholes up.
Once the walls were painted I stood back and felt a kind of freedom… A feeling that said that chapter is over.
A few months later I began giving away all my antiques….these weren’t of great financial value, but they were thing I had been collecting for 20+ years. Things that gave me great pleasure just being in my home. I was often heard saying to people “oh I have one of those .” Owing these things made me feel connected to the past for various reasons. Things I genuinely loved old suitcases, bottles, tins you name it I had it.
After all these thing were gone and the walls painted I felt like I had lost part of my identity. Friends always brought stuff over for me and I had to tell them that I am no longer collecting this or that. It was very difficult.
Then the new vision opened up. I have space for different things, I am leaning into new spiritual and non material spaces where I have identified areas that need to be decluttered. Life is a blessing full of new beginnings.
Thank you, Rene’
I’m so glad that you’re finding EvoFaith helpful. And thank you for sharing your story. This is so beautiful, and such a hopeful perspective on decluttering.
Those new beginnings you mention really are such a gift!
I am sure this is true but my current problem is not clutter but the level of ‘nothingness’ in this pandemic – a brain that has ‘frozen’ because it cannot ‘fight or flight’ so has no energy or motivation for anything – whether that be creating beauty or attempting to remove ugliness …. it’s just a nothingness
I am so sorry to hear that Jenny. I knwo you are not alone in your experience. I suspect part of your journey may be showing compassion to yourself in this time, and just allowing yourself to be where you are without expectation, judgement, or pushing beyond what you can manage. I wish you strength and grace!
You may find it helpful to be part of the EvoFaith Tribe where we try to support and care for one another as we journey through this time. Also, we’ve just started a new series on how to navigate this crisis with creativity, playfulness, and joy. The PDF version is downloadable from this site, or, if you’re looking for a more immersive experience, in the Tribe the series is offered in interactive videos.
If you’re interested check out http://www.EvoFaithTribe.com