Marie Kondo is an organizing consultant whose best-selling book and Netflix series, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” touts her method of decluttering to find the things that you own that bring joy to your life – and tossing the rest. She instructs putting like items in a single pile before holding each item to see how you react, listening to what each thing says to you about joy. It’s like giving treasured friends your undivided attention and delightfully incarnational!
Kondo’s book arrived as my husband and I were ready to downsize, relocate to Houston, and live in an apartment less than half the square feet of the home we were selling. I eagerly “Marie Kondo’d” my way through assessing what we could let go of and what we truly needed to hold onto, touching piles of things asking Kondo’s signature question, “Does this item spark joy?”
Searching through the attic, I found a box marked “for Shelley.” Opening it, I was suddenly torn over what to do with the contents: a set of dishes. I hadn’t used them, but John could see my struggle and asked me about their significance. He listened to my memories of my maternal grandmother sharing hot tea and cookies with me using these dishes. Then he offered a joy-sparking suggestion: you could just keep a cup and let go of the rest.
In Luke 15:8-10, Jesus tells of a woman desperately cleaning her house. She had ten coins, but one had gone missing, so she lights a lamp, sweeps her house, and searches until she finds the lost coin. Filled with joy upon finding it, she gathers friends, saying “Rejoice with me for I have found the coin that I had lost.”
As we go through our days, much gets misplaced or lost, things accumulate, and joy is lost. The Lenten season invites me to throw much of my life, accumulated objects and behaviors, into a pile on the floor for a search. Picking up each piece of my inner and outer life to ask: Does this part of who I am and how I live produce something that God desires for me and for the world? Does it “spark joy” for me and others?
It’s not exactly “Kondo-ing” my spiritual life, but a Lenten tidying up empties me of what is no longer necessary and leaves space to find and share all that God intends. By letting go of self-doubt, I am free to cultivate meaningful work. Letting go of comparison frees me to explore my own creativity. In letting go of past hurts, I find experience and forgiveness.
Tidying up makes an authentic search possible. Searching leads to finding. And finding leads to rejoicing.
Shelley Regan, Executive Assistant to Dr. Long and Rev. Lambert
