Making Space

It's that time of year when the nights are closing in and the temperature begins to drop a few degrees, when we need to make sure that everything is ready to withstand the winter and whatever bad weather it throws at us.  The trees are shedding their leaves and it's time to trim back, get rid of dead flowers and branches and generally tidy up and sort out in the garden.  For me, part of that preparation for winter has been to give the garden sheds and fence their annual top-up coat of paint/creosote.  This year I've been doing some sorting out in the sheds.  Oh dear, how we accumulate 'stuff', a lot of which I really don't know why it's there. It's so easy to just take something we don't really use much and shove it in the shed, out of sight, out of the way.  At the bottom of our garden we have a very old brick bunker/shelter, possibly used during the war for a family to keep safe(r) during air raids.  When we moved into the house 5 years ago, the shelter had quite a few old doors, wooden posts and other bits and pieces in it.  A couple of weeks ago a very good friend and neighbour from down the street (Pete Davies for those who know him) and his teenage son (Ben) cleared it all out for me .  So that set me off to clear out our other sheds and declutter.


It's amazing just what you find when you have a clearout.  I discovered a small garden hand fork that I had totally forgotten about.  It had been a gift from a friend when we moved in here and was part of a set with secateurs and small trowel.  It was special for me as after years of living in an upstairs flat, where on opening the door to go out, you saw stairs, now I could open the door and see a garden.  I use the secateurs and trowel but can't remember the last time I used the fork - years probably.  The truth is that some things that we think are lost are not really lost at all, they are just abandoned and forgotten underneath a pile of clutter.  When we begin to move things and get rid of all the carefully kept rubbish that we have accumulated, we can come across something we thought had gone forever but all the time it was just waiting there for us to rediscover its whereabouts.

What a difference a declutter makes!

On property programmes they often tell clients that it is best to declutter if they want to sell their homes more quickly.  The truth is that potential buyers want to see the house and not the present owner's personal clutter or family history depicted in photos.  They want to visualize how they would fit in and how they would adapt it to their own needs.  On a spiritual level. many people express that same thought when they say that they want God/Jesus but not the church.  Just like the potential house buyer, they are really not interested in all our personal religious add-ons of our particular preferred expression of faith.  Just like in the bible verse when some people approached one of the disciples saying, 'We would see Jesus'.  Really people just want God and not have to accept all the other bits that some religious people seem to think is a part of God.  They present the gospel as a package deal, you can't have God without all the extra do's and don'ts.  And frankly, they're not buying. 

Over the past few years I have had much spiritual clutter that I have got rid of in order to see God more clearly.  Some people like to live in clutter.  That's not necessarily wrong but it can often cover something that we need or have been looking for.  Much of the spiritual stuff that we accumulate is actually other peoples stuff that is not necessarily what I need or want. and I need to see God for myself, not through the eyes of someone else.  If my relationship with Him is personal as we all claim it to be, then it must be my relationship and not just a copy or cloned duplicate of how someone else tells me it should be.  And so I continue to declutter my life and rediscover treasures.  Less is more - less religious 'clutter' and more God.  We have much to consider and learn from creation and on a regular basis 'declutter' the bits that no longer serve the purpose, discard them and make way for new growth in a new season.