Decluttering as a Spiritual Practice

 Decluttering as a Spiritual Practice

What defines a spiritual practice?  We think of prayer, worship, fasting (but I don’t think about that one long) and ritual.  Perhaps decluttering falls into the final category, though, technically, God is optional.  What I have found is that God’s holy spirit inserts herself into that ritual.  

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.  Jesus encouraged us NOT to collect “treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19).  Earthly treasures are far inferior to storing spiritual treasures in heaven.  That said, his instructions are harsh on how to declutter earthly treasures.  Jesus tells the rich young man to cold turkey sell them all to benefit the poor.  That poor man is so freaked out he goes away crying the bitter hot tears of grief.  The disciples are freaked out too. Jesus tells them, in so many words, that decluttering for such as the rich young man (us?) is as hard as shoving a camel through the eye of a needle.  BUT through God all things are possible.  

Well, my Rainbow peeps, let’s give decluttering a try, but not cold turkey.  Instead, let us do it as community.  Community is holy too!  God is with us when two or more gather.  

This course will not feature a book, because I know you people.  Books, for many, are THE BIGGEST SOURCE of your clutter.  We will be guided mostly by Dana K. White’s gentle five-step method of decluttering, which avoids the emotions that bog most people down and paralyze them.  We will consume her philosophy through her generous YouTube videos.  We will also have a special weekly round-table show-and-tell about how it’s going.  During this time, you may bring things you know you must liberate to unknown new owners who might benefit from them, or to the landfill.  Through this sharing time, we will process the grief of giving up our worldly goods, that we may better follow Jesus (and not leave an excessive amount of stuff for our children or others to deal with when we depart this mortal coil). 

This course will be led by me, Chaplain Debra, who routinely avoids being smote despite an unorthodox scriptural hermeneutic lens. (Don’t be embarrassed if you need to look it up.  Rainbow sponsored my ordination and that’s the $64 word you get for it.)

-- Debra Sapp-Yarwood, MDiv, Ordained