At our Service of Healing and Hope in mid-December, I shared a story from Mark Nepo’s book, “The Book of Awakening.”
He tells the story of his friend Robert who decided to paint the family room in his home over a long weekend break. Robert went to the hardware store to get the paint, drop cloths, mixing sticks and one-time paintbrushes that
always harden no matter what you soak them in. He prepared everything in the garage and made his way to the back door of his house with a gallon of paint in each hand, a drop cloth under each arm and a paintbrush in his mouth.
Robert said he tried to open the back door of the house with all his supplies in hand, not wanting to put anything down. He had the door almost open but then lost his grip, stumbled backwards and fell onto the ground with paint everywhere! At that point in his telling the story, Robert laughed at himself, as he often did!
As Mark Nepo reflects on Robert’s story he writes: “Amazingly, we all do this, whether with groceries or paint or with the stories we feel determined to share. We do this with our love, with our sense of truth, even with our pain. It’s such a simple thing, but in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door. Time and time again, we are
offered the chance to truly learn this: We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside.”
Here we are at the beginning of another calendar year. I invite you to take some time to think about and reflect on what you need to set down, to leave behind and more importantly what you really need to pick up and carry with you into the new year – another new beginning.
The Celtic Prayer below has become a favorite of mine and I share it with you in the hope that it might resonate in your heart as well.
Blessings and peace to you in the New Year!
Pastor Cindy
Celtic Daily Prayer
Lord, help me now to unclutter my life,
to organize myself in the direction of simplicity.
Lord, teach me to listen to my heart;
teach me to welcome change, instead of fearing it.
Lord, I give you these stirrings inside me,
I give you my discontent,
I give you my restlessness,
I give you my doubt,
I give you my despair,
I give you all the longings
I hold inside.
Help me to listen to these signs of change, of growth;
to listen seriously and follow where they lead
through the breathtaking empty space
of an open door.
(“A Prayer in ‘The Middle Years’ of Opportunity”
from the Celtic Daily Prayer book, p 220)