Day 30.

"The world grows green again, and runs with gardens.

Souls open, like suns, and link with one another." Rumi

These words remind me that the root of the Hebrew word for salvation means "making wide." I hope that this practice has encouraged us to know some deeper shades of green and open up to life as widely as we're able. Just as we might throw open our doors and windows in springtime, so might our souls open as well, and stretch out naturally to take on their original shape of wholeness.

Thank you for your "presence" here. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversations, both online and personal.

The practices and thoughts over the last month have been but a few suggestions to help us realize what Rumi also promised, "There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground, there are a thousand ways to go home again."

May you be at home. May you be at peace. May you always keep it green. Amen.

A parting gift, because what's over now isn't done, it's prologue for what's to come...

Day 29

As we start to close up shop on this second to last day of Spiritual Spring Cleaning practice, it seems wise to go back to basics.

Here are Three Rules of Work that have been attributed to Einstein (or alternatively, have been written about Einstein's work by physicist John Wheeler.)

1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.

2. From discord, find harmony.

3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

These three are characteristics of the mind and commitments of the heart before they are actions of our hands. I find that such teachings are much more accessible to me when the primary experiences of silence, simplicity, prayer, and connection to the ground of being are regularly part of my life. Beyond any particular practice, thought or video of this past month, I hope that what this blog has provided you is a daily space for you to recenter, refocus, and then return to your life with greater clarity.

It certainly has done that for me. In the past month, I've finished a foundational course in Mindfulness training, begun a basic yoga practice designed to help further align my head, my heart, and my gut, and, fittingly, planted some significant seeds now that will bear fruit in some commitments I've made for the future.

Until tomorrow's final post...Peace.

Day 28

One of the first photos I remember being taken of me was when I was three and sitting next to a compost pile that was twice my size. My dad was publisher of Organic Gardening magazine in the '70s, and we had a big garden in the back of our house. I also remember having to eat the all-natural peanut butter that separated in the jar into what I was sure was oil and paste while I whined and pined for Skippy. Even though I tended to eat pretty mindlessly after that as the years went by, I'm grateful that my parents gave me that early gift as part of my food DNA. Healthier stuff just tastes better to me now.

I'm still trying to overcome an overcharged craving for sugary stuff (the result of no longer putting other, more harmful stuff into my body), but I mostly find that health-conscious choices are their own reward. The "keeping it green" image that I've referred to this month is not just a metaphor for me.

My family is blessed to be in a position where we can afford to pay a little more at our local Co-op for foods that favor local and organic production methods and cause less cruelty to animals and harm to the planet. In mindfulness, I become more aware of choices I make, and I choose to spend my money at a place that supports my values. There's no perfectionism in this for me; it is an aspiration. As my mind becomes less cluttered, I cast less clutter into the world around me.

As this Spiritual Spring Cleaning practice winds down, what are some of the ways that you'll continue to keep it green--in habits of body, mind and Spirit?

(photo courtesy of Joi)

Day 27

Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.--Viktor Frankl

I love what this quote affirms, the reality that between instinct and action, there can be insight. It doesn't seek freedom through thought control (judging "negative" thoughts or sensations as immediately bad) nor does it insist that the first reaction is the right one (judging a decision's wisdom by its rate of speed). Rather, Frankl encourages us to give ourselves back the gift of space, and with that space, the gift of time.

Throughout this practice, I've been using a variety of images and words to describe the experience of an uncluttered freedom: a garden, beginner's mind, an exodus, a rolled away stone, an open field, barefoot in the grass. I think of the opposite of these experiences and qualities, and of the kinds of human miseries, oppressions, and sufferings that result when we fear the open places, and seek to limit our own, or others, access to that which is unfettered.

Where is the open space in your life now? What image describes that open space? What's the story behind that open space? And how are you keeping open your space and your time?

(Photo courtesy of Sam Ramji)

Day 26

Recently some friends started preparing their annual garden. Their thumbs are much greener than mine and my wife's are, but every summer we caretake their plot while they're on vacation and somehow manage not to turn it all brown by the time they return.

One of the things that I really like about this couple is revealed in how, and not just why, they grow their own vegetables. They have as much joy in preparing their garden as they do in harvesting it: laying out the straw beds, carpeting the plot with old newspapers, measuring out the stakes for the tomato plants.

They take pleasure in the planting. The process is as valuable for them as the eventual produce is.

As the Spiritual Spring Cleaning blog starts to wind down this week, I think their attitude in the garden is what underlies this whole practice. Process mattering as much as product. It's a way to re-enchant our lives, to fall back in love with creation.

Even if you're not a gardener, where do you find pleasure in your planting?

I think I first became consciously aware of this lesson when I was a kid and heard the song "Inchworm."

Here's the Sesame St version:

And the one I really remember like it was last week, The Muppets version(although embedding was disabled and you have to click on the link). Inchworm begins at the 2:25 mark if you want to start there. Although I don't think taking the extra time to watch a couple more minutes of The Muppets can be held against you.

http://youtu.be/xZivb3zjlo0

(Photo courtesy of Salvadonica, Chianti, Tuscany)

Day 25

The link below is the best Easter story I heard this year.

It's about a classmate of mine from Divinity School: a minister, a mom, a cancer survivor. I can only imagine the joy yesterday morning at her church when Molly preached.

Today, I offer a prayer of gratitude for her health and for all those who know resurrection, as Molly said, in their bones, and with the deepest part of their hearts. And a prayer for all those who are sick and suffering, who are still waiting for Easter to arrive.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/04/24/rev_molly_phinney_baskette_returns_to_somerville_parish_after_cancer_treatment/

Day 24

Easter Sunday and April Showers edition of Sunday Sounds.

Day 23

What keeps you up at night? The 3am moments when sleep won't come. When I've had insomnia in the past, sometimes it's just restless energy, and sometimes it's something deeper, an unresolved urging in my psyche. Something that could lead me to future growth, and won't let me go and find immediate peace.

As spring is seed planting season and the harvest comes much later on, I'm looking for your help in planting some seeds for a future message series. It will be called something like, "Staring At the Ceiling: Hopes and Fears that Lay Heavy in the Heart."

What keeps you staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night (and what provides you relief as well, if you care to answer that)?

You can answer down below, or also head over to the WellSprings Facebook page and answer there. I'm hoping to get many answers, your answers, and to fashion the individual messages in the series based on the trends in, and my resonances with, what you write.

For now, here's a well know poem about worried staring at the ceiling, and also what relieves the author's fears.

Day 22

Around here, spring is a season of emergence, of an almost riotous daily display of creation in bloom. But this growth isn't like instant pudding , it's tied into deeper, timeless patterns of being and becoming. And to really witness it in a marvelous way requires patience.

In Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis tells a poignant story about refusing to wait on creation, and the damage he did because of his insistence:

"I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the back of a tree just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened; the butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath, in vain.

It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm."

The TV show LOST dramatized a version of that story, starring a moth this time instead of a butterfly, and featuring a character who was battling drug addiction. (I also think it's a resonant image of death and rebirth as we enter this Easter weekend.) But the point is the same. Perhaps our greatest addiction is to demand the world conform to our timetable.

As Robert Bly wrote, "Our disasters come from letting nothing live for itself, from the longing we have to pull everything, even friends, into ourselves, and let nothing alone." With perfect straightforwardness, Diana Ross and The Supremes sang, "You Can't Hurry Love."

When do you find yourself most in the midst of creation, not hurrying the love, but learning to care in patience and with presence? Or alternatively, where have you impatiently rushed the process of creation, prematurely bringing forth life before it was ready to be born?

Day 21

A different kind of practice suggestion today: walk somewhere in bare feet where you normally wouldn't.

In the book of Exodus, as Moses receives his Divine call to free his people and sees the Burning Bush, he is told, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

There's something very intimate in that directive, an invitation to not just see, hear or comprehend the revelatory moment, but to actually feel it, to be grounded in it, by removing the barriers between the physical body and the ground of being.

In Springtime we shed layers, the coats and sweaters. It's also a time to shed unnecessary layers of protection, to get grounded again in the elemental stuff. So today, stick your toes in the dirt, in the sand, in the water. Get connected. Feel the place where you are standing or walking.

(Photo courtesy of Dave Goodman)

Day 20

In Song of the Open Road Walt Whitman wrote, "I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all great poems also..."

In the Passover story, this is a time of passageway, of sacred travel. A pilgrimage into the open air, which is both fresh and frightening. An exit and entrance of

danger and possibility, devastation and liberation. The ancient Israelites had to unlearn the internalized burdens of their captivity that they carried with them after leaving Egypt. Barriers fell. It was painful. They confronted themselves and their God. They were changed by their time in the desert. In its open space and open air, the Israelites learned what it is to be free.

Springtime travel is as old as Passover, as famous as The Canterbury Tales, as familiar (and sometimes as asinine) as Spring Break. Open and fresh air is a necessity if your winter was cold and sun-deprived.

The trip only becomes a pilgrimage if the journey is a formative one, changing you and/or your fellow travelers in some significant way. You're not the same person when it's over as when it began. There's some measure of deliverance--into a new understanding, a new perspective, even a new name (I'm reading Manning Marable's awesome new study of the life of Malcolm X, or as he became after pilgrimage to Mecca, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz)--at journey's end.

Something substantial has changed, kind of like how the band Death Cab for Cutie puts it in the title of their song "Soul Meets Body." (video below)

Where have your sacred travels taken you? And where have they delivered you, changed from the person you were? And with whom do you share your stories of pilgrimage?

Day 19

The wonderful writer Anne Lamott on how she experiences Easter:

"When I was 38, my best friend Pammy died, and we went shopping about two weeks before she died, and she was in a wig and a wheelchair. I was buying a dress for this boyfriend I was trying to impress, and I bought a tighter, shorter dress than I was used to. And I said to her, 'do you think this makes my hips look big?' and she said to me, so calmly, 'Anne, you don't have that kind of time.'

And I think Easter has been about the resonance of that simple statement; and that when I stop, when I go into contemplation and meditation, when I breathe again and do the sacred action of plopping and hanging my head and being done with my own agenda, I hear that 'you don't have that kind of time,' you have time only to cultivate presence and authenticity and service, praying against all odds to get your sense of humor back."

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/135517274/beyond-bunnies-the-real-meaning-of-easter-season

That's the bold, small voice of beginner's mind: "you don't have that kind of time." I think she's talking about the useless worry, small bore obsessiveness, and belittling of the self that's a kind of daily death to the spirit.

Is there a "you don't have that kind of time" moment in your life that helps reframe your perspective, helps you stop and breathe and pray so you can listen to what's beyond our own agendas and hear the voice of something deeper?

Day 18

Today we'll shift from our recent aspiration to live a less cluttered life to an aspiration to let some more fresh air into our lives.

In the classical image of home spring cleaning, it's not just about salvage and removal of the accumulated stuff inside, but about opening up the inside to receive what's on the outside. Letting new life in. Recognizing and welcoming new sights, new smells, new sounds. Undoing the latch on winter's tomb and opening up to spring's flow of energy.

We'll start this focus on fresh air with the most elemental practice there is, the practice of breathing. Today, please reserve some time to follow along with this basic meditation that works with the breath.

Day 17

A Mumford and Sons kind of day here at the blog for Sunday Sounds.

As they sing, "Remember Spring swaps snow for leaves."

Day 16

This blog was conceived during a particularly miserable blustery day this past winter. Everyone I met had eyes faced forward, looking to Spring. But Spring, although it may bring relief from the cold, may actually be worse for despair. Suicides peak, not at the December holidays, but in March and April.

Here's a blogger at Beliefnet writing about her springtime struggles:

There’s something oddly comforting about the misery of winter, and a camaraderie with even those who aren’t normally depressed. When the sun comes and wrenches those lilacs from the earth and families and friends and couples all play frisbee and have picnics and talk about how happy they are, it’s almost too much to bear. And then that fact–that I’ve waited and prayed for spring and now I can’t even enjoy it–makes me feel like an ungrateful wretch in addition to completely alone and raw and skinless. The bad-thought pile-on. Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/freshliving/2009/04/springtime-depression-is-touching-my-soul.html#ixzz1JcuWJl77

I remember, years ago, that one of the lowest days of my life was drenched in sunlight. Living in South Florida after my first marriage ended, there was one absolutely gorgeous day in a seemingly endless cascade of them, the sound of happy people from the beach and the pool streaming into my apartment with all that sunshine. And I though to myself, "This is vampire sadness. I'm not welcome in the light. I belong in here, hiding myself."

The point of all this is that the emergence of spring can be a mixed blessing. The green things and the warmth and the sunshine may feel like deliverance or damnation to one whose soul is arid and bleak. If you're feeling the latter, or someone you love is, I think the writer above has it right:

And here’s a reminder that a friend simply and potently texted me yesterday when I asked how I could possibly be depressed in this yummiest of weather: “You’re loved,” he said.

Try to remember that.

Amen.

(photo courtesy of Paul Botu)

Day 15

Happy Tax Day?!

However you're feeling about filing, I wish you as stress free a day as possible. (And the hope that that little extra grace of this weekend will help you if you're not quite finished yet.)

Tax Day is a pivot point, fittingly in the springtime. A chance to close last year's books and to finish last year's business. Returns filed, rebates (maybe) on the way, once we're past 4/15, winter is truly over, a new season is here. Time to turn the page.

Beyond squaring financial matters, there are other ways to head consciously into this green season. Taking stock of your life, taking a personal inventory. What feels unfinished from the season past that may keep you from the season present?

Imagine that today you had to file a Moral and Spiritual Return. What outstanding bills or debts are there? What still needs to be paid off or forgiven? And count the positive stuff as well, the credits and gifts in your life ledger. The debts of gratitude, too. An old hymn sings, "O to Grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be." I don't hear guilt in that, I hear a conscious recounting of the gifts that help us to be alive.

Take a few, or many, minutes today to write out your Moral and Spiritual Return. Maybe share it with someone else, or keep it to yourself. And if it calls you to pay out, or pay in, or pay it back, or pay it forward, try to do so.

And if you're just really stressed that it's 4/15 and you're reading this damn blog instead of finishing your damn taxes, well, here's a little cute overload for you. Enjoy. And smile. It won't count against you.

Day 14

I'd like to pause at yesterday's reflection on fasting and renunciation.

I pause to make an admission, perhaps even a confession.

As much as I love putting this blog together, I know that the risk of the practice-a-day method is that it will only add more items to our pile of things to do. Even the most noble aspirations stacked too high and deep can become just another source of clutter.

Perhaps the worst kind of clutter. When we don't want to do the dishes or the laundry or fill out an expense report, we rarely feel that in avoiding those things that we're turning our backs on our higher calling. But to feel overburdened by our hopes, that's where anxiety or guilt might start.

So, today, no new practices. We're about halfway through the month. You can go back and review the prior days if you want to. Or not. Feel free to renounce the invitation. (-:

Day 13

Fasting is an ancient practice used to dedicate oneself to physical, emotional and spiritual renewal. I've undertaken various forms of a fast as part of my spiritual practice over the years. I find it's a way to help reset my relationship to certain substances. Ultimately, though, the greatest benefit is not about some object outside of me, but that I get to recognize the shape of my own hunger in the fast, my cravings, and my reflexes to try to fill some of my "God-shaped holes" with some material substance.

Although fasting is based in renunciation, it's actually a practice that's about freedom. Freedom from certain things that opens up room to be more free for other, deeper, more sustaining and healthy relationships. That's why the fast is ultimately not just about the self, but a preparation for the self to be freer to love more fully and more honestly. See, for example, this piece about a fast undertaken on behalf of those who are most vulnerable and invisible in our society.

We've been talking about clutter the last few days. How could a fast help you reframe your struggles with clutter, understanding the clutter--physical, emotional, mental, spiritual--to be an unhealthy relationship that keeps you locked into less than flourishing patterns of being.

I don't recommend any kind of fast to be entered into without some serious preparation beforehand. But set aside some time today for real discernment about how a fast could help you experience greater freedom. If you're interested, make plans to conduct your fast in the future. And if you want support, ask for it. Fasting with others can make for a powerful experience in spiritual community.

Day 12

Yesterday, we talked about time-fulness, about receiving this moment as it is. I recently read this quote attributed to the Dalai Lama (I've changed it just a bit to make it gender inclusive):

"The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered, 'A person. Because they sacrifice their health in order to make money. Then they sacrifice money to recuperate their health. And then they are so anxious about the future that they do not enjoy the present; the result being that they do not live in the present or the future; they live as if they are never going to die, and then die having never really lived.'"

This is another dimension of clutter, where we toggle back and forth in our minds between time present and upcoming (and time past) and lose the sense of asking ourselves, "what is this particular moment for?"

Years ago, someone gave me a small pillow with the words of Psalm 118 stitched into it, "This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." It's on a bookshelf in my office, intentionally within my line of sight when I lift my eyes from my computer screen. It reminds me to take this time appreciatively, especially when I am mindlessly sacrificing the moment.

What cues do you use to keep yourself attentively present? In this season, I particularly like to use the blooms on the trees to remind me because as beautiful as they are, they're also wonderfully impermanent. Unlike the green leaves to come, they're not going to hang around for months.

Day 11

Sorry, a technical glitch kept this morning's post from going up at its normal time...to be honest, it wasn't computer error, it was totally human: last night, an overtired me picked PM instead of AM as the post hour. D'oh!

This week we're going to examine some of the deeper connections between clutter and time and attachment and our relationship to creation.

To begin our exploration, a video (and then some thoughts after it, so please keep reading below after you watch):

Beautiful to behold isn't it? But it's totally false. Time-lapse is not Creation. Time-lapse is instant gratification. Creation is time-ful, not condensed. Creation is time-ful, kind of like these famous words:

"For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up..."

Physically, biologically, this is a time for planting and blooming. It may or may not be that way for you right now in your life. What is the season of your spirit at this time? And are you being time-ful with your spirit and with the Spirit?

Until tomorrow...

Day 10

Sunday Sounds of Spiritual Spring Cleaning, from your suggestions.

Day 9

I'm on the road right now, speaking at a conference. Living from a suitcase, thinking about uncluttering brings to mind George Carlin's old comedy bit "A Place for Your Stuff." My stuff feels pretty spread out right now, with a long drive home waiting for me later today.

Today, let's take a step back. On Day 2, I asked you to write about the clutter you want to let go of. Upon reflection, what kind of clutter is that primarily (although they very often are interrelated)? Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual?

Do you feel you're making progress with the clutter that's in your life? In terms of understanding it, and also dealing with it?

Day 8

A couple of days ago, Angie commented about how she needed to let go of some of the literal clutter of her life in order for her spiritual life to grow.

I resonate with that (and also with what many of the other commenters have written, thanks for taking the time to do so, it really helps to make this practice a discussion.) Particularly on days when I'm already mentally feeling many steps ahead of where my actual feet are the minute I wake up, there are two things I regularly do.

The first is that I keep my commitment to twenty minutes of my contemplative practice. If I think I'm too busy to practice, I'm too busy not to practice. As in the Karl Barth quote yesterday, it is very much a way to rise up mindfully in the disorder. But, as he also wrote, it's just the beginning.

The second thing I do is make the bed. It's a very small thing, and something I don't have to do. And that's precisely why it's important. A small act of ordering that makes me tangibly attend to something right in front of my face, not what's way out in front of me. To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh, I make the bed to make the bed. There's peace in that process. Making the bed, I wake up.

How do you mindfully unclutter your surroundings?

Day 7

"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." Karl Barth.

I love the simplicity of Barth's image, particularly in contrast to the honest reflection on physical, emotional and intellectual clutter in the Avett Brothers' beautiful song "10,000 Words":

Ten thousand words swarm around my head
Ten million more in books written beneath my bed
I wrote or read them all when searchin’ in the swarms
Still can’t find out how to hold my hands

And I know you need me in the next room over

But I am stuck in here all paralyzed

For months I got myself in ruts

Too much time spent in mirrors framed in yellow walls

(video at the end of the post)

One of the painful costs of a cluttered life is the way in which it walls us off. Clutter hides us from the rigors and the pleasures of true intimacy. It's no wonder that many contemplative teachers equate a deepening spiritual life with greater transparency within ourselves and with others.

Today, I'd like to ask you to identify one area of your life that feels cluttered or disordered to you. What, if anything, do you believe is hiding, or what are you avoiding, by way of that clutter?

And how can you clasp your hands in a (hopefully peaceful) uprising against that disorder?Like that wonderful cliche, how can you "bless this mess?"

Attempt to really bless it by trying to understand it.

Day 6

This will be the first in a series of posts about aspiring to live an uncluttered life. I'm not talking about messy vs. clean. Creativity is messy. Springtime, with its rain and melt and mud, is messy. A child at play is messy. Watching someone take a machine apart or compose a work of art encourages us to transcend simplistic notions that mess=bad, clean=good.

And besides, clutter is not just about objective physical surroundings. As someone who has struggled with OCD during my life, I know what it's like to seek to constrain the environment around me because within me, my mind was total teeming chaos.

When I talk about clutter, I'm remembering the roommate I once had who didn't see the floor of his room for months at a time because it was littered with books, clothes, music, everything. Not knowing where anything was, he was, literally, living at a loss from moment to moment in mind, body and spirit. That's clutter. And we pay dearly for it if we live in it.

Clutter in our lives is like a plaque that builds up in our arteries. It constricts freedom of movement and limits the opportunities for flow. It is the opposite of beginner's mind and the enemy of simplicity. Clutter obscures reality and costs us peace of place and peace of mind.

In the days to come, I'll be writing about different kinds of clutter: physical, environmental, emotional and interpersonal, and how some spiritual practices can help us create peace beyond the clutter.

For now, I'd like to know, do you struggle with clutter, around you, inside you? Is that struggle part of what draws you here to this practice?

Day 5

Yesterday there was an article at philly.com about a psychologist who posts meaning-based signs next to the road outside her house. Because the area where she lives is fairly privileged, the columnist seems to suggest that there's something deeply transgressive about this practice.

Color me yawning. Not quite nailing 95 Theses to the church door.

Still, simple acts of mindfulness matter. They're a small part of a larger conspiracy of kindness that puts the world back together one compassionate act at a time. The columnist's fishing for controversy aside, I really like the spiritual graffiti the psychologist posts.

Some samples:

What Are You Grateful For?

Fully Inhabit Your Life

We Are Not What We Own

Be a Curious and Honest Observer of Yourself

What Masks Do You Wear?

Keeping it green/beginner's mind practices, like we've been talking about the last few days, are intended to wake us up by breaking things down. "To front only the essential facts of life," like Thoreau famously wrote, "and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

If you were going to post some signs about the essential facts of life by the roadside, what would they be? And what would you hope your readers would do?

Day 4

Another name for the beginner's mind experience that we've been talking about is "keeping it green." This is about cultivating an attitude of curious appreciation for our lives, paying attention to the fundamental questions and essential experiences that are of value to us, and learning to stay in touch with them. It's about staying fresh, and not growing stale.

It's easy to lose touch, to live mindlessly for the moment, forgetting what matters, instead of living mindfully in the moment, remembering to stay conscious and connected. Part of this practice as it evolves over the month will involve pruning and weeding, letting go of the stuff that's no longer beneficial. Every gardener knows that this is part of keeping things green and growing.

But what to keep and what to toss, especially when everything seems to command our attention? We'll explore how we can discern how to do that wisely. For now, let's just know that it isn't always easy keeping it green or being green, but that it's an important aspiration.

With that, take it away Kermit...

Day 3

Sundays here at the blog will be dedicated to the Sounds of Spiritual Spring Cleaning, music that echoes the key themes of this practice.

First up is a song that sounds like a prayer to me, Tift Merrit's "Engine to Turn." I'm quoting from it in my Sunday morning message today, these lines:

I don't know how to fix the world

I don't know how to fix myself

Seems like we both need some love

Seems like we both need some help.

Maybe you could fix it might

Maybe you could just stare it down

Seems like some tenderness

Could turn the whole thing around.

Part of this practice is the belief that fixing isn't the best metaphor for the change many of us seek. Getting a fix has all kinds of addictive connotations, and, besides, what if we're not truly broken to begin with?

I don't consider Spiritual Spring Cleaning to be a fix. As Tift sings, and Otis did as well, perhaps trying a little tenderness might work better.

Any songs that remind you of this practice so far?

Day 2

Day 1's invitation was to enter our creative unknowing willingly and with a sense of freedom. Here's a quote from Leonard Bernstein that expands on that thought:

“The first moments are critical. You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something, perhaps something silly. It simply doesn’t matter what you write; it only matters that you write. In five or ten minutes the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.”

When you think about what you want to do with this spiritual spring cleaning, what are the first things that come to mind? What's the clutter you want to let go of? What's the fresh air you want to let in? Write those things down. Whatever they are. Don't edit the list.

Then write about what you wrote down. Why do you think you listed what you did? Keep your ideas somewhere you won't lose them. We'll return to them in the coming days.

If you find yourself stuck, take a few moments to view this video on Beginner's Mind. Simple images. But maybe not so simple if we really see what's there. But, after that, please write. Don't delay the beginning.

Day 1

Welcome to Spiritual Spring Cleaning.

Years ago at a time of personal struggle, I started attending a daily 6am Zen meditation session. (For those of you who know me, you know I must really have been struggling to be willing to do anything at all at 6am.) My commitment to rising before dawn lasted about a week. The desire to stay asleep was more of a pull than the desire to be awake.

But the teacher taught us a simple practice that has stayed with me. She said, "Breathing in, say to yourself, 'What am I?' Breathing out, say to yourself, 'Don't know.' "

I've consistently found that "don't know" to be a liberating tool, a way of getting unstuck when I'm bound by the knots I've tied. It's a method of remaining hospitable to possibilities I may be missing. A willingness to be open, to admit how much more there is to learn.

Much of this month-long practice of spiritual spring cleaning comes from that place of creative unknowing. This practice involves our willingness to let go and unlearn patterns of living and being that are harmful to ourselves and others.

But this practice is not just about freedom from something. It's also about the freedom to become... more loving, more wise, more just, more alive.

To begin, I invite you to take a few minutes, close your eyes, breathe in and out deeply and repeat the simple mantra above to yourself. "Breathing in, say to yourself, 'What am I?' Breathing out, say to yourself, 'Don't know.' "

After you've done that practice, how do you feel? Hopeful, scared, open, curious? However it is, that's where we'll begin.

Until tomorrow...

(You've got a sense of why I'm here. Why are you here? If you'd like, please share your thoughts in the comments.)