Spring Cleaning

After six weeks of very warm, springy weather, suddenly it feels like winter again.  The National Park Service even says that Washington may lose its iconic cherry blossoms this year because of the warm-followed-by-very-cold weather.  Being a perpetual optimist, I am counting on warmer weather, soon I hope, and clouds of pink blossoms.

As you know, I've had boxes in my closet from my offices since September and the ones from my storage room since January 2016 construction. Yesterday I finished going through them.  What started as 10 boxes is now down to five.  I planned to take the remaining ones down to my storage room last night but decided I was just too tired; that is a good Saturday morning project, I thought.

In my meditation this morning, I got that I should go through them again, as I should.  Just as when I started the project a week or so ago, in each box were things that I knew in my heart that I was finished with, but of which I was just not ready to let go. Yesterday's sorting was even more so.

My challenge yesterday was comprised of boxes from the 1990s, when I was more active in the media, keynote speaking, and running a thriving business. In addition to several years of tax returns, there were a number of copies of my books in languages I don't read, speakers videos, multiple copies of an executive audiobook series of which Leading from the Heart had been a selection, beautiful and creative marketing pieces, videos of TV interviews, and cassette recordings of speeches.

Yesterday's boxes were a monument to a time when both my business and I were thriving, and I felt like I was making a real contribution to a world, which would be connected by love.  That is how I want to remember myself.  Yet the photographs on the brochures were clearly of a younger woman, and who even has a device on which they can play either audio or VHS cassettes any longer?  I got rid of a lot, but kept "a few" copies of each.  Really? What was I thinking? Clearly another pass through the boxes is in order.

Plan A had been to go through clothes today.  I hate to shop, so I rarely throw clothes away.  That means that I also have clothes in my closet from the 1990s, which, if I love them, are now so frayed they should be discard, or if I didn't, they are at least woefully out of style.  I think another pass at the boxes prior to attacking the clothes is in order.

Today is the day that we switch to Daylight Savings Time (DST) in the U.S., losing an hour which we don't reclaim until late fall.  Although the official start of spring won't come for more than a week, in my mind, when we switch to DST, I think it is spring...even if the weather belies that assumption today. All the sorting and the arrival of DST has had me thinking about spring cleaning.

I am not sure if "spring cleaning," as a thing, is a figment of another time or place...or both, but it was a formative part of my childhood.  For anywhere from a few days to a week in both spring and fall, my mother, and I as her dutiful servant, ripped our house apart.  No molecule was left uncleaned. Furniture was moved and cleaned as thoroughly as humanly possible. Floors were scrubbed, stripped, and, as appropriate, waxed.  Carpets were cleaned. Windows, walls and ceilings were washed. AND, cupboards and closets were cleaned out.  (Anyone who thought that spring vacation was a time to go to Florida beaches on holiday didn't grow up in the Midwest, or at least not with my mother.)

The effort was exhausting. Yet, this biennial exercise was not without reward. Nothing, which wasn't being used, ever hung around more than six months. None of this going through 20 years of stuff was imaginable. Professional organizers have a closet-cleaning rule about, if you haven't worn it in the last year, get rid of it. In my mother's home, that would definitely have been enforced by these biennial cleaning rituals.   And, there is nothing like washing ceilings to identify upper-body muscle groups, which haven't been used since the last time we did this.

Despite the physical weariness at its conclusion, the spring cleaning ritual always left me feeling really...clean.  Like a ritual bath.  Adjacent to a photograph of a woman, soaking in a tub full of beautiful flowers, care.com* describes a ritual bath: "...you are participating in an initiation to open yourself up to spirit. Ritual bathing implies that water and prayer wash away any spiritual grime--cleansing and purifying your body and your aura." Purified is exactly how it felt when we'd finished our spring cleaning. And, energized for doing new things.

I continued the sacrament of seasonal cleaning into my 20s, but then I noticed that no one else I knew did so. I had moved from the midwest to the West Coast, so I don't know if the passing of the popularity of the practice was regional or generational, but despite its rewards, a busy career left me disinclined to use either my vacation or my weekends on hard-core cleaning. Since fall cleaning had never had the uplifting quality to me that spring cleaning did, it was the first to go. (Aren't we supposed to be filling our cupboards in the fall?) Then, washing walls and ceilings went. Piece at a time, I dismantled this ritual.

All week I've been thinking about it again.  Now, don't get any notions about me starting this on an annual basis or even ceiling washing at all. But over the past two months of transition, I've been imitating the practice in a less concentrated way. After each flurry of sorting, I've felt that spiritual sense of purification and renewal.  Over the next two weeks, I am going to do serious cleaning and cleaning out. Yesterday I had area rugs taken away for cleaning, which will make moving furniture easier.

This morning as I meditated about what should go and what should stay, there was a sense of ruthlessness about what must go.  Make room for new energy.  Like a ritual bath for my home, it is time to cleanse and purify.  It is very clear that there were several things that must go.  Among them is this blog.  I started it as a place to reflect on my spiritual journey, particularly about questioning and clarifying along the way, to help me and other gain clarity about what I know to be true in my heart.

What I know in my heart right now is that my heart is no longer energized by writing about these things.  I will continue my journey, but now when I think about writing, what comes to mind is health, nutrition, refugees and other things that have piqued my interest recently. I am not burying the blog, but rather giving it a sabbatical. There have been times when writing about what was on my heart helped me a lot; I want to keep open the option to do that again.

I have truly been grateful for the readers all over the world that have followed the blog, including the three readers in Albania who read every post for a long time, and three friends who report reading almost daily.  I wish all of you peace and joy on your journeys.




*http://www.care2.com/greenliving/raise-your-spiritual-energy-with-a-ritual-bath.html