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4.15.05
Having a stack of fluffy white towels in the bathroom is not zen and neither is paring a wardrobe down to a few trendy pieces hung on wooden hangers at pleasing, uncrowded intervals. Neither is swinging in a hammock, drinking iced tea while a cool breeze blows. And a religion isn't something pieced together from random quotes and bits of philosophy that please.
Nice, calming, inspirational, desirable, maybe, but not spiritual. Not heart-changing. Not salvation.
Even zen is not that. Meditation, self-contemplation, intuition . . . the closed system inside my own brain? Is this bedrock, stability to build a life on? I don't think so. Just sand.
I'm kind of sad, lately, with the recent insistence (online, in magazines, on Home & Garden t.v., everywhere) that simplicity equals spiritual fulfillment. It's grieving me . . . women convinced the heart will be happy if the physical world around them can be manipulated into a sparse, serene beauty and order. If schedules can be written in soothing rows and columns with clear handwriting, one little meeting tucked in after another. If hair and nails can be clean and sleek. If everything functional can also be beautiful and artful. If the mind can be emptied of anything messy.
And everything simple. Above all, simple.
I don't understand why no one is yelling that a materialistic hedonism is still a materialistic hedonism, even if it is simple. Even if the lines are cleaner and the patterns are calmer and the portions are smaller.
God save me from the great allure of engineering my surroundings so that everything I look at is calm. Help me dig deep, even when it means going through mud. Keep my heart focused on service and obedience, the world's unhippest and uncoolest concepts. Help me never confuse a clean house with a clean conscience, or a pleasing color palette with inner peace. Help me love and help and comfort and hope, even when it means inconvenience and chaos and dirt and noise.
Help me never confuse sophistication with maturity.
Help me to not waste my life controlling the transient physical space around me. Help me hold fast to truth even when the idea of truth is unfashionable. Help me say "Jesus," clearly and without mumbling, to each heart I meet seeking redemption through shopping and organizing and cleaning and decorating.
Help me delight in beauty, but not deify it.
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