The Path of Discipleship - Organization as a Spiritual Discipline

I have always struggled with organization.  No matter how hard I try, my workspace eventually falls victim to entropy, devolving into a number of piles of papers and books.  The piles are not random but fall in categories.  This one is full of administrative documents.  That one is a stack for sermon preparation.  I currently work in a congregation that has minimal administrative support, so I am the one who sorts the mail each day, routing bills to the bookkeeper, checks to the counters and the huge monthly catalog of cleaning supplies to the property group mail slot.  But then a day comes when there is no time for sorting; another stack forms, papers waiting to disperse.

                I will be careful in talking about organization not only because I struggle with it but also because effective organization is subjective.  One mind looks at a busy table and sees clutter.  Another mind looks at the same table and sees connections.  One person can find nothing without a careful filing system.  Another can pull a necessary paper directly from the stacks without pause.

                This will not be an article about a particular system of organization, instead it will focus on organization as a form of spiritual discipline.  The idea is that as our lives and spaces become more organized we are able to open up more room to pay attention to God.  Think about a schedule, how you spend your time.   A common reason that people will cite for staying away from worship or other forms of spiritual practice is a lack of time.  There are so many things that have to be done, so many tasks and projects.  Yet if you were to break down the time available in sixteen waking hours, how much time could be recovered if we could just remove some unintentional clutter? 

Here I am making an important distinction between the intentional and the unintentional.  For instance, social media can be a great way to connect with friends and family.  I know of clergy who build Facebook time into their schedule as a way to connect with members of their congregation.  Yet social media can also be a deep rabbit hole of lost time, a trance of clicking and liking, only to wake realizing that after two hours you don’t really care about the fish tacos Larry in accounting had last night.  With intention, it is a helpful tool.  With a lack of intention, it becomes a waste of time.

The call to worship at the beginning of Zen meditation is, “Great is the meaning of birth and death.  Awake, awake each one.  Do not waste this life.”  Jesus is remembered several times saying simply, “Keep awake!”  The first step in seeing organization as a spiritual discipline is realizing that organization is about paying attention to the moment, treating it as holy, being stewards of the time and space we have been given by God.  It turns out that there is an hour or two a week for worship if we choose it.  It turns out that there is ample time sit with God, ample time to admire God’s good creation, ample time to show kindness, if we choose to have it which means intentionally choosing not to lose it.

The same can be said for the assorted stuff that piles up on desks and coffee tables, in basements and storage units.  Many of us have more space than we expect when we choose to remove things we don’t need, when we  stop treating “things” like treasure and start treating “things” like the stewards we are supposed to be: to be used, to be shared, to be disposed of or passed on when appropriate.

A discipline develops when we create a regular time to organize and sort.  It doesn’t have to be long, maybe 10 minutes at the beginning of the day and 10 minutes at the end, time to plan and time to evaluate.  Time to do the cleanup that Mrs. Brenner told me to do in first grade, “Putting things away is part of the play.”  Yet again, this is not just cleaning up, but rather it is creating time and space for the holy in our lives, and as such it becomes holy work.

I should add a final disclaimer, a reminder of the nature of grace, that the love of God is not dependent on a clean house, an organized desk or a well-executed action plan.  You will make plans, and life will happen in spite of them.  You will make space and the law of entropy will fill it.  The goal is not perfection, but intention.  As with all spiritual practices, we seek time and space to be turned toward God, remembering that God is already turned toward us in love.  I invite you try a discipline of organization, intentionally creating space and time to dwell in the love of God.