CONNECTIONS: CONSOLIDATING LIFE

I once was the shopkeeper for Scrap4Art, a non-profit organization that accepts donations of art and craft supplies from people who no longer need them. These supplies are then offered at a reduced price for teachers, group leaders, artists, and crafters. The shop’s mission is to steward the earth’s resources and support education by reusing these materials instead of adding them to landfills.

At that time, this vocation was perfect for me. I loved sorting the items and organizing them into specifically themed displays. I loved arranging, labeling, and maintaining tidy shelves. The old proverb, A place for everything and everything in its place became my guiding mantra.

As items sold and left empty spaces, or new items arrived that didn’t fit into the sorted collections, certain areas of the shop would need to be refigured; I would consolidate some groupings or redefine the bins and shelves. If a bin of white beads dwindled, I would combine them with the red and rename the bin, CANDY CANE. Or once the Christmas shelf became depleted, I would add other holiday items and rename the shelf, HOLIDAY. Depending on the supply, there could be labels as specific as REMNANTS OF STRIPED PURPLE FLANNEL or as general as FABRIC. I enjoyed finding ways to integrate every donation.

This practice can lend itself to all of life.

How often do we try to organize our lives into tidy inner files that help us make sense of our experiences or bring purpose to our being? But then we experience a loss, come upon an obstacle, or encounter a challenge that depletes our inventory of dreams and goals. Or we receive an opportunity, gain an insight, or discover an exception that doesn’t quite fit into our bins of beliefs and expectations.

My tasks at Scrap4Art now convey to me that life’s surprises, misfits, and exceptions–the things that initially bring chaos to my soul–can become invitations to expand, consolidate, and sometimes rename old files in order to encompass the new. They can serve as instruments for our souls to increase, learn, adapt, and embrace all that life brings.

While preparing this post, I looked up the definition of consolidate and found another insight. According to Merriam Webster, consolidate means “to join together into one whole, or to unite”–a gift for our personal integrity and spiritual wholeness. But it also means “to make firm or secure, to strengthen”–a gift for our personal perspective and spiritual foundation. Consolidation fills in our empty spaces, expands our understandings, accepts and includes our differences, and in turn, can strengthen our connections within ourselves, with God, and with one another.

Everything belongs. ~ Richard Rohr

(Photo by Karen)