Be Not Idle

Where I live now – in base of the thumb of Michigan’s mitten - we almost never get snow days. The lay of the land and water is such that the climate is milder than the surrounding areas. (In the gardening, it’s a zone warmer here than in the rest of the state.)

This is probably the last snow day until next year, so I used it to its full.

I slept.

I haven’t been feeling well since Friday. Because my eyes are bleary and my thinking is slightly off, it takes me longer to get through normal chores like grading essays. Since it takes longer, I get up earlier in order to do lesson plans, etc. Then I feel tired and react so much slower to everything. It’s a vicious cycle.

I didn’t want to blog today, but it’s part of my Lenten discipline. In some ways, it’s not a lot different than praying! Sometimes the last thing I want to do is pray.  Until I actually do, and then I realize how necessary it is.

So I blogged, just like I did all the other necessary tasks between bouts of napping: doing laundry, correcting quizzes,  shoveling, catching up on reading, shoveling, filling the birdfeeder, washing dishes – and did I mention shoveling?

 Now I’m going to go off and pray, then get some more sleep.

…I sometimes forget to pray. It makes more sense to pray when the going gets tough, but that’s when I get to the end of the day and say, “Wait a minute, I could have asked Him for help. Why didn’t I?”

 Sometimes, however, I feel like a small child about prayer. And not in a good way. It’s more like being the kid who says, “I wanna do it myself!” And just like a kid, it’s usually right before everything comes crashing down around my ears.

… here’s a favourite poem of mine. There’s a fairytale quality to many of Yeats’ poems.

THE CAP AND BELLS by William Butler Yeats

The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.

It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;

But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.

He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.

It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
Of a flutter of her flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.

‘I have cap and bells,’ he pondered,
‘I will send them to her and die’;
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.

She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song
Till stars grew out of the air.

She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left one came the blue.

They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.

This one’s real, so believe the hype.
“Don’t Believe the Hype” is the sequel.
- a song by SNAP! playing on a rap by Public Enemy

Since neither my candidate nor my runnerup made it through the primaries, I watch the remaining candidates with interest and sometimes apprehension.  I must say I don’t like the tone of the campaign, even if it has an overall “hopeful” tone. If anecdotal evidence is to believed, including the comments from young voters in my area, Barack Obama very likely will become the next President of the United States. If so, he will have done it by appealing to people’s yearning for hope and a better future. It’s a clever strategy in many ways, but it’s also a deeply flawed one.

First, he’s going to displease many people. It’s not merely that he can’t please everyone, which goes without saying. By using vague terms like “hope” and “change”, he’s convinced voters – especially first-time voters - that he represents hopes and the changes THEY want. Perhaps some have looked into his voting record and expect his future behavior to mimic the past. However, I’ve been watching campaign coverage and shaking my head over comments by many Obama supporters. They sound positively unhinged. (And I use “positively” in both its denotations.)

For what is too much for you, meddle not, when shown things beyond human understanding. Their own opinion has misled many and false reasoning unbalanced their judgment. – Sirach 4:22-23

Whenever I hear emotional supporters waxing eloquent (or incoherently babbling) about how Mr. Obama makes them feel, I don’t get it. I keep thinking of Charles Guiteau, the man who assassinated President Garfield. Guiteau was mentally unstable, possibly schizophrenic. He tried to improve himself in various ways, including joining the “Christian” Oneida Community which practiced wife-swapping.  He shot Garfield because he believed the president wasn’t giving him the government job he deserved.  That was in 1881, when by all accounts voters believed politicians were public servants and not the Second Coming.

Unfortunately, the Obama campaign is acting like a church revival. Although he’s done nothing to equate himself with the Messiah, Mr. Obama does nothing to moderate the tone of adulation. I don’t mean the bizarre episode of the crowd applauding when he blew his nose. (Mr. Obama himself looked thunderstruck at the weirdness.) 

His supporters have embraced a religious motif. Campaign posters show Mr. Obama with a halo of light, with divine rays shining from his countenance.  One popular ad is a music video in which supporters literally sing his praises with a chorus of “O-ba-ma” that mimics to a T the gospel refrain of “Je-sus” and “Praise Je-sus” that echoes in Christian churches. 

I doubt it’s unintentional.

I wait for Mr. Obama to step out from the hype and say he’s not a messianic figure. Maybe he could dust off the old term “catalyst of change” from a previous Democratic candidacy (although I can’t remember if it was as recent as John Kerry or as far back as Paul Simon). At any rate, his supporters could get back to calling for votes to support him instead of sending out a call to worship.

Overcoming our faults and weaknesses gives glory to God, because we can’t possibly overcome them on our own.

- Mother Angelica

Two weeks ago, I had three pieces of furniture that had outlived their usefulness: a dresser, a linen folding screen, and a wingback chair. Two of the items found new homes, but the hand-me-down dresser remained. I’d used it as a bedside table despite it being too wide and too high. (People suspect you’re hiding the truth when you say you got the blackeye from rolling over to read the clock.) It is too big to fit in my car, and I was afraid to tie it into my trunk and attempt the hour-long drive to a charity. It’s too good for the neighbours’ bonfire.  With its typical  ’50s or early-’60s  tapered legs and fake-wood laminated top, it’s not stylish enough to interest the resale shops.*

As I was cleaning out the office closet, I wondered what to do about storage. Stacks of cardboard boxes are neither safe nor accessible, plus they absorb moisture during humid days. Plastic is better if you want to see the entire contents at a glance. (I prefer to read labels.) 

“It would be nice to have one of those expensive closet systems with drawers,” I thought. Eureka! I put the dresser in the closet, then stacked a low bookshelf on top. Ta da! My art supplies, writing paper, etc. are stored but accessible.

As usual, organizing one area opened my eyes to organizing another. I unearthed my writing desk. It was buried beneath low-priority paperwork, books, the telephone, etc. Mostly etcetera! I realized how long it’s been a dumping-ground when I excavated raffle tickets from the 2006 parish festival!

I don’t know what I’m going to write yet. However, I’ve already benefited from having a single place to read essays and correct tests. Now my diningroom table can stop serving as  Paperwork Central.

*I paid ten bucks for a similar nightstand at the St. Vincent de Paul Society.  I guess I’m not stylish.

I have had a request from a friend to explain what I mean by “squalor”.  I could just invite her over and have her look into my office and living/diningrom on a typical day, but it’s slightly less embarrassing to explain here. 

Squalor is a high level of clutter. It can be hoarding, like the people you see on various organization shows who collect broken computers because they’re useful for “parts”. It can be chronic clutter that explodes into a huge mess because a person is too ill or stressed to prioritize it. It can be everyday items that gradually take over every horizontal surface (including the floor). 

In other words, squalor has a lot of levels.

What causes it? A number of factors play into it. Obsessive-compulsive disorder leads a lot of people into squalor. Perfectionism is a surprisingly common trait among squalorees, as we call ourselves (when we’re not calling ourselves worse names). We get paralyzed by thoughts like, “This has just one broken part, so I should fix it. I can’t clean part of this room unless I clean the whole room. I know the recycling center won’t take this, but I’d feel guilty if I don’t find a use for it.” 

The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization developed a Clutter Hoarding Scale which the Squalor Survivors Community uses:

 http://www.squalorsurvivors.com/squalor/measuring.shtml

When I lived in my first apartment by myself, I was at Level One: chronic clutter. As friends and relatives moved in with me, I went to Level Two and stayed there for years.  But I didn’t know I was at Level Two. I thought I was a dirty slob. I knew I wasn’t lazy. I had a full-time job, a part-time job, and took evening classes.  Was it avarice? But I didn’t LIKE having so much stuff. Was it an organizational problem? A professional organizer told me that all I needed to do was switch from being a “piler” of papers to a “filer”.  (Instead, I did both.)

I didn’t know that other people were like me. Granted, I knew people who had trails of dirty dishes from the sink, across the countertops, over various tables, and into their home offices. But mostly those were young men, and everyone knows about ”bachelor housekeeping”. If a man’s bathroom smells like urine and has topless toothpaste tubes oozing over the sink, it’s not pleasant but it’s a manly foible. Similar conditions in a bachelorette’s home are unacceptable (unless she has a closet overflowing with shoes and clothes – that’s just the life of a fashionable single girl!) 

I knew a couple women who were sloppy housekeepers, but one suffered from depression and, conversely, the other was a highly successful businesswoman.  I also knew hoarders, but they tended to store everything so NEATLY that it wasn’t until later that I questioned why anyone would WANT an entire shelf of stacked empty cottage cheese containers.

I remember when I prayed for help. I had been a “secret slob” as Holden Caulfield put it in The Catcher in the Rye - looking neat on the outside but shoving boxes of stuff into the storage closet so company wouldn’t see it. Or getting the urge to clean and throwing out good stuff (like the year I threw out my tax return… eek!)  But I couldn’t hide it anymore. My younger brother moved in. He’d take his friends into my bedroom to use my computer and there was my squalor: boxes stacked next to the bed, dresser piled with stuff, overflowing file cabinet. I couldn’t hide it.

I prayed and even talked to someone at my church to ask for prayers. As usual, Our Father answered not with an instant ”cure”, but by steering me towards other people.

I had been reading business books about time management and organizing work-related items. I checked motivational tapes (Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, etc.) out of the library and listened to them on my commute. One day I came across a misfiled book, a funny book about ”Sidetracked Home Executives”. The “Slob Sisters”, Pam Young and Peggy Jones wrote about their own squalorous lives and how they invented a card system to keep them on track. 

The cards never worked well for me, but on their website did. There I ”met” other people who had similar challenges in staying organized. One of them was Marla Cilley, “The FlyLady” as she prepared to launch her daily FLY List. From there I made my way to OrganizedHome.com  and the Squalor Survivors Community (see my blogroll for links).

 So that’s my story. (And I’m sticking to it… but in a PostIt Note way, not like old bubblegum…)