The Ship Song

There are a couple of reasons to share this video. It's been made as a tribute to the Sydney Opera House, the most iconic building I've ever been in. It features some of the best musicians/performers in Australia (imho), and it's a song written by Nick Cave, that I love.

I admit that there are tears in my eyes when I watch it. I walked down the aisle to this song almost 13 years ago.

Tracks and Habits

image from here

The picture is the story. Sheep running along worn paths. Wending through grass, flattened under their feet. My shoes tread the grass down, too. Following daily planted footsteps, crossing the road at just that odd angle. The angle I walked yesterday. Do you step in the worn patches of dirt? Or let the smoothed, worn stone cradle your feet?

Habits form us. Form me. We construct our lives in repetitive, well-worn blocks. Follow grooved, gouged tracks.

It's tempting to concentrate on the bad habits. The paths we trip thoughtlessly along, forgetting their destination. Trapped on exit-less freeways, addictions, weaknesses, sins overwhelm us. "I can't stop." "I didn't want to end up here..."

But every maze has a way out. Don't forget we are the ones who've made the paths, and they can be changed. The first time you deviate is exhausting, time-consuming and messy. The old path calls you insistently back. It resists an overgrown, unused future. The whispered, lingering reminders in your ears are final pleas for existence. But deviating for the first time is exhilarating. Making a new, better, wise path brings possibility and hope.

Habits can also breathe life. Good ones open our existence so that grace can get in. I wish I could find the list of helpful habits I read last week, because it illustrates the sensible simplicity of good habits. The ones that have stuck are - getting 8 hours sleep a night, sitting down to eat breakfast. Alas, google cannot find the rest tonight :)

A wise life is one with well-crafted habits. A network of paths that lead to healthy destinations. Paths painstakingly carved and carefully re-routed when necessary. I long for a life like that.

What about you?

Here is a trustworthy saying...

Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.

Proverbs 4:26

Declutter (part 1)

Contrary wishes clutter my heart. It beats and pumps and I waver in the wind.

My mind is a cupboard filled with hoarded bits and pieces. I long to unpack the piles that have collected on the shelves, but I can't do more than move them from one to another.

A preoccupation with what I want and need, crowds inside me. I witness dramas and imagine myself in the starring role. I long for significance and to be noticed. I want to be the one who gets it done. In the nightclub that is my soul, the crowd on the dancefloor are all me just trying to catch someone's eye.

I look around the house, discouraged by the similarites of outward and inward life. Stacks of books. Collected toys and games. Mount Washington just in, off the line. No space to spare.

No one is surprised, that decluttering and simplifying are national pastimes. We talk about them, anyway. We pay to hear the secret of making them reality. Maybe if I buy the book, order, rationality, simplicity, will be possible.

But I need to ask the real question.

How do I declutter my heart? Simplify my mind? How do we purify our lives?

Any suggestions?