Organization vs. God’s Right-Order

January is a time of new beginnings and fresh starts. Placing a new calendar on the wall inspires us to make changes to our habits and lifestyles which we hope will enhance our health, wellbeing, and even our spiritual life. In addition to diet and exercise, many people see the New Year as an opportunity to revamp living spaces. Numerous gurus offer methods to transform our physical surroundings into places with clean lines and sparse décor. Pinterest pages and magazine spreads show white walls and clutter-free counter tops. Department stores offer sales on white towels and bedding. We want a fresh start mentally and imagine the best way to encourage this is to create a fresh start environmentally. We hope a pristine house will lead to a pristine mind and life.

Let’s Get Organized

There is nothing bad about being organized. The word organize has its roots in a word with multiple meanings, including musical instruments, implements or tools, and even body parts. Eventually the word has evolved into the use organize, referring to creating systems or structures for controlling and managing a whole made up of differing parts. Organization allows the whole to do what it has been created to do, without wasting time and effort.

In a French kitchen, the junior chefs are taught mis en plas, or “everything in its place” so that all efforts are effectively used to create an excellent product for the customer from the time the doors open until the last table is bussed, despite the frenetic level of activity associated with a busy kitchen. Organization allows for success. A lack of it makes success more difficult to achieve.  

Are our households, families, lives, and minds meant to run like a French kitchen? Often the media of January would have us believe the answer is an emphatic, YES! Perhaps you have experienced the sense of clean winter minimalism after the last Christmas decoration has been tucked away. The gift of simplicity is tangible after a time of feasting and abundance. But do we rush that time by tossing our beloved Tanenbaum to the curb on December 26^th? Do we ignore the Church’s invitation to consider the Christmas story well into January, opting instead to match the world’s “out with the old and in with the new”? It may be beneficial to reconsider whose lead we are following.

It’s ALIVE! Or Is It?

Finding the word organ in organize brings to my mind a Dr. Frankenstein creation—it may work in the short run, but at what cost to our humanity? Dr. Frankenstein’s monster may seem an extreme comparison to a Modern Architecture-style home, but such a house can be similarly soul-less. The pursuit of organization can lead to an abandonment of the flawed, the comfortable, the human.

Grace in the Imperfection

Kintsugi, the Japanese art form that takes broken pottery and mends it in a beautiful way, dates to around the 15^th century. Along with the ideas of wabi and sabi, which honor the impermanence and imperfection of things, this overarching design philosophy strikes me as truly human and open to God’s ways. Acceptance of impermanence and imperfection are fertile soil for acceptance of our own and our family’s fallibility, shortcomings, and limitations. Such an environment teaches mercy. As humans we constantly need to receive and bestow mercy. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” A flawless home does not teach us that, but a beautifully mended piece of pottery does. Pristine January white does not teach us that, but slightly dusty Christmas décor, or a refrigerator crowded with school projects, do. We need God’s and each other’s forgiveness. An imperfect home is just the place for forgiveness to flourish.

God’s Right-Order and Timing

Am I suggesting that we disregard all organization and live in an environment of chaos where no one can find a pair of socks nor a set of keys? No, but I am suggesting that we may not be called to seek organization according to our will or the world’s measurements. I like tidiness. My mother was a wonderful housekeeper. I want to live in a home that is neat and clean. But if you come to my home in January, you are likely to encounter Christmas, still on display, though in ever lessening amounts.

The fruit of contemplation is an ever-deepening relationship with God. But that fruit takes time to ripen. After the time spent decorating our homes for Christmas, the Church calendar invites us to linger with the Christmas mysteries and meditate on the Gift of Jesus, God among us.

Following the Church calendar also increases our trust in God’s timing. As we yield to His timing, we experience the fruit of that surrender—a peace that sets a human pace for the year to come. By yielding to this view of time, we choose God’s right-order over human organization; we choose peace over control.

Yielding Our Control to God’s Order

The Lord asks us to let go into the long feast of Christmas. We must feast because the Little Bridegroom is with us. He has come to save and save He will. There will be enough time for the ordinary. Relaxing our spiritual, emotional, and physical muscles into the feasts of the Church calendar keeps them flexible for the long, arduous stretches of labor during Ordinary Time and beyond.

Resist the urge to tidy up the feast. Instead, be present to your family, spend time in prayer by your manger scene, play a game with all the Christmas lights on, bake the cookies you never had a chance to during Advent. Trust that it is all part of God’s perfect order for you, your family, and your home.

As we yield to God’s order, we learn to bend without breaking. As we train ourselves after God’s order and His holy will, we will be ready to cease feasting as the Church calendar directs. We will be refreshed and ready to re-place Christ’s yoke on our shoulders. Nourished by prayer, we will recall that we are yoked with Jesus, who shoulders the greater burden.

Organization is an aesthetic that seems good and pleasing to our eyes. But God’s right-order trains us to seek the good, true, and beautiful. It allows us to be who we were created to be—human beings. It nurtures us as we grow in the virtues that chase after the divine in a joyful, playful way that accepts both feasting and labor as coming from His loving hands.

Thank you, Lord, for long Christmastime, a time of dusty houses, messy schedules, too much food, too little exercise, more time together, and special times to pray. Please help us to trust your right-order that fasts and feasts, pauses and moves on, according to a calendar that is not in sync with the world. May we yield the good fruit of mercy and love, joy and peace to all we meet and throughout every season.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash