Cleaning Closets- What’s that got to do with loving my neighbor?

Deciding what to keep, toss or donate matters

I’ve been cleaning out closets lately. There’s a reason, in fact several reasons, we put off a task like this. Stuff accumulates. When I find the courage to open the boxes and take a look, I find them packed with questions that accompany all that stuff. “I never use this, should I keep it?” Did I really wear that jacket?” “I love that old vinyl collection, I wonder what it’s worth today?” “Will my daughter be mad if I toss the picture she made in second grade?”

Treasure or obligation? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

And so, I’ve been sorting things into piles. Keep, Toss, Donate. Keep- It makes me smile, stirs warm memories or meets a need. Toss- What is it for? And it looks like its broken. Donate- I love this, but… Somebody could probably use it?

Cleaning my “soul closet”

All that sorting gives me time alone with my thoughts. Remembering what I’ve done and where I’ve been leads to thoughts of who I am and who I am becoming. So, while I’ve been sorting my stuff, my mind wanders to the clutter in my “soul closet” as well. This dusty cubbyhole gathers my comforts, relationships, and perspectives and often dictates my priorities.

My time and financial resources are among the artifacts stored there. And to be honest, while I sometimes keep and donate these treasures, way too often I toss them out.

For example, it’s easy to throw away my time. Binge watching TV, doom scrolling the internet, or an afternoon spent with a whole bag of Doritos.

It’s better to keep my time. A walk, a good book, a nap, and puttering in the kitchen can restore sanity and wellbeing. And it is often lifegiving to donate my time, calling a friend, reading with a child, offering a ride, taking a meal, attending a community meeting, or volunteering at school. What I do with the time I have matters.

What I do with my money matters too. I can keep my financial focus on my needs, a new backpack, an updated iPhone, or new workout clothes. I can throw my money away on lottery tickets, plastic trinkets, or too many lattes. Or I can communicate my care and concern for a stressed-out mom by donating the funds for an afternoon babysitter.

Donating my attention

The more I look into my soul closet, the more I realize that there’s more than time and money inside. Where I place my curiosity and attention are part of this soul collection as well.

I can keep my attention on my physical and emotional needs. It’s not selfish to care for my health, to research information to make good decisions, or to figure out my family’s best options for the future.

But it is possible to squander my attention. Too much of any entertaining attraction becomes the “junk food” of the mind. Look no further than a group of people with phones for evidence of this phenomenon.

While it’s easy to get caught up in meaningless entertainment, I am growing concerned that our greater difficulty is the absence of donated curiosity and attention. It’s easy to look the other way when there’s a problem that doesn’t affect me. Someone else’s problem won’t disturb my comfort if I don’t know about it or never investigate to understand it better.

The question is, should I keep or donate my attention?

This donate question is a challenging one. When we’re thinking of a physical item stored in an attic, the decision to keep, toss, or donate can be complicated. For example, I don’t always know why I keep the handmade sweater grandma gave me. I may keep it because I love grandma but not the sweater. Or heaven forbid, that I don’t love grandma, but it’s a fantastic sweater.

In the same way, the stuff in our soul closet can get tangled up with our unexamined ideas or one-dimensional conclusions.

I was distressed this week to learn that a program to support teachers who are working toward special education certification was abruptly defunded. The school staff impacted by the funding decision are filling positions to serve students with disabilities because fully certified teachers are in short supply. The program had allowed them to work under supervision of a certified mentor while completing requirements for full certification themselves. But these disabled students and the teachers who seek to help them became a casualty of efforts to eliminate programs that support diversity. And the effort itself to eliminate such programs is defined by overgeneralized or unexamined conclusions.

The mention of diversity and its companion terms, equity and inclusion likely means one thing to me and something else entirely to many others. These words may be linked to emotions and for some of us to memories. Our experiences and perspectives will influence how we regard them. Without curiosity and thoughtful examination, over simplified judgments derail life impacting services. And all of us are susceptible to this outcome when we keep the focus on our own experience and fail to donate our attention to something that impacts others more than ourselves.

Curiosity will lead to important questions. “What do I really want for myself?’ “What kind of community do we value?” “What am I holding on to that someone else needs?”

When it comes to my curiosity and attention, donate is another word for love.

Loving my neighbor

Love often begins with learning more

In her remarkable book Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day, Kate Bowler calls love “the simplest word and the most complicated act.”

When faced with important decisions our task is not just to rank order some abstract idea. Our greater responsibility is to bring our best judgment on behalf of our neighbor and ourselves. The creative tension required to do this thoughtfully is an act of love.

When I donate my attention, I set aside my first reaction or my already formed opinion to truly listen and learn. It would be easier to hold to what I think I know. But it would be life giving to learn more before I act or judge. That’s true for teacher training programs. Emotionally loaded vocabulary words. And ordinary conversations.