Curious consolations.
That is, it is interesting what can make us feel better.
The other day I came across an article entitled “Don’t Feel Bad About Your Laundry Chair.” It was consoling.
Many people call it the laundry chair. But it’s not always a chair that serves as a repository for the heap of clothes in laundry limbo. It might be a futon, or an ottoman, or the top of a dresser, or an exercise bike being put to a different kind of workout. If it has a surface area fit for plopping, it will do.
The article went on to say that not only do most people have a laundry chair (or two or three, perhaps a dresser or a room), but that it is actually a way for many people of creating some kind of order amidst chaos. It can be a place to leave clothes that do not need to be laundered, but that are not necessarily best put back in the closet or a drawer. In other words - it’s okay, its normal, and don’t stress about it.
Everything is spiritual, of course, so, as I thought about the laundry chair, I considered the pressure that we put upon ourselves. Sometimes the clutter in our lives can seem to pronounce a kind of judgment upon us. If there is a pile of clothes, we are lazy, or too busy. The noise of our lives, emotionally and spiritually, can seem to judge in the same ways. We wind up seeing ourselves as inadequate somehow, or deficient, or defective.
The same weekend that the laundry chair article was published, CNN released the first couple of episodes of a documentary on the life and work of Martha Stewart. Do you think that Martha Stewart has a laundry chair?
Some of you will remember Martha Stewart from the height of her popularity and influence in the 1990s. Jen and I were married in 1992 and Martha Stewart’s magazine called “Living” was in its early days. Her uber-popular books Entertaining and Weddings had been released in the late 1980’s. It wasn’t long before Martha Stewart was a big big deal. As I look back now, I ponder that Martha Stewart and James Dobson were both HUGE around the same time. So many ways people can be made to feel terrible about themselves.
The documentary follows a number of interesting threads, the challenges of being a woman in business at the time, Stewart’s own personal life, and, as I think about the laundry chair, the aspiration and expectation of doing things well and beautifully.
There was a backlash to Martha Stewart and her lifestyle empire. Many people said that the drive to create wonderful meals and centrepieces and gardens was too much and made them feel worse, not better. Stewart replied to this accusation by saying that she did not want to put that pressure on at all. Rather she thought that people benefitted from beautiful things and spaces.
The laundry chair article does cite a professor of psychology named Joseph Ferrari who says that a pile of laundry is perfectly acceptable, but that psychologically the question is how long the pile has remained (and maybe how much it has grown). It does feel good, does it not, to clear off the chair from time to time?
There is indication of tension in questions like this, tension that can be felt in our emotional and spiritual lives. Rigid theological understanding can focus more on sin than on God’s goodness. Sin, while not a popular word these days, might be seen as yesterday’s equivalent to ideas of deficiency or unacceptability today. You should be a better person. You should make better decisions. You should not have a laundry chair. You should not have a big carbon footprint. You should never have any ideas deemed by society's self appointed gatekeepers to be unacceptable - even in retrospect
I think that many people who reject the concept of sin still tend to have a myriad of ways to judge others and perhaps themselves as inadequate or deficient. For all of our supposed moral sophistication, we remain very much aware of the offenses and offensiveness of just about everyone else. It’s strange that we can become convinced that the idea of sin is archaic while at the same time being fairly certain that people who don’t think like us are terrible and even morally deficient
The laundry chair article is consoling because it reminds us that such things are part of being human. This recollection of humanity is where I turn to prayer. I think of Julian of Norwich, who in her visions of the crucifixion of Jesus never once mentions sin. This does not mean that she does not take humanity and our shortcomings seriously. It is just that the love of God is so astounding that it overcomes all of our judgmentalism towards self and others.
So a prayer from my messy room and my messy life;
Dear God;
I feel so scattered and incomplete at times. A pile of clothes can remind me of how I don’t have anything in my life together at all, of how lazy I am, of how I have too much, of how I am not enough. Sometimes my emotional and spiritual life feels like it’s a mess as well. The house is not presentable, and neither am I. And then it spirals. Even to the point where I feel that just about nothing is as it should be. Especially me.
And then someone tells me that it is okay to have a laundry chair. And I am consoled.
And then something reminds me that your love is bigger than all the mess we make or leave in our lives. And I am granted hope.
Bless those today who feel like they will never measure up. Thank you for beauty and design, for people who make things nice. For how lovely you have made the world. I just ask that such beauty can be experienced as gift or even as aspiration, but not as indictment.
Thank you that in you there is life and breath and space and rest.
“And all manner of things shall be made well.”
Amen.