I love office supply stores with their promises of organizational mastery. Equally, I love bed and bath stores with their offering of organization coupled with beauty; the perfect combination of function, form, and style. I suspect the reason why I like office supply, and bed and bath stores are the same reason realtors stage homes when they go on the market. I have the same dream of control over my life as everyone else.

It’s not that my life is particularly out of control, messy, or even disorganized. I’m actually pretty good at knowing where to find my stuff, particularly important items like car keys and my wallet. These days my home is only filled with one other adult, my beloved spouse Mark, and two springer spaniels, the chaos factor is pretty low these days. When the kids visit, now with grandkids, chaos increases in direct relation to the decrease of control. I welcome it with deep gratitude for the life they bring into my relatively quiet and calm existence.

I’m keenly aware of the balance between an organization and its partner chaos (maybe not the best terms, but it’s what I got right now). Life relies on this crucial partnership of contraction and expansion often with creative sparks and explosions of change. Organization and chaos, representing the spectrum of control, play off of each other, sometimes the result is painful and destructive, sometimes the result is fun and exciting. With too much organization and control, life has no space to spread its genes, too much chaos, and no control, life has nothing to land upon and take root.

It’s in that fantastic, scary, exciting, discombobulating, and life-giving balance that creativity gets it game on. It’s in that space, between the isles of color-coded filing systems and matching dishes, that we can be a part of the creative impulses of life unfolding itself into an unimagined magnificence.

With love, control, and chaos, Rev. Kate

Pastoral Connections

The Celebration of Life for Bill Myerburg on April 23 has been canceled at the family’s request.  A private memorial is being held.