Spring cleaning

Blossoms at Lake Katherine
Palos Heights, IL

Isn’t it amazing how certain truths really stand the test of time?

An email came along recently recommending eliminating clutter as one step in finding inner peace and living a fuller life:

“Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.”

That sounded really familiar, so I tracked the original to a dispenser of good advice some 2000 years ago, St. Paul. (Perhaps someone knows an earlier source?) He was a little more specific. Here is Paul's version in a letter to the little church he had established in Phillipi:

“Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise… “Then,” he concludes, “The God of peace will be with you.”

This is a wonderful way to shed unwanted mental weight. If we think of God as Mind, that is our authority for discarding mental clutter. The Mind of the universe who orders orbits, solar systems and galaxies, blossoms and bees, clearly isn’t cluttered with irrelevancies. We needn’t be either.

If some thought isn’t good or honorable or praiseworthy, I really have better things to be thinking about. It’s not too early for spring cleaning! What can I start tossing out of my thinking that doesn’t measure up to these simple standards?