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| Saturday, July 03, 2010 |
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Container Store Confessional
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 849 Views ::
0 Comments :: Nina Frost
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I confess I was in one of my favorite secular temples earlier this week: The Container Store, that paragon of order, organization, and the astounding possibility that everything can be in its place.
One definition of “temple” is “a place where something holy or divine is thought to dwell” and, no joke, that definition is one of the reasons why I sometimes go into The Container Store, just to wander around and pick up what feels like an essential message: Yes, it is possible to give color-coded, serene order to all that you love and cling to and that surrounds you in overlapping waves of disorder and piles and exciting potential.
When I go into this store, it is like breathing different air. For me, it’s the same kind of promise a monastery or convent holds: everything is in its place, with space to live and move and dream and pray.
Last week I wrote about how God’s spirit comes through us in key moments throughout our lives. There are moments when we are clear channels. No wonder I am also attracted to the promise of a clear environment—space that is tended to in ways that cannot help but tend us.
Like any visit to a sacred site, the point is not how much you longingly linger there, but how and when you incorporate the teachings from that site into your life. It will not do to just waft through The Container Store now and again, mooning about what could be possible with the years of notes, workshops, etc. I want to organize. Even in The Container Store, at some point the rubber hits the road, and I have to CREATE ORDER myself.
Like David in Psalm 51, the Psalm many of us start Lent with on Ash Wednesday, these words arise:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”
Of course it’s bigger than the store. In the human vessels, the containers that we all are, the question centers on what we need to be cleared of; where do we need space, breathing room, even a winnowing hand? Summer cleaning, anyone? |
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