Dear Friends,
My mother indelibly imprinted upon me the idea we always leave a place cleaner and better than we found it. It didn't matter if it were a rented cabin at the beach, a campsite or the house we were moving out of. Perhaps that explains that as I leave the church I've served for the past four years, I felt a ferociously need to clean out.
To that end, I invited a good friend of the church, one most generous with his time, on a date to go to the dump with me. He accepted. I brought the pick-up truck and he provided the major amount of muscle. We loaded up the detritus from all the corners of the church: broken chairs, an old bent drainpipe, old sofa cushions, decaying garden pots, an old moldy wooden room divider, bent out of shape wrought iron fence and much more. I even snuck in a few things from home. It was harder work than I imagined and we both worked up quite a sweat. As I drove slowly on the local streets, I held my breath and never stopped suddenly so the precariously tied on items wouldn't fall off or crash through the back window of the truck. We must have looked dangerous because cars left us a wide swath.
When we got to the transfer shed at the Marin Sanitary District, we only needed to throw the items off the truck into the pit and we would be done with this task. The dust, the noise, the smells were intense. Flinging off the trash, I noticed it felt strangely liturgical. I began to see myself not only flinging trash, but casting off old moldy festering hurts, worn out beliefs I'd clung to for far too long. Oh, it felt so good!
Back at the church I washed my dirty hands. With the water running over them, a deep peace came upon me as once again the memory of the waters of baptism flowed over me and I knew it was good to let go.
In great gratitude for everything,
Julianne
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