If you walk into my room on any given day, what you will see is one of my perennial struggles – several piles of paper.  There are two piles on either side of the easy chair where I sometimes open the mail. There are piles of paper on the credenza from the Newman Center or from the school where I drop them off.  Magazines in another stack, only partially read, but waiting till I get back around to them.  Perennial piles of mail and projects and notes on my desk.  Though it is never so unmanageable that you can’t see the floor, it is my one area of constant struggle - my battle of the desk – as I call it.  And usually, about this time of year, I find myself desiring to be free of the stacks.  And free of the piles.  And free of the work they symbolize.  I am ready to do some spring cleaning.   

And then, in one of those moments of grace, when I came home from the Newman Center one afternoon this week – came the redeeming thought – Bill Kempf, these piles of paper in your room are a metaphor for your own internal life.  Though there is a lot of clean space there, plenty to walk around and through, if I am honest with myself, my own internal life needed some of the same cleaning that my room and desk needed.  Time to get rid of the clutter that makes the temple called my body, soul and spirit so filled with things that are not of God.  Time to get rid of those patterns of sloth that make my discipleship a matter of routine and ritual!   

About that time in my week I read the gospel for this Sunday, and the image of Jesus cleansing the temple just about knocked me to the ground.  And then came the even more salvific moment:  What if zeal for His Father’s house (that would be the house that still carries his image - you and me) still consumes him?  It was amazing to pray with that image of Jesus rolling his sleeves up OVER ME, wading into the mess of my internal strife and turning over the money changers tables in my own life.  Because in those moments of prayer, I realized that “Zeal for his Father’s house STILL CONSUMES him.”   

What has to go?  What stack of messiness had to be overturned, cleaned up, prepared for the resurrection?  Though it might be different for each of us, I could name two just like that (*snap).

1) The table of time wasting.  Whether it is computer games on the cell phone or Mahjong on the desktop– it became apparent to me that I was filling a lot of my ‘down time’ with these ‘time wasters’.  (Perhaps it is Facebook or Myspace or Twitter that does it for you.)  I heard Jesus inviting me to cleanse that part of my life – and to replace it with some gratitude and thanksgiving.  So I have been writing a letter of thanks to someone every day since then.  “Lord, let your zeal for my time make me so aware of the preciousness of EACH MOMENT.” 

2) The table of negative thinking.  Interestingly enough, I realized that table out on the golf course.  One of the gentlemen I played with had a negative comment about just about every swing of his golf game.  “It wasn’t nearly as far as he used to be able to hit it.  It didn’t roll very much in the soft ground.  Misread the putt.  Pushed it left.  Pushed it right.”  And so it went.  By the 8th hole, my pretty good round starting going south as I let that same kind of negative thinking into my head.  As did my enjoyment of the game.  I realized he was tapping in to some of my own internal worries about the broader game called life.  And how much I want to control the outcome of life, and how little I am trusting in God’s providence to this parish and school.  “Lord, let your zeal for my house cleanse the self doubt and negative thinking that sometimes comes my way…” 

And so it goes in my prayer this lent.  Spring cleaning fever is upon me – and hopefully upon us all – both externally and internally.  The good news is that we have a savior who is ready to roll his sleeves up, wade into the mess and clutter of our lives and help us overturn whatever tables stand in the way of us and his Father’s house.  Will you invite Jesus to do a little spring cleaning on your soul this week?