Bless the Mess

A lot of folks are facing mess around Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and any number of places around the world from weather. I, on the other hand, have skillfully made my own mess. I am a master mess maker, much like a five year old child can be a master mess maker. Maybe it’s the inner five year old that rebels against order. Maybe feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start, the adult perfectionist relies on steadfast procrastination. Maybe both.

I talked with my sister in St. Petersburg, Florida yesterday and she was surveying the mess. Downed trees, broken pool, but no flooding. She was very, very fortunate. Hurricane Milton was originally on path for a direct hit on her town. One week following Hurricane Helene which also hit close by. By grace, Milton wobbled into another direction South of Tampa/St Petersburg. Her mess is her mess, different than others. Residents in Siesta Key, Florida where the hurricane finally decided to make landfall, face more challenges. Near where my sister lives, she told me she saw furniture out on the streets, so other people are handling their mess too by taking destroyed items out for trash pick up.

We are all facing different mess. For her, cleaning the black mold out of the refrigerator was the next step in recovering calm. Her power was out two separate times, about a week each. So the fridge was calling when the storm cleared and the power reconnected. In this ‘civilized’ society, no electricity is a big ole deal. In Gaza, where human beings have not been treated like they are human, no electricity has been going on for a year. There is no refrigerator to clean in a home because the homes have been bombed. People are living in makeshift tents and schools made into shelters. We all have different mess, different challenges, different blessings at different times.

For me, I am blessing my own mess. My own home has piles of books and papers…mainly paper all over. Like my dad used to do growing up, I merely move the piles from one place to another. Today I am gathering my courage to just do it. DECLUTTER! If I had a video of myself moving piles from one room to another…say for example moving stuff off my massage table to my bedroom for a client…then moving it back to the massage room after the client so there’s less mess in my bedroom… it would make me laugh. Imagine speeding the video up and seeing migrating mess carried from place to place through out the day and the weeks, months, you get the idea. What is an alternative way of living? Hmmmm.

“Bless the Mess” is a term I first heard from a dear friend from Hollister, California. Sonne Reyna who did ceremony with me years ago and is an elder earth guardian. It takes “Fixing” out of the picture and “judging” out too. I trust Mother Earth completely. She is over 4 Billion years old and her wisdom runs deep. Humans have forgotten, not all humans, but a lot have forgotten all things come from the earth for our survival. From the wood that makes up our homes, to the water that flows from the faucet. A collective Re-membering may come from a collective Dis-Membering. Training my human eyes and mind to look from this perspective helps my body relax into the unknown and transforms fear into trust during chaotic times.

Disruption can be part of awakening. “Bless the Mess” is a prayer not only for my migrating piles of clutter, but also the heart wrenching wars unfolding now and the effects of climate change on animals and humans. I’ve found only when I am stretched way past my own capacity to do it alone, do I ask for help. That is part of remembering. We are in this together and when the old ways fall apart, we will birth new ways together.

Bless the mess is a mantra I can use when things feel overwhelming and out of control. Like maybe, just maybe it’s not up to me to control it all. What a relief that is. I have tended a Gaza grief altar for a year now. It has been heart breaking and heart opening at the same time. I update it monthly. Meaning I look at, not away from the current casualties of Israelis and Palestinians as well as what other conditions are unfolding since the last month. Collective starvation as a method of war is part of what is unfolding now. As well as 20,000 children having been orphaned and over 600,000 children having been out of school for more than a year now in Gaza. This is in addition to the remaining hostages and their families being in continuing anguish. This is part of my call right now, to be witness and to plant prayer seeds. We all need tools on how to handle and face that which is out of control whether that is prayer, music, ritual, activism or refuge in like minded communities. Or a combo pack.

Every month I remove the cards from the previous month to put new cards and candles on the altar. The cards from previous months are now all over my house. The altar is a tool to honor the suffering and pray for the protection and well being of all and to keep it all in one place. But I have found part of my ‘clutter’ are the cards all over my house. It leaked out. Not only old cards with old facts on them but also research into this region, the letters from Congress people to our President asking for a cessation of weapons transfer. Also hand written notes preparing for my own letter writing and articles are sprawled in piles in different rooms. So much for putting it all in one place. I feel the grief rising in me as I write this. What was a war that displaced people in Gaza is now a war that has displaced people in Northern Israel and in Lebanon. As an American citizen in a country that has provided 68% of the weapons to Israel to use against civilians over and over, I feel compelled to speak up over and over. Now, over a million have been displaced in Lebanon too.

Yet, this mess of war is like a hurricane. It is beyond my power to stop it. Only look for ways to wake up and never give up on better parts of humanity rising from the ash. Use it as motivation to make my heart bigger. The next step is to do a burning ritual this afternoon with the ‘clutter’ I collect, the stories about people who quit their jobs in protest, the research notes, the old cards. Moving the mess about is a form of procrastination of facing it, blessing it and releasing it in a conscious step of prayer. Bless the mess is a step towards transformation, like tears are watering the seeds of peace yet to manifest ‘out there’. The peace that starts right here and now, where I am.