Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2026
Junk drawer
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The Lord is my shepherd.
In 2012 Father Albert Haase and Jessie Vicha began two years training fifteen of us, men and women, protestants and Catholics, to be spiritual directors. They told us that our minds quickly become as cluttered as a kitchen junk drawer with hopes and dreams, and of course regrets. (Theirs too, all of us.)
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters.
To navigate and keep track of the junk in there, they said we should Examen it once or twice a day. The Examen is a prayer method conceived by Ignatius hundreds of years ago. Ignatius told his followers that although they might skip the Eucharist now and then, they must never skip Examen.
He guides me in right paths, and he restores my soul.
The examen welcomes God to look into my junk. Just as happens in the 12 steps, inviting God to look and see helps me see more clearly than I can alone. God’s listening ear, forgiveness and insistence that I come back tomorrow to see him again … changes my life one confession at a time.
If I walk through the valley, through the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Thou art with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
In a week my CRU Houseboat buddy Shannon’s Premier mattress will be arriving at our door, a twin XL to replace the too big dusty queen I put together when we moved in five years ago. Andi found a “Buy Nothing” Ikea mattress and base in her neighborhood. Twenty years old, its label said. Aki and I rented a U-Haul truck and we all helped move it in and put it together.
A couple of years ago I found a well-preserved 10-inch foam Walmart mattress, waiting for me at our apartment dumpster. I plopped that on top of what I had, found some marvelous cotton sheets at Target, bought an electric blanket and Marriott quality pillows and a couple of toddler pillows on Amazon.
You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. And you anoint my head with oil.
My cup runneth over!
For five years I slept and slept. Like a baby. No hurry to get up, living the semi-retired life of Riley. Margaret and I both love to sleep in our beds with no rush to get somewhere or do something. And now I can barely get into bed and dread getting out again. A lot of stifled screams. My new chiropractor Dr. Owen thought maybe my old bed was not helping. Of course it isn’t.
So now all I have to do is make the bedroom available and ready to receive Shannon’s “white tie” installers on Friday.
There is storage space under the 60 inch by 80 inch bed, and when we moved I filled it with gusto. Fishing equipment, golf clubs, a guitar in a beautiful felt-lined case, heavy black bag of cordless tools that wouldn’t fit anywhere else, blankets … actually I’m not sure what else is under there, but I’ll find out tomorrow or the next day. Lots of dust, I know that for sure.
I have bookshelves, which need to be used for books at last. There’s a desk with sliding shelf (another dumpster inheritance), which is usually not visible under the piles of papers on top. Some days I can find my laptop, other days I don’t try. Oh, yeah, there’s a CPAP machine too, which I try to use most nights.
And of course five years of STUFF in six drawers beside the bed. Important stuff. I have more than one junk drawer. Electronics, binoculars, chargers, several kitchen creatures like an apple peeler, olive pitter, little dachshund dog that holds a hot dog and cuts it into bites, a circular form to contain and shape a frying egg, a small cutting board with a cheese slicing wire embedded in it, and a heavy, granite mortar and pestle.
There’s an oldish Canon digital camera, at least three small Bluetooth speakers, an iPhone 5 which works fine when the boys want to play a game …
And in one drawer I found an extra wedding ring, two wooden crosses made by Armando at church, a variety of large and small palm crosses, including a beautiful autographed palm cross given to us when our Transforming Community ended in 2013, identical to the one we had been passing around in our group spiritual direction meetings for two years.
In the “spiritual” drawer there were several laminated pictures and verses that Diane King makes every week and often gives to us at church. When I walk by, Diane stops me, happy to share her creations with us. And I also found a jewelry case full of a buddhist prayer bracelet, orthodox Jesus Prayer necklaces and rosary beads I bought in bookstores at convents and monasteries Margaret and I visited for retreats. Marytown, Gethsemane, Saint Meinrad, Chiara, Pallotti, Fatima, Immaculate Conception, Saint Joseph, Portiuncola, Kings House, LaSalette … We went everywhere, man.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.
Although you’d never know it today, the bedroom WILL be ready on Friday for a Bouldin Lux Firm mattress and Rio 4 Ergonomic base that will lift and lower my miserable back and give me a massage whenever I push the button. All this feels a little miraculous to me. The pain in my lower back makes it very hard to move around Walmart or anywhere else to shop. Any heart surgery will make this moving even harder, of course. And I am talking with Dr Grimm (a nice guy, I’m told) about that tomorrow.
Margaret is doing the heavy lifting. She said that now I can have my monk’s cell again.
At church today I hope to give away a few palm crosses. But I’m keeping the rosary beads.
And a few days after the first bed arrives, Margaret gets one too. Aaahhh!
So we will dwell in the house of the Lord FOREVER.
(Acts 2, Psalm 23, and John 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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