June 8, 2016

“Even we ourselves are subtle versions of our refrigerator door.”
A Table in the Desert: Making Space Holy, W. Paul Jones

It's taken me longer to get through this book than I had originally thought it would.  I still have about 40 pages to go.  But I've been interrupted here and there – Holy Week and Easter, and there was the seven-step discipleship series I just finished, to name a few.

This entire book revolves around the topic of holy spaces, where we find them and how we make them.  In this particular section, Fr. Jones discussed sacred spaces of religious buildings and where we find or make sacred spaces in the various spheres of our lives – home, work, school, church, car, and casket.  We have various personalities and traits and attitudes in each of those arenas, and it was in this context that he made the above quoted comment.

It originally struck me as funny as well as accurate; but the more I thought about it, the more I began to think that we are not just subtle versions of our refrigerator door, but versions of our refrigerators themselves.

Our refrigerator doors tend to be a display area for the proud artwork of a child or grandchild.  They hold photos of family and friends, both near and far.  They may display a photo or two of our favorite places.  Our refrigerator doors more often than not display the very best of our lives, images of which we are proud, that we want to show off to others, or that we want to be reminded.

Open those doors up, though, and we might find something else entirely.  Up front there's the usual food stuff we use on a regular basis – milk, juice, eggs, sandwich fixins, and dinner ingredients.  But dig a little deeper, go back a little farther, and you might run into the forgotten container of cottage cheese with a February “sell by” date, dinner leftovers from December that you wanted to eat for lunch, a moldy cucumber that got buried under other things and forgotten, or any number of ingredients that never got used because something came up or you just didn't have the time to prepare.  Take a look at the shelves and drawers and notice how many things have spilled that didn't get properly cleaned up.

We aren't just a version of our refrigerator door, we are a version of our refrigerator.  We put all the best stuff out where people can see it.  We show off all the goodness of our lives.  But if we open up the door, things aren't always as neat and tidy as we make them out to be.  Sure, there are things we get right and do well; but there are also things we intended to do but forgot, leaving it in back, untouched.  Or maybe there's a piece of us that was once wholesome and good, but we neglected it, so it sits deep inside of us, turning moldy or rotting away.

We aren't just a version of our refrigerator door, we are a version of our refrigerator.  What inside needs to be used more often?  What needs to be cleaned up?  What needs to be tossed out?  More importantly, what would it take to have our sometimes messy inside be more in line with the displayed goodness of our outside?

Amen.