Dumpster Party!

During post-planning (the days school faculty and staff spend together following the students’ departures at the end of the year) you may have noticed a HUGE DUMPSTER parked outside “the Village” at our Episcopal Day School. That dumpster has already been emptied and returned once at the time of writing this article (so perhaps more than once at the time of reading) and I have no trouble believing that it will go and come again before it leaves us for good in the coming weeks. We have been encouraged to PURGE – PURGE – PURGE from our classrooms and offices – to enjoy a dumpster party - and we have certainly been doing that!

Outdated materials for teaching and learning – handouts and homework from a generation ago – machinery nobody remembers how to operate – “tapes” for which there are no players – etc. etc. – these things and many more began to line our hallways, ready to be carried (rather unceremoniously) to the dumpster. The process was slow at first, because parting with things can be difficult, but once we realized how freeing it felt to unload we could hardly stop ourselves!

There are several parallels in our spiritual lives, I believe. The first and most obvious is the burden of sin. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is an invitation for us to “unload” our sins through true repentance, confession, and amendment of life, and then to be freed in absolution. This is hard work, because we have to name our sins as sins just as I had to name old textbooks as trash, before we can experience the freedom of letting them go.

Another spiritual similarity, I think, is the “unloading” of past hurts and offenses. It is my experience and observation that much of what burdens us in life is made up of “past due” items that we could have been rid of long ago. Good memories and helpful lessons should/could be held on to for as long as they are good for us, but things that have been said/done to offend us just need not be taking up space. Gently “dumping” these would make us all “lighter.”

Finally, let us be rid of our fears! This too is hard work that begins with identifying those things that hold us back because we are overcome by uncertainty and/or insecurity. If our fears could be carried out to the parking lot and thrown into the dumpster, then there would be so much more room for the fullness of life that God in Christ has in store for us.

So … do you want to go to a dumpster party?