大象传媒

From the Reverend Kate Bottley:

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A much talked about Japanese way of tidying up has hit the Bottley household. If you鈥檙e not familiar with the practice it involves only keeping the items that spark joy, but before you consign your 20 year old magazines to the recycling bin, the tidying up gurus implore you to thank each item.

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And so this past week I鈥檝e found myself crawling in cupboards, weeding out wardrobes and sorting out sock drawers.听 I dutifully said 鈥榯hank you鈥� to each one as I consigned them to the bin or the recycling.听 To be honest, I felt a bit self-conscious.听 And that doesn鈥檛 happen very often.听

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But in one desk I found an old collection of orders of service from weddings, christenings and funerals going back to the days when I first collared up.

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I smiled as I remembered the nervous groom who accidentally turned up in odd shoes and all the babies who slept through their baptisms, and the ones who didn鈥檛. And I teared up at the funeral orders of service photographs of treasured loved ones, and just below their name, two dates, the year of birth and the year of death. But what I noticed, that I never had before, was that between those two dates was a little dash, connecting the two, and it struck me that tiny little line means an awful lot and represents so much to be thankful for.

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Lives well lived, laughter shared, momentous moments, dances danced, songs sung and countless connections with other fabulous life enriching humans, all held in that little dash between two dates.

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The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible wrote 鈥業 know that there is nothing better for people to be happy and do good while they live, that each may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their work, this is the gift of God.鈥�

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So while I agree with the tidying up mantra that I need to be grateful for the stuff I own, surely what really sparks joy is the gift of life itself, and despite it not always being as neat and tidy as I hoped it might be, our life line, is to be lived and rejoiced in, embraced and encountered.听 Now that really is something to be thankful for and arguably considerably more joyful than a sorted-out sock drawer.

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