Saturday, June 6, 2015

The Magic of Power-Washing

I was reading A. W. Richard's Sipe's "A Secret World" a while back which is about the struggle of Catholic priests to keep their sexual abstinence vow. As it turns out, in his survey only a small number of priests seem to have made peace with their sexual abstinence, a much larger number of respondents either just accepts the struggle within, or are caught in the never-ending battle of temptation, sin and and atonement. I enjoyed reading the solution of one monk who simply said that he needed to "spill the seeds on the floor", to use biblical language, to keep his mental sanity, but that his solution is to do it under the shower. Afterwards, he claims, he always feels clean both physically and mentally; his physical urges are gone and his soul feels clean as well.

Yup, that's the symbolic meaning of washing. I remembered this story as I was power-washing the pool deck this morning. All kind of thoughts and emotions were rushing through my system. My father-in-law lives with us this summer, which always raises the temperature at home by a number of degrees. Big personality changes happen at work as well which has taken a big emotional toll on me. As I reflected on this all, and as I became aware of the anger and all the frustrations that bubbled to the surface, it suddenly occurred to me that I was power-washing. For a moment I wondered, what if this is my soul I am washing clean? What a nice symbolic concept! I returned to my weekend cleaning job with renewed energy, and at the end of it, felt great! 

Do you have a cleaning project coming up? Try the magic of power-washing; it works!

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