By Betsy Gonwa, 
File folders, bins, boxes, projects once begun left unfinished, piles in obscure corners, leftovers from someone else’s life or an earlier time in my own. The accumulation is not so much as it could be had I not moved several times over the years and become more particular about what enters through the door of my house (because I am aware of the effort required to send it in the other direction!) But, my attempt to keep the encroachment at bay has been intermittent, and I have been feeling the weight as a burden.
Many have been embracing this slowed down at home time of the pandemic as an opportunity to declutter, me included. I thought it might have let up, but considering I was 12th in a line at the drop off at St. Vincent de Paul last week, I do not think that is the case.
Clearing out the old to make space for the new. That is what I believed I was doing in the spring and the summer. Now I am experiencing, as I move into newness, that the old falls away, like the dried, dead skin of a snake. The molting of the skin occurs regularly in snakes when the old skin is outgrown. It is called shedding or ecdysis. I am identifying with the ecdysis of a snake, as the choices for what to discard are making themselves. It is almost effortless.
What a revelation this is for me! If anyone had suggested this to me last spring, I would not have believed them. It is the ease with which I am letting go that is teaching me this truth. There is no agonizing over what to hold onto and what to let go. Instead, there is clarity.
And now I see how misguided my former way of thinking was. For how could I clean up what was left behind when it was not yet behind me? It is obvious to me now that when I grab onto the new with both hands, there is no hand available for holding on to the old!
Is there some newness that you want to grab onto with both hands?
