some of you might have felt a little sorry for me when you read “host a make-your-own-pizza night” on my fantasy to do list. “poor mary allison,” you must have thought. “while everybody else is fantasizing about world travel, lottery money, and fame, this poor, unimaginative girl is dreaming of pizza!”

well, last night, andy and i hosted a make-your-own-pizza night, and i am here to tell you that it was indeed worthy of fantasy, thanks to the recipe for home-made crust, perfected and given to me by my friend, mary.

mary’s recipe was simple and incredibly delicious, and the good news is that she’s given me permission to share it!

thanks to mary for putting in the hard work of perfecting the process so that morons like me can have first-time success. i’m off to eat the leftovers for lunch. yum!

following the daily email directives of the re[frame] productivity system for creative people  has helped me to organize and prioritize what was once a rain cloud of to-do’s that floated above me, casting down ominous threats.

now, the cloud is gone, and in place of it, i have this cute little box and this set of stacking shelves. no more hail storms of balls inadvertently dropped.

but this life of organization comes with a price. i used to be able to ignore the cloud for stretches of blissfully ignorant time. i am now acutely aware of what needs to be done. now that i’m committed to a daily study of the radar, i miss setting out for a picnic without the slightest notion of torrential downpour…

…but not enough to turn back.

the problem is, i’ve passed the halfway marker now, and my re[frame] emails have moved beyond the kind of concrete directives that have inspired me to organize corners of my house, clean out my email in boxes, and develop a bizarre obsession with note cards. i am now encouraged to brainstorm about what version of myself i would most like to be, what kinds of things act as barriers in this process, and what life changes i could make to facilitate a more centered way of being.

these second-tier questions are precisely the kinds of questions i LOVE! i ask them repeatedly in my work as a minister. it is not that i am negating their importance. it’s just that i’m still organizing corners of my house, cleaning out my email in boxes, and clinging tightly to my note cards. i cannot possibly think about organizing my vision of the future until i organize this and other proverbial visions of my present life:

but as you can see, i AM making progress.

so, i’m taking a week or so off from new challenges and questions so that i can keep up the foundational work. and because organizing my “to do’s” has taught me that i simply have too much to do, i think i need to pare down a bit before i can enter the next phase. i’ve got to dead head the rose bushes so other blooms can grow.

oh, that reminds me. i’ve got to literally dead head those rose bushes. excuse me while i jot that down on a note card…

remember this picture?

yes, this is my office. she looks like this all the time, not just when she wakes up in the morning. i guess i could soften this image with explanations about how my little bird builds nests around himself on the floor of this space with the contents of my purse, or how this room is right by the back door and has become a popular place to shed clothes, packages, et cetera upon entering the house. but it’s too late. you have already seen my kitchen.

you know how i roll.

for the next sixty days, i am putting myself through the re[frame] program, a “productivity system that is built specifically for creative people.”  two of my friends have employed this system and are now downright evangelical about it, so i went to the website last thursday and paid the sign-up fee of $42. later that day, i purchased the required school supplies (note cards, labels, and among other things, a shredder!). now the creators of re[frame], heather jassy and jodi carter, send me daily emails that tell me to sort the stuff on my desk into piles labeled “DO, FILE, IDEAS, and DELEGATE,” for example.

so far, i’m having fun, and i no longer have the urge to don a hazmat suit upon entering my office. i’m also starting to see things differently. i enter my closet and think about how exciting it would be to receive an email telling me to box up all the maternity clothes. last night, as i was getting a fork from our toothpick-infested silverware drawer (the monkey is to thank for that one), i fantasized about a directive in my in-box reading, “and now it’s time to liberate your forks, knives, and spoons from toothpick explosion debris.”

in case heather and jodi don’t cover these types of things in re[frame], i went ahead and cleaned the drawer. already, i feel better.

look out, world. there is no telling what’s going to happen with all of this creativity once it isn’t crumpled under a pile of maternity clothes, toothpicks, and un-filed papers. maybe i’ll find the cure for the common cold! at this point, i’d settle for being able to find my keys.

in light of yesterday’s post about the state of my kitchen,

i thought i’d string a few words together about housekeeping.

my parents, sibling, college roommate, husband, children, and friends know that i was simply born without the part of the brain that exhibits concern over the disorder of physical space and provides impetus to clean with tornadic vigor. this is unfortunate for reasons depicted above. i would argue, though, that this weakness is turning out to be a gift now that i am a parent, who is regularly called to tolerate not only my own personal chaos but that of the three other males (and four, if you count the dog), who live in my house.

but some messes, like the one in my kitchen yesterday, are magnaimous enough to defeat even my inner slob. and on those rare occasions, i have no choice but to put on some loud music, go against my very nature, and CLEAN. thanks to these words in barbara brown taylor’s an altar in the world, i am beginning to see that there is a special sort of dignity to be found in scraping smushed strawberries off the floor with my fingernail:

“i no longer call such tasks housework. i call them the domestic arts, paying attention to all the ways they return me to my senses. when the refrigerator has nothing in it but green onions that have turned to slime and plastic containers full of historic leftovers, i know my art is languishing. when i cannot tell whether that is a sleeping cat or an engorged dust ball under my bed, i know that i have been spending too much time thinking. it is time to get down on my knees. after i have spent a whole morning ironing shirts, folding linens, rubbing orange-scented wax into wood, and cleaning dead bugs out of the light fixtures, i can hear the whole house purring for the rest of the afternoon. i can often hear myself singing as well, satisfied with such simple, domestic purpose.

…this is my practice, not yours, so please feel free to continue calling such work utter drudgery. the point is to find something that feeds your sense of purpose, and to be willing to look low for that purpose as well as high. it may be chopping wood and it may be running a corporation. whatever it is, perhaps you will hold open the possibility that doing it is one way to learn what it means to become more fully human, as you press beyond being good to being good for something, in a world with the perfect job for someone like you” (120).

now let’s be honest. i’m not much into ironing, and the bugs in my light fixtures are there to stay. but after yesterday’s (eventual) kitchen cleanup, i could almost hear our house purring. i’ve been trained to look for meaning in sacred texts, good conversation, masters degree programs, and travels to far lands. but there is a lot of truth to be found when i’m on my knees, bringing order out of chaos within the four walls of our fabulously messy house.

[the source for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]