Keep your kitchen clean

This morning I found lessons in comparing the importance of keeping a clean thought to keeping a clean kitchen.


I asked, “Why do good cooks keep a clean kitchen?” And answered, “Because they don’t want the food they prepare to be spoiled.”

It’s not safe to prepare food in a filthy kitchen. A conscientious baker doesn’t want to roll out dough on a grimy counter. She doesn’t want to mix batter in dirty bowls, and is not pleased about storing salads and ingredients in a mold harboring refrigerator. It’s not sanitary.

A good cook has the know-how to prepare fabulous meals, but if the environment she has to work in is laden with foreign elements and lurking spores, chances of a final product turning out pure and perfect is greatly diminished.

The human consciousness is like a kitchen environment.


An individual may have the know-how to do great works, but if there are spoilers in the mental environment in which he thinks, the chances of a notable outcome are diminished.


What are the spoilers? They are anger, resentment, ire, grumpiness, selfishness, lack of commitment, distraction, pride and their associates. These negatives kill the leaven, spoil the meat and sour the drink.


We need to keep a clean thought just like we need to keep a clean kitchen.


We can have the best of intentions, but if the mental environment we work in is filled with foreign agents working against out best efforts, the final outcome is in doubt and difficult to achieve.

Before embarking on a major project or prayer, it’s healthy to start with a good scrub-down of thought to clean up the mental premises in which you work. Foreign elements need to be purged, thoughts not coming from God eliminated, and all negative attitudes dumped into the garbage can of no return.

Keep a clean kitchen today—a clean mental environment! And the tasks you perform in that workspace will turn out the best you could hope for.

Keeping out the dust and cobwebs

I’ve been out of my office for two weeks while teaching a class on Christian Science elsewhere in town. During this time, I stopped by to pick up my mail and check on the premises, but otherwise, had no time for regular housekeeping.

Yesterday was my first full day back, and man-o, did I have cleaning to do! It’s amazing how dusty and dirty a place can get in two weeks. Especially in the desert climate I live in.

Do you know what I’m talking about??

I had to pick up fallen leaves from my Fichus plant, vacuum the floor, sweep cobwebs off the outside of my windows, pick up strewn litter on the lawn, dust furniture, and more. I’ll spare telling you about the “more…”

As I cleaned, I thought about how persistent we must be to keep our physical homes clean from gathering dust and cobwebs. We cannot leave a place for an extended period of time and come back expecting to find the premises as sparkling clean as we left them if no attention was given to the place in the meantime. Dust accumulates. Bugs move in and make a home. Plants need to be watered.

And then I thought about how equally persistent we must be to keep our mental home free of gathering dust and cobwebs! It’s a different kind of dust that moves into thought, but equally as offensive. Dusty thinking like apathy, indifference, forgetfulness, lack of spiritual growth, energy and vigor, contribute to an environment of thought that is unpleasant to occupy. A few days of spiritual neglect, and bam-o, we have a mess to clean up!

This summer, with countless people taking vacations, I considered how important it is to not take a mental vacation from proper mental housekeeping while traveling. If we’re tempted to leave prayer behind and stop growing spiritually while sunning on the beach or walking through shops, we might have a mess to clean up when we return home. Mental dust gathers, subtle fears mount, latent worries increase, unless checked by truth.

It might be a whole lot easier to keep the broom of truth sweeping through consciousness moment by moment, even if it requires some spiritual time-outs between tanning sessions, than have to deal with an accumulated mess later on. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” an old proverb states.

That’s what I’m thinking anyway…

Shiny object polisher

I share the following with you which came in from a reader yesterday because the lesson relates to all of us.

When you read it, ask yourself, “How much time do I spend on polishing the shiny objects in my life while ignoring the less bright aspects that need some major cleaning attention?

Here goes…

A son, who is a recent graduate of the Fine Arts in Piano Performance shared with me a term used through out the music department. It is “Shiny-Object-Polisher”. He explained it was the difference between
amateurs and professionals. He ran into this principle every time he worked on a new piece of music. It refers to the reality that in reparing a new work of music that some passages will come along quite quickly and readily while other parts will be more of a struggle.

The tendency is to polish the parts that are easy to make bright and clean in performance and leaving little time for the more difficult passages. The music professors can quickly hear where the lessons learned in performance are already at hand and the student lingers too long in practice on those parts without moving on and spending a greater amount of their study and energy in the areas not nearly as “shiny”.

He went on to explain that he learned the value of going directly to the most difficult passages of a practice piece and spending nearly all of his time there. Thus, not allowing the easier portions of the musical piece to distract from learning the needed lessons of the day.

I now look at my own day to see where I dedicate the major portion of my time and energy. Is it with the projects that are Shiny-Object-Polishing? Or do I go directly to the less attractive tasks and put my energy into them?

While the tendency is to shy away from the more arduous undertakings, yet the greater personal development comes from the less than shiny endeavors right in front of me. And now I find gratitude for those tasks.

So, what less than shiny tasks do you have before you today that need some vigorous metaphysical scrubbing attention?

Living an uncluttered life

My wife panics when I get into a serious cleaning mode. I don’t like clutter. I easily part with things that sit around unused. I can sort through a closet jammed with clothes, books, trinkets, and other dust-catching objects and discard the majority of it with ease leaving clean sparsely covered shelves behind to hold the items we really need.

My wife doesn’t have a problem with getting rid of material possessions. That’s her mantra too. She’s just worried I’ll throw out the wrong things. Like “her” things! Aw, the price we pay to keep a light load around the household.… We make a good team.

In his article, “The ‘Real’ Simple Life,” Matt Bell describes a sentiment many people are discovering these days as they work to live an uncluttered existence.

He wrote,

Not long ago, a good friend went through his closet and gave away literally half of his clothes. Rather than missing the items, he feels a new sense of freedom.

In a recent Town & Country magazine article, Jane Hammerslough
describes a similar experience. A roof repair gone wrong forced her family to frantically pack what they could and move to a small, sparsely furnished rental house for six months. She writes of their surprise that they didn't miss much of what they had left behind. Rather than feeling depressed or deprived due to their "hideous living room" and "mismatched plates," they felt liberated. And when they returned home, she felt "overwhelmed by the utter excess of stuff." A purging of things soon followed. She concluded that "when 'enough' is always just a little more than you already have, you don't have a lot of room left for the truly great pleasures of life: family, friends, and the time to enjoy them.

He ends with the summary

In our materialistic, marketing-saturated world, simplicity isn't, well, so simple. But as Richard Foster points out, it begins on the inside with the attitudes of our hearts and minds. And those attitudes are cultivated through prayer and meditation on the truth of God's Word.

I recommend reading the whole article. It’s very enlightening on how to catch the spirit of living a truly simple life.

It's easier to stay clean

A high-profile lobbyist in Washington DC named Jack Abramoff recently pleaded guilty to three felony counts. His up-coming testimony threatens to end careers of several members of Congress associated with his shady dealings, plus land himself in prison and end a high-flying career.

“The way of transgressors is hard,” the Bible reminds us. His plight reminds us it’s much easier to stay out of trouble then to restore one’s reputation and integrity once its been ruined.

Selfishness, greed and lack of respect may tempt some power players to ignore sound ethical choices at times, but the good news is we don’t have to give into temptation. God is the source of everything good we need to live a happy prosperous life. We don’t have to compromise with evil to prosper and do well. The trade-offs aren’t worth it. We can resist wrong and do what God wants us to do in the first place.