A recurring theme: All Clean

It doesn't take long in Japan to notice cleanliness is quite important. The streets are clean, the subways are clean, no shoes in the house, epic baths...it's fabulous. Clean.

As I strolled around my old neighborhood soaking up the familiar back-streets, checking out new construction projects, and attempting to show jet-lag who's boss, I noticed a new addition to the local Shinto shrine: smiling old ladies carefully doing a choreographed walk through and around this large ring of grass.

I learned this week is a special week for half-way-through-the-year purification: for health, good luck, and to wipe away any misdeeds from the past 6 months. To get clean.

I hear a friend practicing organ as I write this, composing. As musicians we work hard to get notes in their places. We want it to communicate well, we want to tell a story. Even in a "messy" story, we usually want the chords and melodic lines precise. Clean.

I spent this morning with a missionary friend/mentor, chatting and catching up on a year of life as we wiped the ash and soot from the recent volcanic eruption (miles away) from her apartment windows. Ahhh, clean. And we talked about complicated relationships and brokenness and sin in both our eastern and western "homes", and we looked forward to the perfect "clean" of our true but-not-quite-yet Home.

When I'm in the US, people often ask about religions, "felt needs", and values in Japan. So... this one's for you! This is one of those shrines, and one of the deepest desires: to be clean, inside and out.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 
(1 John 3:2-3)