Cleaning out the Bible

SOUL FOOD

“Men live by forgetting. Women live on memories.”

-- T.S. ELIOT

Whether it is true, that men live by forgetting and women live on

memories, I cannot tell you. I suspect the tendencies may not run

that neatly by gender.

If tucking away the stuff of memories, pack-ratting, is any

indication, my friend Lisa and my father are the only people I have

known to hold a candle to me. Maybe it’s something passed on in one’s

genes, like eye color or sound teeth.

Lisa’s mother died before Lisa and I met. But I know, like Lisa,

she was a saver with a taste for nostalgia. Much of what I know of

her I know through what she treasured and kept -- things Lisa has

kept, too.

About 10 years ago a woman I’d met gave me the book “Legacy of a

Pack Rat” by Ruth Bell Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham. The

book is full of tender, encouraging, often funny stories gleaned from

a long, full life. Bell Graham describes them as stories of “how the

Lord’s goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life.”

I suspect the woman who gave me the book meant it to nudge me to

clean out my office and spare bedroom. Oh, if she could see them now.

The introduction in Bell Graham’s book at first seems to support

Eliot’s theory of memories and forgetting. “All that junk [in the

attic] -- just clean it out and burn it. You’ll never use it,” Ruth

writes that Bill often told her.

But a few paragraphs later, a different story emerges.

“Just look at these! The best stuff I’ve ever come across in all

these years since Bible school,” Bill says to Ruth as he pores over

notes, photocopied from his own college notebook and given to him by

people at the Graham Center.

“And where did they happen to get that old notebook?” Ruth asks

him.

I didn’t have to read on to know where; they got it, of course,

from Ruth’s attic.

I know my office and spare room don’t house anything so important

to the world as the stuff in the attic of Billy and Ruth Bell Graham.

And I have to admit things are spilling over into new parts of the

house. I wouldn’t be surprised if my husband sometimes thinks what

Bill Graham said, “All that junk -- just clean it out and burn it.”

So lately I’ve decided to look for some middle ground. I found a

book, “Organizing for the Creative Person: Right-brain styles for

conquering clutter,” to help me. It suggests I break a big,

overwhelming task into smaller, more manageable ones.

“Take a couple minutes to visualize how you will accomplish the

task, how much nicer things will look, and how good you’ll feel in

just 30 minutes,” the book advises.

I chose my Bible.

I know a Bible isn’t a room or even, really, an area. But if you

saw my Bible, you’d give me this break.

I pulled out bookmarks, photos and a tiny prayer card I got in the

mail from a friend on my 44th birthday. “A day hemmed in prayer is

less likely to unravel,” it says. I found more prayer cards,

timelines of the prophets and the archeological periods of

Syria-Palestine, newspaper clippings, magazine snippets and Bible

study notes.

I pulled out letters and postcards, blank Post-it notes used as

placeholders, poems and cartoons -- one that makes me laugh no matter

how often I see it: Two monk scribes sit at a table, glancing up as a

fellow scribe hurries past them. “He’s our new high-speed copier,”

reads the caption.

I slipped the cartoon and the tiny prayer card back into my Bible.

I tossed the blank Post-it notes, an old shopping list and a handful

of newspaper clippings in the trash.

I stacked the other things -- my keepsakes of the Lord’s goodness

and mercy, each tied to a loved one, a time and a place -- in a box

marked “keep.”

My Bible does look much nicer. I can even close it now. Imagine

what I could do with an attic.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].