Defining out real treasures in life

SOUL FOOD

“Is it not time that I lost a few things, when I care for them so

unreasonably?”

-- GEORGE MACDONALD

My column last week on pack-ratting hit home with some and hit a

nerve in others. I am sure there are people in this world who are

untouched or indifferent to pack-ratting, but I didn’t hear from

them.

Mostly I heard from fellow keepers who have reached their limit

with stuff -- and more stuff -- and are now attempting to purge. They

read the column as commiseration and were glad for it.

I also heard from people bound by blood or marriage to someone who

does the keeping. They read the column and told me, “You said it! All

that junk, just get rid of it.” But I must remind them; it was Billy

Graham who said that -- to his wife Ruth. She ignored him, and good

things came of it.

I heard from one professional organizer who asked me to keep her

in mind if I ever got serious about putting things in order. I am

certain she could help me tidy my house, but that would not, I am

just as certain, cure what ails me.

The responses I got to the column got me thinking more about

stuff. Why, I wondered, do we become so endeared to it and have a

hard time letting it go?

Packrat or not, most people I know have things they could hardly

stand to lose.

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have an answer to the question:

What would you grab if your house were on fire? Most people have a

tough time limiting the list to what would fit in a full-size car.

As I considered my own attachment to stuff, I came across a few

sentences George Macdonald wrote on the subject and it struck me that

he was on to something.

Macdonald lived in the late 19th century, and I can’t conceive

what he might make of our 21st century, equipped as it is with

professional organizers and a self-storage unit boom to house all the

stuff we never touch in a year, yet pay good money to hold onto.

“When I trouble myself over a trifle, even a trifle confessed --

the loss of some little article, say -- spurring my memory, and

hunting the house, not from immediate need, but from dislike of loss,

is it not time that I lost a few things, when I care for them so

unreasonably?” Macdonald reflected.

This made me think of what Jesus said to a rich young ruler in his

day. Go, Jesus told him, and sell all your stuff and give to the

poor. The young ruler, the story tells us, went away grieved “for he

had great possessions.”

It is not simply having an abundance of things that encumbers us,

though. As Macdonald and Jesus each rightly perceived, it is caring

for whatever things we have “so unreasonably.”

Jesus told those who would follow him, “Take heed, for one’s life

does not consist in the abundance of the things you possess. Where

your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Macdonald saw the losing of things as “the mercy of God.” It

teaches us, he said, to let things go, even thoughts we cherish too

much.

“Have I forgotten a thought that came to me, which seemed of the

truth?” he wrote. “I keep trying and trying to call it back, feeling

a poor man until that thought be recovered -- to be far more lost,

perhaps, in a notebook into which I shall never look again to find

it! I forget that it is live things that God cares about.”

Some months ago, one of my favorite Sunday cartoon strips, “For

Better or For Worse,” told the story of an elderly woman moving from

her lifetime home to an assisted-living apartment. She was giving up

a great many very fine possessions, and a friend expressed his

dismay.

“These?” she replied, “These are just things. People are my

treasures now.”

From God’s heart to her mouth.

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

can be reached at [email protected].