Stuff

These last few days packing and moving has been a part of my work.  I have been sorting and packing books and cards and papers, deciding what to toss and what to save, trying to put things in boxes in at least a semi-organized manner.

Sometimes I stop to look, to read, to remember.  I stop before packing a book that I bought, but haven't read, and I think, "Maybe I will read it now."  I stop to look at a random photograph, a picture taken after a baptism, or during Vacation Bible School one year.  I stop in the middle of sorting a box of cards, to read a thank you note from a child:  "Thank you for helping me cut my pancakes."  I remember then, the "lunch with a pastor" rewards given to students for Sunday School attendance.

I have a lot of stuff.

I have a lot of children's books, I observe.  I did not get these in seminary.  I decide I am going to keep all of these, though they are heavy.  I also have most all of my seminary books still, and my notes.   have sermons.  I have lesson plans.  I have knick-knacks too.  What should I keep?

This is what happens in life.  You accumulate.  At least I do.  Some you accumulate on purpose, and some by accident, just because it goes into a corner and you don't think of it again for a long time.  And then, someday, you move and you consider the weight of all of that stuff.  What it means.  What it costs.  The memories held in the middle of the stuff.  There are different kinds of weights.

One piece of advice I got with regard to leaving my congregation:  Attend to the relationships.  Make time for people.  I think it is good advice.  But there is a hard deadline to be out of the office.

I would much rather be visiting people, talking to them on the phone, having coffee, than sorting stuff in my office.  I would much rather spend all of my time with people than with stuff, except for the time when I see some old confirmation student doodling and memories flood back in.

I wonder if, in the next leg of the journey, I can somehow design my life so that I can spend more time with people than with stuff.  I would like moving to be easier, to be able to pick out and pick up the most important stuff, even to know what it is, and then to spend more time with people, with the people I will leave, with the people I want to remember.

The Destination, Not the Journey

So, I have been called to a new congregation, in a new city, in a new state, some distance away from the city and state where I live and serve right now.  I have a few weeks left in my current position, a handful of weeks of vacation (so to speak), and then I begin.

I begin to meet people and drive on roads I have never driven on before.  I begin to write new sermons and ask new questions and meet a community and probably get lost.

In the meantime, I am here.  I am calling moving companies and figuring out what will go first with me and what will go later.  I am getting pictures and imagining apartments and trying to make decisions.  I am making lists (fix car, get new glasses, close checking account).

And the lovely sentiment, "it's the journey, not the destination" occurs to me, except that on this occasion I do not consider it lovely.  I am not loving the journey.

I want to be there.  I want to be there, with the furniture all moved in and the washer and dryer hooked up and all of my books on the shelves and the vase from Japan in the entry.  I want to be there, meeting the children and reading them stories, going to the hospital, drinking sweet tea with a new friend, asking questions, finding a new road.

I want to be there.  And, I want to be here.  I want to be here, doing crossword puzzles and going to restaurants with my husband,  seeing my friends one more time, having coffee with my mother, going up to the Falls with my dog, getting left-handed knitting help at the shop that I love best.  I want to be here, making sure I notice the beauty that I have taken for granted, because I was always on the way somewhere.

Is this "journey, not the destination" thing in the Bible?  Oh, I know, there are a lot of journeys in the Bible, including those forty years in the wilderness, where the Israelites ate manna and quail and prepared to enter the promised land.  But the promised land WAS the point, wasn't it?  It was the destination, not the journey.

Or, maybe the wilderness was a destination too.

So, I breathe deeply (my new spiritual discipline) and try to be there, in the mess, in the lists and the packing and the coffee with friends, in the crossword puzzles and conversations:  here, there, and in between.