STUFF

The Luke 3 lines where John the Baptist says, "...whoever has two shirts should share with someone who has none..."make me think of a recent bestseller.

Here we are, digging for authentic JOY during the Christmas season when there is a book out there telling us to keep only things that "SPARK JOY" and to throw everything else away.

"The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The

Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" by Marie Kondo has been a #1 bestseller for months. $10.19 on Amazon. 6,503 reviews -- most of them favorable.

You keep only items that "Spark Joy." You no longer roll your socks into a tight ball but you lovingly lay them flat, one on top of the other, and you tell them what a good job they've been doing, working hard to keep your feet warm, ...and so on...

You must throw everything away. Put it in black plastic bags and send it to the landfill. No leaving it up for grabs. No giving your joyless stuff to thrift. No passing it along to somebody else (Luke! Lookit!) including someone who actually may be able to use it. (John! You have your work cut out!).

This book says something to people, this idea of decluttering and going Zen with your stuff. I look around this room which is certainly cluttered with about a thousand books just sitting there. I see a wooden machine my granddaughter made in 6th grade. It is the most clever little apparatus: painted orange, big black propeller and a wire that will let it run along an energized third rail.
I will keep this.

I will also keep the model of an oil tanker up there on a high shelf. It is the kind of ship my husband went to sea on after he was kicked out of Columbia for a year after punching Dean?

There is a little jar of multicolored sand from the Negev. Lord. I can't remember who brought it back but it has been on one shelf or another forever. Then I see the glass pyramid-shaped prism with the Kremlin etched in it. That certainly is a treasure and brings JOY because I remember my father-in-law bringing it home from one of his frequent trips behind the Iron Curtain.

Goodness. There is an abacus! How did that get in here? We've had it forever, also, propped up on one bookshelf or another. It has moved around with us. Is it happy in Vermont? Brings JOY? I'll have to think.

This is only one room. It will take me days and weeks to go through everything, applying the SPARK JOY test.  Kondo tells us this is no good. It must happen all at once and it must happen FAST. 

How hard this is, Luke. We have such tortured relationships with stuff. Take the shirt. Don't tell Marie.