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Rev. Thomas Disrud

First Unitarian Church

May 16, 1999

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A few weeks back, I found myself standing in the middle of my basement. I knew that I had to do something with all the stuff down there. I’ve lived in the house for almost three years, and during that time I’ve been doing a lot of work on the house. During this process, I’ve never paid much attention to the basement. I just put everything down there that didn’t have someplace else to go or that I did not want part with. Old curtains, boxes—lots of boxes, paint cans, furniture, flower pots, stuff from every chapter of my life. You name it.

 

Well, now I have to figure out what to do with all this stuff. In a couple days, work will begin full bore on a remodel of my kitchen. This means that an electrician, a plumber, a gas installer and a carpenter were all due and that they will have to be able to get around in the basement to do their work. As I look around, all I could see is stuff. There were not many paths to be seen. It is my job to create some.

 

Suddenly, I see before me the results of my tendency to save things. I could see that the proverbial chickens were coming home to roost. It is good I have a deadline this time, or I probably would put it off longer.

 

I pull up my sleeves and plunge in. I start putting things in piles. Recycling. Goodwill. Dump. Save.

 

I’m moving right along, making progress. But then I start coming along things that I’m not sure what to do with. That old stereo cabinet. It was my first stereo, after all. I hate to part with the stand, even though it is made of particle board, even though I haven’t used it for at least 10 years. Of course you never know. There might be a use for it someday.

 

Oh, and that old curtain material. It pretty ratty. But still, might find a use for it someday.

 

I keep wondering if I will get some Martha Stewart like vision about how to turn such things magically into useful, practical items. I don’t think that is going to happen.

 

It takes a few hours, and lots of dust is stirred up, but in the end I’m proud of the piles a see before me.

 

The basement now has some room to move in. I feel like I have taken a big step. I’ve at least made progress. My spirit feels lighter.

 

I know that there is another round in the future when I will try to decide the fate of all that stuff that I wasn’t quite ready to part with. I put it all in neat piles and stack it up. It is there and someday I’ll have to deal with it.

 

That day, I know, will come.

 

It seems that each year when spring rolls around, I have the urge to clean things up and sort things out. I want to throw the things away that I no longer need. Those piles of magazines, some read, many unread. I want to make things more tidy and I want to get rid of the dust I see.

 

Of course this year, spring has been a little harder to discern given our less-than average temperatures. This year has not so much felt like spring as a slightly warmer version of winter. I guess I’m lucky that I had other reasons to clean out the basement.

 

Spring cleaning is a ritual I go through each year. When I look at what I’ve accumulated over time, I wonder how I did that. I ask myself why. How did I get into this place anyhow. What, exactly, was I thinking when I bought that thing?

 

There is a comfort in having stuff around. I’ve always been a pack rat. I’ve always had a hard time getting rid of things.

 

My parents grew up during the depression and I think that I inherited from them an uncertainty about what the future might bring. It seems wasteful to get rid of stuff, even if it sits in the attic for years and years. Who knows what use I’ll have for them someday? I’d hate to have to go out and buy something again. It’s probably better to just hang on to it. This is particularly true as I have more room in the house. I find the amount of stuff I save is directly proportional to the amount of space I have to store it in.

 

Accumulating stuff is part of our culture, it seems. We are certainly encouraged to do so by most of the messages we see. I hate it when I see an ad for something and suddenly I find myself thinking that I could use the product, even though I’m just fine without it.

 

Most of us have things we like to collect and hang onto. It may be books, or CDs or stuff for our kids. It may be not using stuff for long and then getting rid of it.

 

If I’m able to look underneath this, I think we’re often trying to fill some void we feel in our lives. If I consume, the messages tell me, I can fill that void. The problem is it doesn’t happen, and perhaps the void will feel even worse.

What we can end up with is a bunch of stuff we don’t need. We just fill up space with it. And then we don’t know what to do. I’ve read that we only use about 20 percent of the stuff we have regularly. The other 80 percent we use only occasionally, if at all. That is a lot of stuff we probably don’t really need.

 

We fill up with stuff in many ways. It takes many forms.

 

I like to go to estate sales. I remember going and liking them as a child. I still occasionally go now.

 

There’s a whole culture about these sales that is fascinating. Early in the morning, people line up to get their numbers, sometimes in the cold and rain. The regulars are usually there first, and they know each other by name. They catch up on the comings and goings of other sales around town and the great deals they have come across.

 

Of course this is a pretty serious business for some. There is almost a sporting element in who can get the best deals on goods. The difference between being No. 1 in line and No. 5 can make a big difference.

 

The thing that I find the most fascinating about estate sales is when I try to imagine the person who accumulated this interesting assortment of stuff. Going into someone’s home and seeing all their stuff on display is a fascinating thing. You can usually tell quickly which era the person did most of their shopping in.

 

The doors open and the first people head into the house and they head for the loot. They place tags on the things they want. People head for closets of linens and start sorting through it. It is every shopper for themselves.

 

Everytime I’m in the middle of this, I think of that scene from the musical "Les Miserables." All the beggars are in the gutters of Paris at the time of the French Revolution, and everyone is scrounging for whatever it is they can find. They try to sell anything they have just to eat.

 

Our modern estate sales may be the equivalent.

 

In these conditions people sometime collapse either because they’ve died or because they are so ill they can no longer stand. When this happens, the others circle the body and remove any valuables. There is no time to loose.

 

Sometimes I feel a certain sadness when I’m at a sale. It seems that a person’s life is reduced to this dissolution of their belongings. There is little regard for how long it has taken to accumulate the things and the ways they were cared for. They are simply scarfed up. Of course, I look at myself and realize that I’m one of the zealous scarfers.

 

It does make me wonder sometimes about how much stuff I really want to accumulate and what I would like to have happen to it someday.

 

More and more now I try to imagine that before I buy things that I really don’t need.

 

I once met a woman who, when she was in her 20s, lived in New York. She felt like she had made it. She got some good roles in the theater and supported herself comfortably. She had a wonderful apartment. She took great joy in surrounding herself with beautiful things. Her apartment was full.

 

One day, a fire destroyed her building and she lost everything. All of her possessions were gone except for a few pearls that were part of a necklace her uncle had given her. She was devastated.

 

She is now in her 50s and says the fire was a turning point in her life. She wishes it hadn’t happened, but it changed the way she looks at things. Now she has possessions, but she is not connected to belongings like she used to be. In fact, her home is furnished pretty sparingly.

 

She said the fire, like it does in a forest, opened up her life and made room for new things to grow. Yes, she still has things that are very precious to her, but she is very conscious about the meaning of things and still doesn’t like to hold on to too many things—just a few that are the most valuable to her.

 

She told me the fire forced her to trust more—not in the security of objects, but in the fact that something would be there, that the loss of the apartment would open up other possibilities, and it did.

 

She no longer wants to cram things into her life as much as enjoy what she has and be happy with that. She wants to make sure that she has room for new things and new people to enter, and to be able to enjoy them and to see what new lessons there are to learn.

 

If making room for something new means letting go of something old, we may not want to do that. There may be lots of reasons for hanging on to baggage.

 

If we get rid of stuff, will we also be losing symbols of past relationships, past experiences, past lives? Maybe by hanging on to stuff, we can also hang on to those times?

 

If I get rid of stuff, will I have room for new things in my life, and do I really want those things? Maybe that is a little too scary. I’m comfortable just the way I am.

 

Maybe the business of stuff allows me not to look at deeper issues I’ve been avoiding. Maybe I don’t want to go there.

 

I’m currently reading a book on how to get better organized, and one of the stories it tells is of a woman who had to move out of her apartment and into a hotel because it go so cluttered up with stuff. Suzanne had boxes of papers and books and magazines that covered every possible surface in the apartment including sofas and chairs, the bathtub and the stove. There was nowhere to walk or to sit. She had to call in someone for help.

 

Seems that underneath all this, in the drawers and closets, things were perfectly arranged and in perfect order.

 

Turns our her husband had died eight years earlier and she had not had the heart to disassemble the life they had lived together, so she just tried to build her new life on top of the old one. Eventually, that didn’t work. She had to live one life, not two. To do that she had to move on from the old life.

 

We accumulate stuff for many reasons. Getting rid of it may be easier for some than for others. If we can’t get rid of it immediately, it may be we have to start by moving it to a new place. Maybe the next time we clear it out, we will be ready to let go.

 

It may also mean getting clearer about what our priorities are and trying to understand why we’re hanging on to things. We probably know why, we just have to listen to what that reason is. From there we need to set our priorities.

 

A man was talking to a group of high-powered overachievers. He stopped his presentation and said, "Okay, time for a quiz." Then he pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed mason jar and set it on a table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, "Is this jar full?" Everyone in the class said, "Yes."

 

Then he said, "Really?" He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks. Then he smiled and asked the group once more, "Is the jar full?" By this time the class was onto him. "Probably not", one of them answered. "Good", he replied.

 

And he reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, "Is this jar full?" The class shouted, "No". Once again he said, "Good"…

 

Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked up at the class and asked, "What is the point of this illustration?"

 

One eager beaver raised his hand and said, "The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more things into it".

 

"No," said the instructor, "that’s not the point."

 

Knowing what the big rocks are in our lives, and putting them first may not always be easy if we are distracted by too many things to choose from. If we have too much stuff around, it may be harder to see.

 

The big rocks have to come first.

 

If we are able to keep our eyes and ears open, the world puts us in situations that helps us see things more clearly.

 

Last Sunday afternoon, Marilyn Sewell and I went to see Karl Bach, Sr. He was in bed. Oxygen was helping him to breath. In the last months, he was in steady decline.

 

He was a month away from turning 91 years old. His life as a minister was rich and full. He was ordained way back in 1933 in Boston. He served churches around the country. He was the affiliated minister of this church since 1970, when he retired and moved to Portland.

 

Visiting Karl was always a pleasure. He loved to talk about his ministry, his gardening, his 65 years of marriage to his wife Margaret, who he would always refer to as his bride.

 

But on this day he was not as talkative. Now his time was short. This man, who was very strong willed, yet loving and compassionate, now lay in his bed, his eyes gently closed and gently weeping. He didn’t seem afraid of dying. He was ready to go. Content with the life he had.

 

He seemed at peace and very much in the moment.

 

Karl died two days later, in peace.

 

In this time and in this place, the possessions we have don’t seem very important. They seem, on the contrary, like distractions.

 

Being with Karl, I have a sense that he had gotten though the clutter and now was there, at peace.

 

The important things in life quickly come into focus.

 

Words of Thich Nhat Hahn:

 

The good news is that you are alive,

that the linden tree is still there,

standing firm in the harsh winter.

The good news is that you have wonderful eyes

to touch the blue sky.

The good news is that your child is there before you,

and your arms are available:

hugging is possible.

The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,

smiling its wondrous smile,

singing the song of eternity.

Listen! You have ears that can hear it.

Bow your head.

Listen to it.

Leave behind the world of sorrow

and preoccupation

and get free.

The latest good news

is that you can do it.

 

May this be our good news. May it be so. Amen.

 

Let us pray. Great spirit of life, we give thanks for all that is our life, for all we have, for all those in our midst, for all those things we treasure. May we be ever present to those blessings. May we make a space to be able to see what is most important and live our lives in serve of that vision. May we walk humbly, open to the spirit, and where it might lead us. When we are afraid, may we know that we do not stand alone, but in the circle of love. May that love hold us and guide us in all of our days. Amen.

 

Benediction: Friends, always take out the garbage, Make room for the spirit to enter. Go now in love and go in peace. Amen.

 

 

Opening words from Shel Silverstein, children’s author and artist, who died this past week.

 

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout

Would not take the garbage out!

She’d scour the pots and scrape the pans,

Candy the yams and spice the hams,

And though her daddy would scream and shout,

She simply would not take the garbage out.

At last the garbage reached so high

That finally it touched the sky.

And all the neighbors moved away,

And none of her friends would come to play.

And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,

"OK, I’ll take the garbage out!"

But then, of course, it was too late…

The garbage reached across the state,

From New York to the Golden Gate.

And there, in the garbage she did hate,

Poor Sarah met her awful fate,

That I cannot right now relate

Because the hour is much too late.

But children, remember Sarah Stout

And always take the garbage out!

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Copyright Ó 1999, Rev. Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.