"A Bag of Sticks" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

[Memos from Rev. Barbara Merritt and Rev. Tom Schade]

M I N I S T E R ‘ S   M E M O

“A Bag of Sticks”

It was carefully placed in a dark corner of the cellar, a plastic grocery
bag enveloping a paper grocery bag, and inside, full to the brim, were
sticks: ordinary twigs, branches and kindling. I discovered this “treasure”
in my recent expedition into the basement where I am attempting to bring
order out of chaos. No one in the immediate family can recall the specific
science project a child was working on that inspired the careful collection
of small branches. But it must have happened a long, long time ago.

Our basement is where the unwanted, the no longer useable and the broken go
to die. Don’t ask why we don’t just throw out an unrepairable vacuum
cleaner, the damaged lamp, an antique carpet sweeper, or an old trunk of art
from college days that we hauled here from Chicago and never opened. We just
don’t. (We should. I know that we should.) But if it didn’t fit into a
garbage bag and it didn’t even reach the standards of a Good Will donation,
we’d put it down in the basement. Every couple of years a flood or a
building project would require a basic reorganization and cleaning of the
floor space. But sometimes that just meant the corners were more tightly
packed.

This underworld kingdom of laundry, cleaning supplies and the extra
refrigerator has been off-limits to even our most intimate friends. It is
simply storage, workspace and a place where old paint cans live forever. And
so it might have remained, were it not for the law of unintended
consequences.

Last spring, I happily bought at the church auction a tutor. Specifically, a
carpenter. Rick Silva, a talented woodworker, would come to my home and give
me several hours of instruction on my new hobby, working with wood. I have
been anticipating his visit for nearly a year, waiting for my schedule to
lighten up. It was only last week that it occurred to me that the only place
to do woodworking is in our basement. A parishioner will be visiting my
basement? Panic time! Time to clean the basement!

Which is how I discovered the bag of sticks. And this bag of sticks has
given me pause. There’s no use blaming this on the kids. Apparently we are a
whole family of people who don’t easily give things away.

Dante has a circle in Hell for hoarders. Their punishment is to push huge
heavy rocks at those who overspend and squander. They yell at them, “Why do
you waste?” And the wasters yell back, “Why do you hold on so tightly?” The
weights they are attempting to smash one another with are actually worn-down
diamonds.

Commentators on the fourth circle of the Inferno note that both hoarding and
overspending are sins where we have no “respect” for the real worth of
things. While misfortune and luck come to all, hoarders believe that they
can somehow outrun misfortune, and therefore “outrun” God. If you have
enough money in savings, or material goods stashed down in the basement or
in the garage you’ll be in control. Or you’ll think you have some control.
According to Dante, the wrongness of the hoarders is that they “don’t know
how to give and they don’t know how to have.”

What Dante might have missed in describing pushing and pulling against those
heavy rocks is that you can get a good physical workout moving all that
stuff around. I count the recent hours spent organizing the cellar as
aerobic, anaerobic and weight bearing exercise (especially the large heavy
planks of wood.) I took the bag of sticks outside and recycled them on the
forest floor. It’s pretty easy to figure out that if I need more sticks, I’
ll know where to find them.

If my basement shows me that I have a deficiency of faith (that I’ve been
trying to outrun God by holding on to everything,) then I’m hopeful that the
clean-up will be an exercise in trust. Letting go of all the material
clutter may lead the way, not only to a new woodworking hobby, but also to a
new spaciousness. In removing what is unnecessary (and unusable and in the
way) from our minds, as well as from our closets, there is more room to
breathe. There is less need to “outrun” destiny and a greater capacity to
both give and to receive. It’s time to let go of the bag of sticks.
                              Barbara


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