What We Keep, What We Carry

Hi folks, i hope you are doing ok and that you have had a good summer? We are meeting at 7.30 at the Enigma Tap on Sunday night, it would be great to see you.

People keep asking about my summer. It’s been a good one, although our holiday is just about to start as everyone else heads back to work.

But this summer has been different.

For 55 years, one particular house was home.

It was the place my mum lived, and in one way or another, it was part of the landscape of my life. It was the backdrop to childhood, family gatherings, ordinary days, difficult days, laughter, arguments, celebrations and all the countless small moments that make up a life.

Recently, I had to say goodbye to that home as Mum moved into care.

You might think that clearing a house after 55 years would mostly be a practical exercise. What do we keep? What can be given away? What needs throwing out? What can be sold?

But it quickly becomes clear that you aren’t simply sorting through things.

You are sorting and sifting through countless memories.

And memories are remarkably good at hiding inside ordinary objects.

A photograph can suddenly take you somewhere you haven’t been for decades. A particular mug can remind you of someone sitting at the kitchen table. A piece of furniture can carry the memory of countless conversations. Something that has almost no financial value can feel completely impossible to part with.

And then there are the things that make you wonder why on earth anyone kept them in the first place!

After 55 years, a house accumulates things. Lots of things. Things kept because they might be useful one day. Things inherited from someone else. Things bought for a particular occasion. Things that haven’t been used for years but somehow still seem important.

It made me think about the strange relationship we have with possessions.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells a story about a man whose harvest is so plentiful that he doesn’t have enough room to store it. His solution is to pull down his barns and build bigger ones. He imagines that if he can accumulate enough, he will have everything he needs for the future.

Jesus’ story isn’t simply about having too many possessions. It seems to be asking a deeper question:

What do we think our possessions can give us?

Security? Identity? Comfort? Control? A sense that we have somehow managed to hold life together?

Perhaps that’s why clearing a family home can be so emotional. We discover that we don’t simply keep things because they are useful. We keep things because they connect us to people, places and moments.

We aren’t always keeping the object.

Sometimes we’re keeping the memory.

A photograph isn’t valuable because of the paper it is printed on.

A child’s drawing isn’t valuable because of its artistic merit.

An old jumper isn’t valuable because of its resale price.

They matter because of the stories they hold.

And this is where the question of letting go becomes complicated.

Can we let go of something without letting go of the memory attached to it?

I think we can.

But that doesn’t necessarily make it easy.

There can be sadness, gratitude, relief, frustration, laughter and grief, sometimes all within the same afternoon.

When Mum moved into care, there was a sense of knowing that this was the right thing to do, alongside the sadness of what was being lost. The house was still standing, but the life that had filled it for 55 years was changing.

Perhaps this is one of the strange forms of grief that life sometimes gives us. Nobody has necessarily died, but something has nevertheless come to an end.

The home we knew is no longer quite the same.

And our emotions don’t always behave themselves.

We can be grateful and sad.

Relieved and heartbroken.

Ready to move forward and still desperately nostalgic.

The Bible is actually really good at making room for such contradictions. The Psalms don’t demand that we tidy ourselves up before we speak to the divine. They give us words for joy and anger, hope and despair, gratitude and grief.

Perhaps we need that permission when we think about home. Because a home can contain all sorts of things.

Love and irritation.

Laughter and arguments.

Birth and death.

Security and uncertainty.

Celebration and disappointment.

A house can hold a whole life… if these walls could speak?!

But eventually, we have to let go.

This is perhaps where Jesus’ story challenges us.

The man builds bigger barns because he thinks the answer is to keep more. Yet Jesus invites us to consider another kind of richness in v: being “rich toward God.” (Luke 12:21)

What if the measure of a life isn’t ultimately how much we manage to store?

What if it is what we have given, loved, remembered and shared?

What if the things that matter most are precisely the things we can’t put into boxes?

A photograph might be lost, but the story remains.

A house might be emptied, but the love that happened there doesn’t disappear.

A chair might be given away, but the conversations that happened around it remain part of us.

Perhaps this is the difference between what we keep and what we carry.

We cannot keep everything.

We cannot keep every possession.

We cannot preserve every place.

We cannot stop time.

But we can carry something with us…  Stories. People. Love. Wisdom. Laughter. Loss. Faith. Memory.

And perhaps this is part of what faith means.

The Bible is full of people who have to leave home. Abraham leaves his family and his familiar surroundings. The Israelites wander through the wilderness. Jesus himself spends much of his ministry on the road, meeting people in borrowed spaces, around tables, beside lakes and in other people’s homes.

The biblical story reminds us that home isn’t always a permanent address.

Home can be a person.

A community.

A collection of memories.

A sense of belonging.

And perhaps, ultimately, home is something we carry.

There is a beautiful image in John’s Gospel where we are told that the Word became flesh and “lived among us”. The language has the sense of the divine pitching a tent among us.

The Divine doesn’t simply meet us in permanent, perfect places.

The Divine travels.

The Divine makes a home among us.

So perhaps when the familiar places change, we haven’t necessarily lost everything.

The house can be emptied.

The furniture can be moved.

The rooms can become someone else’s.

But the stories remain.

The love remains.

The people who shaped us remain part of who we are.

And perhaps the Divine remains too.

The emptying of a home can remind us that life is constantly asking us to make space. Some things have to be released, while other things are worth holding onto. Memories can remain even when the objects that carried them have gone. Love can continue even when the place where it was lived out is no longer ours.

Perhaps what matters is not so much what we manage to keep, but what we choose to carry with us: the people, the stories, the love, the wisdom, the laughter and even the losses that have shaped us.

Some things we leave behind.

Some things we remember.

And some things become part of who we are as we move into whatever comes next.

Peace Rob

Questions

• What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found hiding at home, and why did you keep it?
• What makes somewhere feel like home?
• What’s a favourite memory connected to a particular home or place?
• Why do we find some things so hard to let go of?
• What is Jesus challenging us about in the story of the bigger barns?\
• What makes saying goodbye to a place so emotional?
• When we leave a place behind, what do we carry with us?

Photo: Rob Wylie