Attachment

As I have already mentioned, we have been trying to sort and organize two houses worth of stuff into one house, with the useful and the sentimental being retained, while extra items are finding their way to the give-away pile. This stuff may go out to other pastors, members and friends in need of items we are giving away, likely charities, and possibly even a yard sale.
But the cleaning and sorting at the house has spurred an additional round of cleaning and sorting at the church. I have been working my way through the shelves and shelves of books I have in an attempt to determine which are the most important and which are just dross to be sloughed off. Now, my dross may just be good books for another person (ain't that the old story anyhow?), for the church library, or for the trash bin. Many are good books, but I have duplicates, I have some that I find more useful than the ones that I have on the shelves alongside. Some are great books that I have no interest in reading.
Well, today I had a hard lesson in attachment and whether or not my attachment to books is unhealthy or not. While I often like to think that if I know where I give the stuff away at least I can go back and recover it, even if I go so far as to give it to the Salvation Army, the local Goodwill, or even the Legal Aid Society, or any other great charity in our area that has its own social services outlet. I can always go hunt it down at the local shop and see what I can get back that I "errantly" threw out. But today I had to go ahead and chuck a large section of my library at the church. As I started sorting I came across a lovely little nest of termites, that found my books a better meal than the wood shelves they were sitting on, let alone the lathe and plaster walls they had previous bored into for food and shelter. I think the walls are still in their primary plans for the future (until the exterminator arrives tomorrow). But, for now I have thrown those books out rather than go through them with some sort of chemical treatment, or checking more carefully to see what ones were affected by the termites. Fortunately, I think the books were only those on the lower shelf that were affected, which took out the larger portion of my marriage and sexuality books, my world religions library, and more than a few authors of religious thought. I have to let go. I obviously wasn't referencing those books all that often or it wouldn't have gotten so bad, and I think I have more than enough of each for the days ahead.
All in all, after I sorted the other books in my church library and those affected by the termites I think I was able to cull out about 1/3 of all the church books I own. That is fantastic!
Now to find the right home, even if it means more are headed to the trash can.
Blessings,