Collections

I've always thought of collections as unnecessary clutter. I've had to learn that some collections are necessary for mental health and clarity.

One of my daughters must collect minerals and rocks of numerous qualities and put them in labeled trays or tumble them into shoeboxes that fill up the space under her bed and all her closet shelves. Now she's added a rock tumbler to the whole idea. I'm trying to spin it in a positive way and call it research or ideas and not clutter.

Another daughter collects her writings just how I've done through the years. She is quite organized with it and I'm always glad to see her neatness.

I looked at my top closet shelf in a cleaning surge. It was lined with sketchbooks and journals, folders stuffed with watercolour paintings. Stories and poems. Thoughts and quotes. Ink sketches and picture book idea mock-ups.

"Clutter," I said to myself.

So I tried to sort and toss it away. It usually is liberating to minimalize and I get a certain happiness when I throw something I thought was essential but I find I can happily do without it. I flipped through the stacks of poetry I've written and pictures I've drawn and I felt like some still needed saving. They have made up and become altars of gratitude along my journey. A lot of my painting or sketches tell a story that I need to keep in my memory. So I put too many of the dear papers back on the shelf and just a small stack went in the garbage. I'll slowly upload some old creations from others and myself here as time goes by. I hope they inspire instead of adding unnecessary clutter to anyone's mind.

Here's the book excerpt I saved for today from Søren Kierkegaard:

"To defend something is always to discredit it. Let a man have a warehouse full of gold, let him be willing to give away a ducat to every one of the poor - but let him also be stupid enough to begin this charitable undertaking of his with a defence in which he offers three good reasons in justification; and it will almost come to the point of people finding it doubtful whether indeed he is doing something good. But now for Christianity. Yes, the person who defends that has never believed in it. If he does believe, then the enthusiasm of faith is not a defence, no, it is the assault and the victory; a believer is a victor.

-A believer is a victor.