Article May 12, 1986 Issue

Sorting things out

ELAINE R. FOLLIS

Not too long ago, I moved from an apartment where I had lived for seven years to a little house in a wooded area overlooking a river. The view was breathtaking, and I was very excited because this was to be my first real home. A part of the moving process that didn't excite me, however, was going through desk drawers, closets, and worst of all, the basement storage area, deciding what would accompany me to my new lodging and what would have to go—to friends (clothing that no longer fitted), to charity (that tennis equipment I never wanted anyway), or to the dump (the ten boxes full of everything else!).

There is another kind of sorting out that is far more challenging but pays bigger dividends: reviewing values, goals in life, concepts of ourselves and others, and discarding those that have become a burden in one's journey Spiritward.

Mrs. Eddy refers to the importance of such sorting in "An Allegory,"^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 323–328.} an article that tells the story of a Stranger who comes to a valley to lead those who are willing to follow him up to the mountaintop above. In the process of their rigorous climb, some of the travelers encounter difficulty because they have brought along many useless, cumbersome belongings. The story goes on, "Despairing of gaining the summit, loaded as they are, they conclude to stop and lay down a few of the heavy weights,—but only to take them up again, more than ever determined not to part with their baggage.

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