  Hoarding: Only Passing Through   just passing throughIn the
Rule of Benedict:  A Spirituality for the 21st Century, author
Joan Chittister, tells the following story:  “A visitor went to
see a very famous rabbi and was shocked at the sparsity, the
bareness, the emptiness of his little one-room house.  ‘Why
don’t you have any furniture?’ the visitor asked, ‘Why don’t
you?’ the rabbi said.   ‘Well, because I’m only passing
through,’ the visitor said.  ‘Well, so am I,’ the rabbi
answered.”  After reading that short tale, I was struck by the
reality of a house filled with so much stuff.  From the
accumulation of clothes and shoes in the closet that are no
longer in style or “may” fit again, to one-of-a-kind finds from
the flea market, not to mention the stack of must see magazines
and newspaper clippings that I’ll get to read some day; all of
it placed neatly and unobtrusively in different places
throughout the house.  So when does the buildup of all these
trinkets and treasures become hoarding or does it?    R