In The Moment Thoughts

There's an impact I feel from the many many hours I spent clearing out my parents' (/my) home.  Most of the time it was me and my dear assistant Angelica sorting through stuff for hours on end and filling myriad large garbage bags. 

Part of the effect is that I am getting tired of my own clutter.  I don't even know who, if anyone, would do it, but in case one day when I've moved forward someone clears through my stuff I'd like to make it a bit less work for them.  I realized that while my parents always told me to throw stuff away, they almost never did.  The house didn't look like a hoarders' home (except for the basement) because things were stored away.  And went untouched for maybe 50 years, till I touched them. 

There were these cabinets parallel to the kitchen ceiling filled with old rusty appliances.  May parents' closet had a top shelf that went back deep and in the back of it there was there wedding album, which I had never seed.  It had sat there since we moved in in the late sixties.  My dad had check stubs and other paper work going back to the early sixties, at least. What was once my room was packed with their clothing and other items.  On and on.  Books that hadn't been touched in fifty years. A piece of furniture filled with my mother's teaching stuff which spilled over to elsewhere too.  All the stuff they got from when my grandparents and so on. 

So tonight I'm giving away a lovely set of books that I've had for about thirty years.  it's called Sarei Meiah by Rav Y L Maimon.  I've never read anything from it till I just now read this: He says that Rav Kook practiced what he preached by moving to Israel.  As much as he was already a big rabbi and leader he wanted more.  he taught that the Jewish people could only become who they were meant to be in Israel, and he believed this about himself too.