On the pilgrim way: 'All this clearing out raises questions: What I am getting ready for?' - Reform Magazine
Sheila Maxey finds pleasure and pain in remembering
‘For everything there is a season – a time to keep and a time to throw away.’ (Ecclesiastes 3:6)
I have just been to Germany again to visit my ailing 88-year-old cousin, Christoph, and found him and his wife doing much clearing out. For decades they worked tirelessly to make the people of their city, Darmstadt, and beyond, more aware of their history, particularly the dark history of their dealings with the Jews in their midst. Now all their papers and documents are being housed in the city archive. It is a welcome recognition but also a sign that my cousin is now too old and frail to do more.
My clearing out has been different. To my delight, all Kees’ Africa books (more than 700) are to find a home on the shelves of a new university in eastern Ethiopia. I am not personally attached to them but when all the shelves on our landing stand empty, as Kees’ study now does, I will feel the loss.
At the same time, I am at last arranging for our family archive, which has been in our loft ever since my father died in 1998, to be sent to the National Record Office in Edinburgh. Again, I do not have much personal attachment to it, and yet all this clearing out seems to raise the questions: ‘What am I getting ready for?’; ‘Is it God’s time or just my time?’…
Sheila Maxey is a member of Ingatestone United Reformed Church, Essex
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This is an extract from an article published in the December 2023/January 2024 edition of Reform
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