Weeding or Gleaning

Weeding is pulling out weeds and discarding them. It is removing books from my shelf that I had forgotten I had. It is deleting books, here and there, that are outdated or that represent some perspective which I no longer can claim. Weeding is leaving the good and pulling out the stuff I don’t need anymore and probably won’t even miss. This I have done several times. My usual plan is to cull out the books I think I can eliminate and set them on a table in the church foyer to give away to anyone who will use them. Then for several weeks, each time I pass the table in the hallway, my attention is drawn toward the books and, having second thoughts, I end up re-adopting a few of them.

Gleaning is different. Gleaning is going through all the stacks, browsing book by book and pulling out only the ones I select to keep before the others are boxed and sent to Half-Price Books. This will lighten the load much faster. In this mode the default is to let go of everything. And I have to take specific action to redeem something I believe I must keep. But what are the criteria? All my life, I have been a conserving, library type. And not just with books.

It is time for gleaning.

Will I regret this? I don’t think so. So many books I have inherited are great history, reference, classics, theology, seminary texts, commentaries. They are books I kept because I thought I would need them. I thought I would need many of them while in seminary. Most I did not. Then I thought I would need them in the practice of ministry. Fifteen years have passed since I was ordained and started serving as a pastor. Most of the books I did not need. I am probably half way through my active pastoral ministry. I doubt that I will ever need these old books. And I don’t want to leave them as a burden for someone else as they have been for me.

So I turn away from the process of weeding out individual books. And I begin to glean and redeem just the individual books that I must keep. I will let go and recycle all the books that are left. Weeding and gleaning, each one an agricultural metaphor, have different meanings. They have opposite attitudes—one positive and one negative. The approaches are different and have different emotions attached.

This is definitely a time of gleaning. And I guess I better avoid Half-Price Books for a while or I will be buying back books that already have my name in the cover.