I am not a fan of yard sales, except of course, that I sort of am.

I wouldn’t stop into one in my neighborhood, because really, there is nothing that I need. And most the stuff I want I don’t need and probably can’t afford. I’m unlikely to find that at yard sales.

But my faith community has two of these a year. They bracket my sabbatical/vacation. They are huge and chaotic. I’m sort of chaotic myself, so I find them incredibly distracting. I dropped in the other day when people were working. The only things I could see were the things of my sister’s that I’d given away. I didn’t have a lot of interest in seeing them.

But we have them and they do a jumble of things. They let people let go of things. People like me take stuff that we’ve held onto from our dearly beloved and release it. People who need things but can’t afford them can sometimes get incredible bargains. Or they can get some little luxury that they didn’t imagine they could afford, but there it is with a $2 price tag on it. And people with collections find that one thing they’ve been searching for. And other people, well, they just can’t resist a bargain. And they shop. And in the meantime, the people from our community get to know one another. We do physical work that makes our community stronger as it strengthens our connections. And we make money that helps our community meet our obligations. We can even make plans with some of this money. That’s pretty exciting.

It really is a jumble of things that come from this huge jumble of things. It’s probably well worth a bit of pastoral confusion. After all, it’s never just my Peace at stake, is it?

But, oh, my goodness, what a lot of mayhem — but oh, such great food!