730 things — Day 106 of 365

 Do you remember this story, about the woman who anointed Jesus and  his disciples complained on grounds that the ointment was expensive and could have been sold to feed the poor? And Jesus said to leave her in peace, that "you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will you can do good to them, but you will not always have me."

He also told the rich young man (here), "Sell what you have and give to the poor . . . and come, follow me."

Then there's the time he stopped to talk with the Syro-Phoenician woman who begged him to heal her daughter, but he said he was sent for Jewish people and it wasn't right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs — to which she replied, "Truth, Lord, but even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table."

So I was thinking about all these things in respect of the things I own and how I use them, and how I spend my money — what I share and what I keep.

It seems to me that it takes quite a lot of careful thought to get this right.

There are times and relationships that are special and deserve to be recognised and honoured — like that it was right for the woman to lavish her fragrant ointment on Jesus. To translate that into my own life — I think it's right to give special help and support to my children, to buy a nice birthday present for my grandchildren, to sometimes have a meal or a coffee out with my husband. I think I was sent specially and particularly to them, in the same way as Jesus was sent specially and particularly to the Jewish people, and as the woman with the perfume wanted to particularly mark how she felt about Jesus as someone she specially honoured and revered. It's appropriate, and not wasteful.

There's a point where it does become wasteful, of course, and tips over into being inappropriate — for instant, even if I had the budget for it, I wouldn't be buying my husband diamond-studded platinum cuff-links for his birthday. The purpose of what I give my tribe is to show them they are loved, not to flaunt wealth (or encourage them to do so). I wholeheartedly believe spiritual people should live humbly and simply, all the time — but that there is a place for glorious birthdays with balloons and a big cake and flowers and all the family gathered.

And the part about the dogs eating the scraps that fall from the master's table is interesting because it gives a sense of what the balance should be, in respect of what to keep and what to give away. It has the idea that for the most part we'll be concentrating on feeding our families and looking after the ones for whom God has given us particular responsibility — but that it's necessary and important and right to also see to it that there is a portion set aside for the homeless person or the crow and the fox, or the people who depend on the work of charity just to get by.

And I think one should be generous about this. For instance, if you have a cashmere cardigan and the colour never really suited you, well, you could sell it on eBay for £40 or something — but how lovely for people who depend on Freegle, or on buying clothes from the charity shop, also to have a chance to own a cashmere cardigan.

And in any case, the plot thickens — does it not? — when we consider that Jesus may have said the poor are always with us but we won't always have him, but he also said that whatever we do for the least of our brothers and sisters, we do for him.

As with everything else, these things don't improve with obsessing. It's meant, in aggregate, to teach us to create a society that travels in the direction of inclusion, personal relationships that travel in the direction of celebrating and valuing one another, and habits of generosity and simplicity. Love makes the world go round, but you can't make an exact science of it. It's not mathematical. Anyone who's counting has missed the point.

Well, today I am moving on two more books. 

These were useful and informative, but once I'd grasped the general gist of what they had to say I didn't feel the need to keep them, so they were donated to the second-hand bookshop down the hill.