When I was growing up, we didn’t put all our trash into landfills – we separated out the paper trash and burned it in our back yards. I’m not making that up! It seems like a much more efficient way to dispose of things than landfills, but I digress.
When I was in 4th or 5th grade, my neighbor Denise and I discovered the joys of this activity. My family (like most) had a burn barrel and my dad would regularly burn its contents. Denise and I decided that we ought to be able to partake in this particular ritual, but knew instinctively that this would not receive the parental blessing, so we started burning trash secretly behind our garage.
Why does anyone need a king-sized pillow? It seems a little excessive to me.
Is it possible to have too many books? Asking for a friend.
When you say you’re sorry for something, you are just sharing an emotion. When you ask forgiveness for something, you are acknowledging that you’ve sinned against that person, that what you did (or said) was wrong, and you are initiating a dialogue that requires a response. When someone says to you, “I’m sorry,” your immediate response to say something like “That’s okay.” But if someone says to you, “It was wrong of me to yell at you, will you please forgive me?” it’s an entirely different transaction.
Have you ever heard of “goof jobs?” That was a technique my parents sometimes employed when we needed disciplining. If you transgressed, you might just get a goof job – an extra chore of menial labor. If you were prone to drama (as I was), you might do your chore thinking of yourself as having been switched at birth with a princess and that any day now, the king and queen would come to your door to rescue you. Ha ha!
Well, that’s enough random musings for one day.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning? I don’t know – it’s always a thought.
The sun went ‘round and ‘round and never thought about what she was wearing or what her hair looked like. But one day she looked down and saw herself reflected in the ocean and said, “How terribly plain and dull I am!” And thus began her quest to get a make-over.
We’re going to have to pretend that today is indeed Tuesday, since on actual Tuesday I was too busy (sort of) to fire off a blog post. But I do have a truly true story to share with you that started with a simple desire but escalated into rebellion, the keeping of dark secrets, betrayal and ending in bloodshed. Now that I have effectively hooked you in, here we go!
I continue to listen to a podcast that features speeches over the years given by Elisabeth Elliot. It’s one of my favorite podcasts and I never tire of her plain-speaking wisdom and whole-hearted reliance on the Word of God. She occasionally throws out some really great pithy statements. Here are a couple:
Of those who indulge in self pity because of difficulties in their lives: “Far worse things have happened to far better people.”
Of the need to cultivate contentment in our work: “If you cannot do what you like, then you must learn to like what you do.”
Ah, contentment. Easier said than done. A few years ago I read a book by the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. It’s very dense and written in outline form with lots of points and sub-points – not the kind of book you curl up in your chair with on a rainy day with a cup of hot chocolate. It was slow going, but worth the effort. I decided to memorize his definition of Christian contentment thinking it would be a profitable thing to have tucked away in my mind. Now comes the test – do I still remember it? Drum roll please…
“Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.”
Simple and very thorough. Then he spent the whole book in explanation of that. I’ve read the book twice now and I’ll probably return to it again. That Christian contentment is a jewel is beyond dispute. But why is it so rare? We are ever prone to complain. At least I am. It’s easy to criticize the Israelites when they fell into murmuring and complainting again and again while being rescued from slavery and being fed in the wilderness. But you know what? After 2 or 3 days of nothing but manna, I think I would have started complaining, too. True, enduring and persevering contentment is rare, indeed. I give you permission to remind me about that definition of contentment the next time you hear me complaining.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning, but definitely without complaining about it.
Every state park must have its claim to fame, and at Interstate State Park in Taylor’s Falls, Minnesota, theirs is potholes. Yes, potholes! This seems so appropriate in Minnesota, the Land of Potholes. Of course, the potholes at Interstate are like regular potholes on steroids. They were formed by melting glaciers, which created “fast moving whirlpools of swirling sand and water that wore deep holes into the rock.”
Oh, and by the way, there’s a matching state park across the St. Croix River in Wisconsin with the same name: Interstate, which I suppose explains the name. But does theirs have potholes? If so, I bet our potholes are deeper and bigger (this is called state rivalry and I don’t indulge in it very often).
Me: All the kids are grown and gone and I’m not working anymore. I’ll have oodles of time to do various hobbies and crafts!
Also me: Where does all the time go?
This is my quaint way of saying that not much got done in the Workshop this week, although I did finish those mittens and passed them on. My life is a combination of actual busy-ness and inefficient use of time.
I did work on the watercolor pages for my last cemetery visit. That was part of my “Grave Musings” project – I bought a watercolor blank pages journal and had thought that for each visit I’d do a two-page spread. It’s probably just as well that I haven’t been to many of the cemeteries on my list. Doing the artsy part is rather time consuming and never turns out like I had pictured it in my mind’s eye. Still, it’s all I’ve got, so here we go:
Good luck reading that tiny writing on your phones!
I’ll probably delete this in my workshop in the morning – it might be the only thing that gets done all week.
Can anyone say “sedentary?” I’ll admit that I’ve never been a big fan of moving around a lot, being one of those people for whom the word “sedentary” is actually a positive thing. Give me a good book and a comfortable chair and I’m pretty much done for the day.
Gym class was never a favorite of mine, not being one of the naturally athletic kind. At my elementary school the gymnasium had fat ropes that dangled from the ceiling and we were supposed to learn how to climb them. There were a lot of monkeys in our class that no sooner touched the rope than they were merrily making their way to the top. How I envied those limber people. My experience was more on the order of trying to climb a greased pole. I couldn’t seem to get a good grasp on that rope and when I did, my arms lacked the necessary musculature to pull myself up.
I almost forgot about the old blog post today. I met a friend for a picnic lunch somewhere and it doesn’t take much to throw me off my groove. However, I do have something of interest to share with you married ladies.
I’ve been reading through Paradise Lost by John Milton for the first time. It’s a bit tough now and again – an epic poem consisting of 12 “books” and each book consisting of about 900-1000 verses. Phew! I’m taking it very slowly. This morning I read about how Milton envisioned Adam trying to wake his wife up after their sleep in the Edenic bower (this is before the fall). Here’s how it went:
“Awake, my fairest, my espoused, my latest found, Heaven’s last best gift, my ever-new delight, Awake; the morning shines and the fresh field calls us.
I just want each of you to stop for a moment and try to imagine your husbands waking you up like that. It’s an entertaining thought, isn’t it? Since sin hadn’t yet entered the world, Eve responded pretty well:
O sole, in whom my thoughts find all repose, My glory, my perfection, glad I see Thy face and morn returned…
It turns out she’d had unsettling dreams because Satan had been whispering in her ear. But that’s another story. I just wanted you to know the correct response if your husband should choose to quote Milton to you some morning to wake you up. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I’m guessing that some of you wouldn’t even think of responding unless your husband had a cup of coffee with him whilst calling you his fairest and ever-new delight.
Now I know why we’re supposed to read the classics!
I’ll probably delete this in the morning, when the fresh field is calling me.
When you see a bird on a wire, you can ask all kinds of questions. Like, why, little birdie, do you want to sit on that nasty sterile wire, rather than on a nice woody branch? How is it that you don’t slip right around that thing and hang like a gymnast from the bottom? Are you just resting for a moment, or is this going to be a long perch while you gaze into the infinite sky? What’s it like to be up there while we plod along below? Why do you fly away when I stop to look up?
Unless you are walking in the pages of a fiction book, the bird will not answer you. Not in words. But if you think about it long enough, you will realize that you don’t need answers. The bird tells the same story every day, just like every other creature in this beautiful created world. He tells the story of His Maker. And that’s the story you need to be telling, too.
So where did Fiction Friday go? If you think about it long enough, you’ll realize that you don’t need the answer to that.
If you see this post sitting like a bird on a wire, it’s a sure sign that it will be deleted in the morning.
Lynniebeemuseoday 