MORE, GREATER, BIGGER.....
Somehow, these words became synonymous with Christmas--more presents, greater gifts, more shopping, higher credit card bills, a bigger stack of catalogs in the mail. It's kind of overwhelming.
So let me share with you my latest "indulgence." Canceling catalogs.
It is SUCH a beautiful thing! Each day, I was recycling several of them. Now I let them stack up on the kitchen table--Signals, Eddie Bauer, Plow and Hearth, Whatever Works, Harry and David..... Don't get me wrong, I LOVE looking through catalogs--turning down the corner of a few pages and sticking them in a pile, or worse yet (I am from the US, after all), picking up the phone and ordering the must-have-thingamajig. But now I let them stack up until I have the time, usually Saturday morning, and call all those 1-800 numbers. And as sweetly and politely as I can, "Please remove me from your mailing list." The reaction is instantaneous--absolutely, not problem, we can do that right away (they legally must respond like this, so I've heard). The most hassle I get from this simple phrase is, "May we ask why?" Well, who can resist an environmentalist who says their website is so easy to use? "I understand, ma'am."
And that's it, I'm free! Twenty phone calls later, I'm looking forward to a catalog free January. Whee! It's such a rush. I feel like a Macy's balloon after being snipped free of all the ropes. I love it!
It's hardly contemplative. Only loosely theological. But I thought I'd pass around my latest Christmas joy!
Monday, November 27, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
I spent some time earlier this month on spiritual retreat as part of an ongoing Covenant group of women in ministry through Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. The Covenant Colleagues holds a retreat every fall and every spring. Each time I go, I am amazed again at how time on retreat--learning something new (usually the focus is the life of a particular contemplative--though this past retreat was on the idea of being both a shepherd and a sheep), reflecting, and fellowshipping with other ministers--is such a powerful refill for my soul.
I often come away with one special reminder or spiritual growth that sustains me. This particular time was the reminder from my spiritual director that God is calling me to play.
After the retreat was over, a friend and I went into Atlanta and visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. The traveling art installation was Niki in the Garden--"the world's largest exhibition of internationally renowned artist Niki de Saint Phalle's outdoor sculptures ever presented." Niki's sculptures are a combination of imagination and playground equipment--giant marbled sea creatures, jazz musicians, and (above) a two-story head. The theme of the exhibit is, "come play."
An important invitation--from artist Niki and Artist Creator.
I often come away with one special reminder or spiritual growth that sustains me. This particular time was the reminder from my spiritual director that God is calling me to play.
After the retreat was over, a friend and I went into Atlanta and visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. The traveling art installation was Niki in the Garden--"the world's largest exhibition of internationally renowned artist Niki de Saint Phalle's outdoor sculptures ever presented." Niki's sculptures are a combination of imagination and playground equipment--giant marbled sea creatures, jazz musicians, and (above) a two-story head. The theme of the exhibit is, "come play."
An important invitation--from artist Niki and Artist Creator.
Monday, November 06, 2006
From Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping
Ruth, the main character, is reflecting on learning about her aunt who became a missionary. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do....
"In this box I found page 2 of a brochure of, it seemed, great and obvious significance. It was slick and heavy, like a page from National Geographic, and it was folded in thirds like a letter. At the top of the page was printed, Tens of millions in Honan Province alone. Then there was a series of photographs. One showed a barefoot boy standing in stark sunlight, squinting at the camera. Another showed a barefoot man squatting against a wall, his face hidden in the shadow of a large hat. Another showed a young woman feeding a baby from a cup. The fourth was of three old women standing in a row, shading their eyes with their hands. The fifth was of a squinting girl and a thin pig. The pig was not facing the camera. At the foot of the page was printed, in italics, I will make you fishers of men. This document explained my aunt Molly's departure to my whole satisfaction. Even now I always imagine her leaning from the low side of some small boat, dropping her net through the spumy billows of the upper air. Her net would sweep the turning world unremarked as a wind in the grass, and when she began to pull it in, perhaps in a pell-mell ascension of formal gentlemen and thin pigs an old women and odd socks that would astonish this lower world, she would gather the net, so easily, until the very burden itself lay all in a heap just under the surface. One last pull of measureless power and ease would spill her catch into the boat, gasping and amazed, gleaming rainbows in the rarer light.
"Such a net, such a harvesting, would put an end to all anomaly. If it swept the whole floor of heaven, it must, finally, sweep the black floor of Fingerbone, too. From there, we must imagine, would arise a great army of paleolithic and neolithic frequenters of the lake--berry gatherers and hunters and strayed children from those and all subsequent eons, down to the earliest present, to the faith-healing lady in the long, white robe who rowed a quarter of a mile out and tried to walk back in again just at sunrise, to the farmer who bet five dollars one spring that the ice was still strong enough from him to gallop his horse across. Add to them the swimmers, the boaters and canoers, and in such a crowd my mother would hardly seem remarkable. There would be a general reclaiming of fallen buttons and misplaced spectacles, of neighbors and kin, till time and error and accident were undone, and the world became comprehensible and whole. Sylvie said that in fact Molly had gone to work as a bookkeeper in a missionary hospital. It was perhap only from watching gulls fly like sparks up the face of clouds that dragged rain the length of the lake that I imagined such an enterprise might succeed. Or it was from watching gnats sail out of the grass, or from watching some discarded leaf gleaming at the top of the wind. Ascension seemed at such times a natural law. If one added to it a law of completion--that everything must finally be made comprehensible--then some general rescue of the sort I imagined my aunt to have undertaken would be inevitable. For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of a hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?" (Housekeeping, 90-2)
Ruth, the main character, is reflecting on learning about her aunt who became a missionary. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do....
"In this box I found page 2 of a brochure of, it seemed, great and obvious significance. It was slick and heavy, like a page from National Geographic, and it was folded in thirds like a letter. At the top of the page was printed, Tens of millions in Honan Province alone. Then there was a series of photographs. One showed a barefoot boy standing in stark sunlight, squinting at the camera. Another showed a barefoot man squatting against a wall, his face hidden in the shadow of a large hat. Another showed a young woman feeding a baby from a cup. The fourth was of three old women standing in a row, shading their eyes with their hands. The fifth was of a squinting girl and a thin pig. The pig was not facing the camera. At the foot of the page was printed, in italics, I will make you fishers of men. This document explained my aunt Molly's departure to my whole satisfaction. Even now I always imagine her leaning from the low side of some small boat, dropping her net through the spumy billows of the upper air. Her net would sweep the turning world unremarked as a wind in the grass, and when she began to pull it in, perhaps in a pell-mell ascension of formal gentlemen and thin pigs an old women and odd socks that would astonish this lower world, she would gather the net, so easily, until the very burden itself lay all in a heap just under the surface. One last pull of measureless power and ease would spill her catch into the boat, gasping and amazed, gleaming rainbows in the rarer light.
"Such a net, such a harvesting, would put an end to all anomaly. If it swept the whole floor of heaven, it must, finally, sweep the black floor of Fingerbone, too. From there, we must imagine, would arise a great army of paleolithic and neolithic frequenters of the lake--berry gatherers and hunters and strayed children from those and all subsequent eons, down to the earliest present, to the faith-healing lady in the long, white robe who rowed a quarter of a mile out and tried to walk back in again just at sunrise, to the farmer who bet five dollars one spring that the ice was still strong enough from him to gallop his horse across. Add to them the swimmers, the boaters and canoers, and in such a crowd my mother would hardly seem remarkable. There would be a general reclaiming of fallen buttons and misplaced spectacles, of neighbors and kin, till time and error and accident were undone, and the world became comprehensible and whole. Sylvie said that in fact Molly had gone to work as a bookkeeper in a missionary hospital. It was perhap only from watching gulls fly like sparks up the face of clouds that dragged rain the length of the lake that I imagined such an enterprise might succeed. Or it was from watching gnats sail out of the grass, or from watching some discarded leaf gleaming at the top of the wind. Ascension seemed at such times a natural law. If one added to it a law of completion--that everything must finally be made comprehensible--then some general rescue of the sort I imagined my aunt to have undertaken would be inevitable. For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of a hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?" (Housekeeping, 90-2)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
