Odds and Ends

Matt is sitting here translating First Corinthians from Greek into English, the dog is dreaming about running (in a field of bones? Wouldn't Ezekiel's Vision be so awful for a dog? Why are all these beautiful bones being spoilt by turning back into people?), the children are rotting their brains on Minecraft and Captain Crunch, and I am lying here feeling like an awesome parent. Bad Awesome, as my friend would say, not Good Awesome. Gosh, and now I'm depressed about the destruction of the English Language.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I've just turned in all my homeschool reports to the governement, and done a bunch of church email, and so all the things that were weighing over me like a great black cloud should be gone. But see, as soon as I lay one burdenous (that's just a little word I made up, just now, because I feel like its better than burdensome) stress down, I like to quickly take another one up again, so that I might be always on high alert. I'm sure, in God's vast economy, my constant anxiety produces something good.

Just kidding. Obviously it doesn't.

Anyway, it is Ramadan now and so we should all join ourselves together in prayer for those who are undergoing this fast (speaking of burdensome stress), and for Christians in danger around the world (in Nigeria, and Kenya and South Soudan, and Mali and Egypt and North Korea and Iraq and…well, there are a lot of places to pick from if you feel like praying) and for those caught in the darkness of sin. Here is a really helpful site, which most of you know about already, but you might like to be reminded of, Lent and Beyond.

I always think its probably not all that wonderful to have Ramadan fall at the same time as the World Cup. So much intensity, so much feeling, so much exhaustion, all mingled together. For once I'm glad to be sitting in a very suburban boring quiet neighborhood. There is much evil here but it is not particularly volatile, as far as I can tell. Its more the ordinary neglect and abuse and general badness that plagues all human society.

But not everything is bad. Here is an oldie but goodie.

And here is what I read last night as I was falling asleep, from Coctail Time.

“Mr. Wisdom,” said the girl who had led him into the presence.

“Ah,” said Howard Saxby, and there was a pause of perhaps three minutes, during which his needles clicked busily. “Wisdom, did she say?”

“Yes. I wrote Coctail Time.”

“You couldn't have done better,” said Mr. Saxby cordially. “How's your wife, Mr. Wisdom?”

Cosmo said he had no wife.

“Surely?”

“I am a bachelor.”

“Then Wordsworth was wrong. He said you were married to immortal verse. Excuse me a moment,” murmered Mr. Saxby, applying himself to the sock again. “I'm just turning the heel. Do you knit?”

“No.”

“Sleep does. It knits up the ravelled sleave of care.”