7 Quick Takes

One

Grateful to be coming to the end of a long week in which it seemed awfully like the whole of everything was spinning out of my grasp. Wasn't sure I'd make it through with reality in tact. Spent a lot of time ignoring the laundry and checking over my plants every few minutes.

Two

Of all the things doing well, my cabbages are foremost among them. Tragically, however the tiny maiden pinks have perished. It's not that I don't want the cabbages to succeed, it's that I wanted the maiden pinks more.

Three

If, as the weather is continuing fine, you are burning meat on your outdoor grill, and you are also burdened by a whole large amount of bananas which you expected would already be eaten but instead are left browning and spoiling as everyone walks callously by to smear Nutella on bread without asking, and, let's face it, you're not going to make banana bread and you're certainly not going to let any of your children make it either, because that means a kitchen so sticky and destroyed you will just scream and scream and scream and ruin the whole moment, you can take those bananas and cut them in half and smear apricot jam on them and stick the on your grill.

They won't be petty but they will be delicious.

Four

I'm hoping and praying that when baseball is finally over we might cook and eat real things again, like banana bread or maybe, actually, something that doesn't involve bread. I'm sick to death of handing out piles of Nutella sandwiches and then nibbling disconsolately on bits of Aldi cheese and salami or maybe a mushed avacado with no salt. We used to eat things like supper. You know, plates on a table with interesting stuff on the plates. I can't even remember what any of that stuff is called, some kind of, I think the word I'm groping towards is “food”. Only a few weeks left, and then we will probably immediately be irritated by having to cook.

Five

I think about so many things when Alouicious is up to bat. It feels like a whole life time can be lived, like everything is suddenly in slow motion. I find, as he tilts his elbow up and his foot out (why does he do that?), that I am wondering about the nature of childhood, and how belief is formed, and whether or not we will know how many universes there are out there, and what it will be like when The Lord returns, and how many minutes it will take to shove the kids in bed when we finally get home, and whether or not the wine jar in the atrium is molding again, and why my baby melon plant is struggling, all in that one minute as he stands there, his attention focused and fixed. Then he drops the bat and runs (hopefully) and my mind settles down to its usual sluggish pace.

Six

I'm well into Kings and Chronicles now, in the bible, having left behind the sudden and catastrophic fall of Solomon. I felt suddenly that I was dreading it, such a small line that it is, “So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of The Lord and did not wholly follow The Lord, as David his father had done,” and was relieved when it had come and gone. It's weirdly sort of a comfort to be in the mire and filth of Ahab and Jezebel and their great predictable evil. That's the thing, evil is so boring and comfortable. The real suspense comes in that fleeting moment when someone is walking towards God. That's when you hold the breath and sit on the edge of your seat.

I think this particular emotion of mine is one reason why I have such a hard time understanding the ordinary and real anger of people at God. The idea that God is being unfair by not saving everyone, or that he, God, should stop great acts of violence before they happen, like all these very regular shootings that we seem to have. Why doesn't God prevent them? How unfair of him that there is so much evil. Except that evil in the heart of each human is the place of comfort and normalcy. It is such a Huge Mercy that there are any people at all and that we have not been brought justly and rightly into the darkness of an unquenchable fire. We don't have any real emotion and anger about our own sin. We are not particularly unhappy about the only true injustice in all of human history, which was the death of Jesus.

Where these two devastating lines, “So,” insert your own name here, “did what was evil in the sight of The Lord and did not wholly follow The Lord,” followed by, so many centuries later, The Lord Jesus crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” make the heart stop and the flesh fail, then there is hope.

Seven

I'm hoping and praying that we really and truly make it out to Frog Pond, about which I have heard so much, today. Apparently there are real farm animals, and real vegetables and real plants and, you know, cool stuff that's not in our own house already. I intend to aquire some more plants, if indeed they do exist there, to replace those whose lives I have so carelessly ended. All this is contingent on me buying six hundred dollars, or some other astronomical figure, worth of paint with which to paint the parish hall this morning. And, for those of you who have been blithely ignoring me on Facebook, and I think you know who you are, just remember that if you do acts of mercy, God will love you more…just kidding, but you do get to go straight to heaven.

Go read Jen! And after that, come help paint at the church tomorrow.