7QT: Paint Paint Paint

One

Praise The Lord July is over. A couple more days of painting and then I hope never to find myself painting again, at least for a long while. I have paint in my hair, to match my gathering streak of gray7QT, and paint on my nails, and paint in my sinuses. And while I’ve been doing the painting the house has rapidly devolved into a place of dirt and chaos and disorder and sadness. Oh well.

Two

Some interesting things happening in August include a week at Camp of the Woods (everyone’s counting the days), VBS (you should all come and bring your children), and the desperate push to get ready for Catechesis to ramp back up in September. Way back in June, when the last class was over, I pushed all the bookshelves with all their stuff into one room and walked away. And there they all still sit, nothing mended, nothing dusted, nothing washed and dried and put away, stubs of candles melting in the sun (just kidding, there hasn’t been any sun), no boxes refilled with pasting paper. Can’t even find The Book (Religeous Potential of the Child) to try and cajole more people to be interested and wondering.

Three

As bad as July was, bizarrely, our slow easement into school work was comfortable and pleasant. The children attended, didn’t complain about doing it, were interested, once or twice chose to go on intsead of stopping to do something else, and generally made life good and fine instead of making me want to pack them all off to traditional school. Having been around the block a couple of times, I know it will not be like this in mid February, but it seems, perhaps, maybe, a little, that some of the very hard work has paid off and we are settled into something reasonable and good. Having done the very minimum in July, we’ll add one or two more things in August, slowly dipping in and inching deeper, so that by the time September rolls around, the full weight of all the work will be a light and breathless shock but will not make us run screaming away.

Four

Going to unabashedly celebrate my birthday for the whole month of August again this year. Tried leaving aside this tradition for a couple of years on the idea that it is too extravagant to celebrate your birthday for such a long time, I’m too self focused as it is, but the other way, celebrating on that actual day, is just a bad idea. It’s not good, as I said to Elphine, to pour all your emotional energy into one single day. If you take a whole month to count it up to your birthday, then if you cry and moan on your actual birthday, you don’t then feel like you’ve wasted your life. This year I don’t expect to cry on my birthday, except that I never expect to but then I always do. So there you are. Today, for my birthday, I’m going to continue to paint that hallway at church.

Five

The big enormous bush that produces yellow flowers is finally blooming. Last year it bloomed in June. Have been looking at it anxiously every day and wondering if everything was alright. The closed buds have sat there for a month, not doing anything. Finally yesterday they started opening themselves up. What a relief. And the two new roses are covered in buds. Now if only Elphine’s weird poppies would bloom.

Six

Out of the weeds of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Daniel and into the relative quick pace of Nehemiah and Ezra and various minor prophets. It’s interesting how, before the exile, king after king was not only wicked but gullible, lacking any wisdom or discernment whatsoever, whereas after the exile Nehemiah and Ezra and Daniel and Esther and Mordecia are so shrewd, so discerning, so wise. They are certainly afraid and anxious, but not giving in to every little thing that comes along. It’s such a strange shift. I don’t usually put shrewd careful discernment at the top of too many lists of important things, but it is certainly something the the western church lacks, glaringly, and many ordinary individual Christians. The difference between Israel before the exile and after is so stark, so like the disciples before and after the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Seven

Alright, I must go shout at the children, in the usual way, and begin to slop paint about, and do all those things which The Lord thinks I ought to do, like being holier and more loving. I’m going to get right on that now, while hoping you all have a very pleasant weekend.