A new hat...sort of

I knit myself a hat today. The pattern is spiffy--and the result looks spiffy--except for the minor detail that it's too small for my head. It fits more like a yarmulke. And keeps falling off.

Maybe I'll just pin it to my head with bobby-pins.

And/or knit myself another hat.

Yet Another Delay

So, just kidding. I'm not meeting my new Karen family today. I was supposed to, although they never did tell me where or when I'd be meeting them. And then this morning--after my sending multiple emails and calling--I received a "How about next week instead?" in my inbox.

Bah.

I had emotionally geared myself up for this being today.

Well, anyway. Hopefully I'll be meeting them next week. I'll let you know.

More time to review my Karen language notes this way, right?

Sigh.

Life's Small Tragedies

I broke my favorite mug this morning.

I tell myself, it's just a mug. Just a "thing."

And yet, it makes me sad. It was the perfect size and shape to hold between my hands, big enough to be a sturdy mug but not so big that it felt clumsy or excessive. The perfect interior-color to tell by tint when my tea was steeped just the right amount. The perfect pattern: just enough of tackiness to leave it quirky, not ugly.

And it was familiar. I used it every morning and evening--and sometimes afternoon--for years now.

Farewell, my mug. You will be missed.

He's here!

The new mpwa has arrived! Little John David was born this afternoon, and I now have two nephews running around. Well, John isn't running yet, I guess. But he's around. And the poor kid's going to be attacked with affection at Christmastime, when they come out west.

Ah, aunthood. So fun.

Originality

The world has felt absurdly poetic to me the last few days. As if every commonplace event is imbued with intense significance.

The observation: "Huh, a solitary falling leaf."
My mind's interpretation: "Every man's lonely and unstoppable journey towards death."

You get the idea.

But really, I feel like there's something in me trying to get out. I just don't know what or how. A story? A painting? A four-volume epic novel? Bah. Whatever it is, it's apparently not something I can squeeze out of myself by sitting down and forcing myself to write or paint it. I think it will have to be something which takes me by surprise. (If there's anything actually there at all, I guess.)

-musing-

In one of his essays, C.S. Lewis talks about "originality" as being among the least important aims when creating literature (or art, or music, or whatever). Particularly when it's originality for originality's sake. To be daring, or different, or more interesting so that everyone can gasp and say talk excitedly about how daring or different or interesting you are. Lewis' idea is to aim for truth instead of originality. He believes--and I think he's probably right--that by writing truth, you'll likely find that you end up being "original" without trying.

I think I'm still stuck wanting to be original, though. Bah to pride.

Church

I went to a new church this morning, and tentatively believe that there I've found a home. I always get really conflicted when it comes to "looking for a church," as if it's shopping for a car or a house or something. What am I actually looking for? If I believe that many of the churches around me are part of the global Church, and therefore are my brothers and sisters in Christ, should my personal preferences for structure/service-style prevent my joining them? I still don't know.

But this church is close (three blocks), active (with small groups and urban/community service throughout the week), friendly, and doctrinally sound (as far as I can tell from one service, their website, and the endorsement of another pastor whom I trust). And I like the structure. So, I think it's a place I can meet and fellowship and grow and be with my local Church. And that makes me really happy. It's wearying to be church-homeless. Thank you for all your prayers!

Weirdness

People do really weird things on Halloween. Like wearing Pokemon costumes on public buses. So, what the heck; here's some surrealism for the evening (in Beligan surrealist Rene Magritte's painting, "La Reproduction Interdit"):

There's my full contribution to the weirdness surrounding today (that, I suppose, and fervent prayers against the twistedly-weird things that are dabbled in tonight). Cheers.
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Painting reproduction from http://psyc.queensu.ca/~psyc382/magritte-notrepro.jpg

Modern dentistry, and other musings

After an embarrassingly long lapse, I went to the dentist today for a cleaning. I'm glad to report that my teeth are healthy. Just a couple of preventative measures to take. (And the suggestion that I visit the dentist more often, but then, dentists are always saying things like that.)

While I was in the chair, I had this fleeting--yet vivid--vision of visiting the dentist in the distant past, and how nasty and painful and bloody it must have been. I was very glad to be in this twenty-first century office with its sanitary rubber gloves and whirring little tools and polishers, as opposed to in a field or vermin-infested room with the sharp, rude instruments I've seen in historical medical displays. It's a good time to be alive. At least for dentistry.

But all of this led me down a path of musing about whether society as a whole was progressing or degenerating. Or both. Or neither. And--at the risk of sounding irresolute and/or vacillating--today my opinion was leaning towards neither. Or maybe both.

I mean, really, the world is and always has been made up of people, yes? People who are--as a result of Original Sin and all that jazz--desperately wicked by nature. But (fortunately) the world also is and always has been full of people who have been redeemed by God: people in and through whom He is at work. Not to mention Common Grace. His grace is evident throughout the world, fallen though it is, and His goodness is displayed through His people.

His goodness isn't getting any less or more (given that it's already infinite and perfect). And somehow I have a hard time believing that He is any less (or more) at work now than he was ten or fifty or five hundred years ago; that is, that people were any less wicked naturally or that He was any less able to work through them to His glory. I think maybe it's more like the pattern we can see in the microcosm of The Church: each generation seems to swing back and forth, bettering some areas which need improvement while themselves leaving plenty of areas for their children to criticize and change. Perhaps in society it is merely that wickedness and goodness manifest themselves in ever-changing ways, so to look at one issue--sexual impurity or stewardship, violence or compassion for the oppressed--gives the illusion of universal "degredation" or "progress." Maybe it depends on where you're looking.

Perhaps this is obvious, and I'd simply never aritculated it to myself before. Perhaps this is totally wrong. Perhaps it didn't come out in words quite the way it came together in my head, which was really more of an impression than anything else.

I do know, though, that you can get a lot of good thinking time in at the dentist.