At least once a week, someone in my relatively small neighborhood is throwing away furniture. I don't know if this is due to the transient nature of the living situations in my neighborhood (a good deal of the housing facilities are apartments) or if it's just the season for new furniture, but there are always piles of it on the side of the road.
Most people, I imagine, pass them by without a second look. I, on the other hand, have lost count of the number of times I've almost stopped my car and picked through the furniture to find a piece to carry home. Unfortunately, the Protege probably wouldn't take well to a sofa in its back seat (it barely survived the Christmas tree stuck through the back windows). There's also the problem of actually finding space for the new/old furniture in my apartment.
But I mean so much of this furniture is beautifully horrific vintage pieces. The kind with stories (that I may not want to know) and personality. The kind that people are lucky to find in a vintage or antique store, and that with some fixing up will leave guests asking "where on earth did you find that?" So many old chairs and sofas now strewn about some landfill, but stuck in my imagination.
And I want to sit on every one of them.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Expectations and Filled-In Spaces
*I apologize in advance if I go a little cerebral or Faulkner on you here
This morning as I was willing myself to crawl from between my sheets, promising myself only one more eight-minute interval before I hit Off instead of Snooze, there were some old thoughts casting about in my attic of a brain. Incidentally, our discussions at church related to and gave a bit more form to these musings.
The impetus for the first thought was a morsel of wisdom handed to me by a close friend a couple of weeks ago. Basically she said, “God doesn’t need good odds in order to accomplish His will.” I’ve been ruminating on that ever since. How tirelessly I work trying to orchestrate all the streams of activity in my life – putting myself in the right places at the right times for me to meet the right people and say the right thing – so that “God’s will” might have the perfect conditions in which to come to fruition. Like I’m trying to grow bacteria on an agar plate. I mean, surely God’s hands have to be awfully full trying to manage His will for the lives of every single human being, not to mention coordinating the rising and setting of the sun, the cleaving of cells to create life, the naming of stars, the counting of hairs, you know, all that jazz. He could use a little help, right? Ok, so maybe I misinterpreted the scripture where it says that God created Eve to be a helper.
Why am I still worried that things won’t work out if I don’t have my hand in them, that things could go horribly wrong if I choose one thing and not the other? A couple of examples (and, while you’re laughing at my absurdity, don’t forget you’ve been in my shoes):
I’m really tired, I don’t feel like going out with friends this evening, but what if my future husband is there and I don’t meet him, and he marries someone else, and I never find someone and then I end up being that old lady next door with all the cats?! And I don’t even like cats! Or….
Forgoing the nursing career for a couple of years to go to seminary. What if I can’t pay off my debt from nursing school and I end up in financial crisis?
When did God’s will become an arbitrary prayer we toss up, as if God decided “ok Abby, I think you’ve got it under control, call me if you need me.” I often forget that A) He’s no amateur, he’s been planning this since before time began, B) compared with history and eternity, my scope is not only limited, but frequently ridiculous, and C) He’s writing the story and making provisions for every event and outcome. I’m not going to make a move ever for which God hasn’t already made provision, for which there’s no next step. God doesn’t actually need me to create an environment which is conducive to accomplishing His will. He’s just nice enough to let me in on the story. Misery is not what God wishes for me, so why do I continuously choose it over peace? I’ll let you know when I figure that one out.
The second thought which kept surfacing is related to the way we go about forming relationships with other people. For every person who is going to become a part of our lives, we have carved out a space for them to fill in our hearts. The interesting thing is that people rarely, if ever, fit into the hollows we create for them. It may have something to do with the fact that we ultimately went about fashioning the space with our greatest knowledge about people (perceptions, preferences, rough edges) coming from our greatest well of information – our own selves. In other words, the margins I draw for other people look most like a space I could fill because I used myself as the type. Consequently, no one else fits exactly into that space. The beautiful thing, though, is that we have no power to change other people, to carve or mold them and make them appropriate. Instead, we unknowlingly change the shape and surface of our own hearts until the “lock and key” are suited to one another. In this way, we keep transforming ourselves, gaining perspective on one another, on our ability to adapt to, love, and forgive one another. We carry pieces of each other around, so we can never be truly alone.
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not known until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” –Anais Nin
This morning as I was willing myself to crawl from between my sheets, promising myself only one more eight-minute interval before I hit Off instead of Snooze, there were some old thoughts casting about in my attic of a brain. Incidentally, our discussions at church related to and gave a bit more form to these musings.
The impetus for the first thought was a morsel of wisdom handed to me by a close friend a couple of weeks ago. Basically she said, “God doesn’t need good odds in order to accomplish His will.” I’ve been ruminating on that ever since. How tirelessly I work trying to orchestrate all the streams of activity in my life – putting myself in the right places at the right times for me to meet the right people and say the right thing – so that “God’s will” might have the perfect conditions in which to come to fruition. Like I’m trying to grow bacteria on an agar plate. I mean, surely God’s hands have to be awfully full trying to manage His will for the lives of every single human being, not to mention coordinating the rising and setting of the sun, the cleaving of cells to create life, the naming of stars, the counting of hairs, you know, all that jazz. He could use a little help, right? Ok, so maybe I misinterpreted the scripture where it says that God created Eve to be a helper.
Why am I still worried that things won’t work out if I don’t have my hand in them, that things could go horribly wrong if I choose one thing and not the other? A couple of examples (and, while you’re laughing at my absurdity, don’t forget you’ve been in my shoes):
I’m really tired, I don’t feel like going out with friends this evening, but what if my future husband is there and I don’t meet him, and he marries someone else, and I never find someone and then I end up being that old lady next door with all the cats?! And I don’t even like cats! Or….
Forgoing the nursing career for a couple of years to go to seminary. What if I can’t pay off my debt from nursing school and I end up in financial crisis?
When did God’s will become an arbitrary prayer we toss up, as if God decided “ok Abby, I think you’ve got it under control, call me if you need me.” I often forget that A) He’s no amateur, he’s been planning this since before time began, B) compared with history and eternity, my scope is not only limited, but frequently ridiculous, and C) He’s writing the story and making provisions for every event and outcome. I’m not going to make a move ever for which God hasn’t already made provision, for which there’s no next step. God doesn’t actually need me to create an environment which is conducive to accomplishing His will. He’s just nice enough to let me in on the story. Misery is not what God wishes for me, so why do I continuously choose it over peace? I’ll let you know when I figure that one out.
The second thought which kept surfacing is related to the way we go about forming relationships with other people. For every person who is going to become a part of our lives, we have carved out a space for them to fill in our hearts. The interesting thing is that people rarely, if ever, fit into the hollows we create for them. It may have something to do with the fact that we ultimately went about fashioning the space with our greatest knowledge about people (perceptions, preferences, rough edges) coming from our greatest well of information – our own selves. In other words, the margins I draw for other people look most like a space I could fill because I used myself as the type. Consequently, no one else fits exactly into that space. The beautiful thing, though, is that we have no power to change other people, to carve or mold them and make them appropriate. Instead, we unknowlingly change the shape and surface of our own hearts until the “lock and key” are suited to one another. In this way, we keep transforming ourselves, gaining perspective on one another, on our ability to adapt to, love, and forgive one another. We carry pieces of each other around, so we can never be truly alone.
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not known until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” –Anais Nin
Monday, January 7, 2008
so little time
I have so much to say lately, but not the initiative to get it down in words. Nor the time, for that matter, to get down as much as I want to get down in writing. I've been consuming books like food, however, over the holidays and liked this latest piece from Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard.
A blur of romance clings to our notions of "publicans," "sinners," "the poor," "the people in the marketplace," "our neighbors," as though of course God should reveal himself, if at all, to these simple people, these Sunday school watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves in their tattered robes, who are single in themselves, while we now are various, complex, and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead -- as if innocence had ever been --and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to our impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, week, and involved. But there is no one but us. There has never been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day. Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace, that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved.
A blur of romance clings to our notions of "publicans," "sinners," "the poor," "the people in the marketplace," "our neighbors," as though of course God should reveal himself, if at all, to these simple people, these Sunday school watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves in their tattered robes, who are single in themselves, while we now are various, complex, and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead -- as if innocence had ever been --and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to our impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, week, and involved. But there is no one but us. There has never been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day. Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace, that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Hindsight
It's funny how, once you've gotten over someone you were once interested in, things that were once endearing to you (like mismatched socks or quirky habits) about the person you once admired become disenchanting and ridiculous.
Of course, this thought is not the result of one specific incidence of unrequited pining, just a realization which I happened upon during a quiet moment in my head, a moment when an accumulation of loose ends actually becomes a recognizable pattern.
Of course, this thought is not the result of one specific incidence of unrequited pining, just a realization which I happened upon during a quiet moment in my head, a moment when an accumulation of loose ends actually becomes a recognizable pattern.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
One of my favorite Christmas Hymns
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
laden with fruit and always green.
The trees of nature fruitless be
compared with Christ the apple tree.
Its beauty doth all things excel;
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
the glory which I now can see
in Jesus Christ the apple tree.
For happiness I long have sought
and treasure dearly I have bought.
I missed of all, but now can see
'tis found in Christ the apple tree.
I'm weary with my former toil;
here I will sit and rest awhile.
Under the shadow I will be
of Jesus Christ the apple tree.
Its fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
it keeps my dying faith alive,
which makes my soul in haste to be
with Jesus Christ the apple tree.
laden with fruit and always green.
The trees of nature fruitless be
compared with Christ the apple tree.
Its beauty doth all things excel;
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
the glory which I now can see
in Jesus Christ the apple tree.
For happiness I long have sought
and treasure dearly I have bought.
I missed of all, but now can see
'tis found in Christ the apple tree.
I'm weary with my former toil;
here I will sit and rest awhile.
Under the shadow I will be
of Jesus Christ the apple tree.
Its fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
it keeps my dying faith alive,
which makes my soul in haste to be
with Jesus Christ the apple tree.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
What Resonates
"Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer's soul and they promote sanctification. We are not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration...The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ...When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers." -Maurice Roberts (The Thought of God)
What about when it's not our fault that Christ has ceased to fill the heart with satisfaction? What if it's been so long we have forgotten how it feels to sense ecstasy and delight?
The God who made the world and everything in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us for, "In him we live and move and have our being" -Act 17:24-28 (ESV, emphasis mine)
What about when it's not our fault that Christ has ceased to fill the heart with satisfaction? What if it's been so long we have forgotten how it feels to sense ecstasy and delight?
The God who made the world and everything in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us for, "In him we live and move and have our being" -Act 17:24-28 (ESV, emphasis mine)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The Ultimate Costume Change
I don't know if it's been the prolonged drought in the Southeast or the unusually long warm season we've been experiencing. Or it could be my previous failure to attend to such detail, but the trees have been changing in a way I've never seen before.
I'm used to trees changing their color all at once, overnight from green to red, then a few weeks later naked branches catching the breeze. This year however, most of the trees I've seen are three colors at once - red at the top, fading to an orange or yellow center, and still green on the bottom and inside. I feel like I've caught them in a privately sacred act of changing their seasonal garments.
And the show has been delightful.
I'm used to trees changing their color all at once, overnight from green to red, then a few weeks later naked branches catching the breeze. This year however, most of the trees I've seen are three colors at once - red at the top, fading to an orange or yellow center, and still green on the bottom and inside. I feel like I've caught them in a privately sacred act of changing their seasonal garments.
And the show has been delightful.
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