The Great Glebe Garage Sale

I found:

• 1 carved wooden lampstand, maple finish
• 1 soddered iron lampstand (evokes art deco, '80's junk art, and african native art)
• 1 small round stuffed rattan footstool (perfect perch for a little person)
• 1 very large carved wooden frame painted a very pre-raphaelite green (perfect for my battered map of Narnia!)
• 1 hard cover Reader's Digest "Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual" (It's so DIY!)
• 1 solid (hard) wood fruit bowl (dark as chocolate. beautiful.)
• 1 vintage eaton's cardboard box full of embroidery thread and a small carved bone tool for who knows what!
• 6 panels of coarse weave brown curtains for our living room!
• 8 prints of "The Vanishing Buildings of Rural Canada" (including a beautiful one of some grain elevators in a very prairie landscape which was a special surpise for Matthew)
  

I am quite pleased.

Real encounters with the small kind

This old church building really does have mice, but there are poison traps and sonic barriers to keep them away, so we haven't seen any evidence of them since we first moved in. However, some folks from the church were recently cleaning out a storage space that had not been touched in a long time, and I think they must have stirred things up.

The other day I walked into my kitchen, opened my dishwasher door, and just before I put my full weight on my right foot, I felt something soft under it, and I jumped back. All I saw at first was that it was dark, larger than most bugs, and moving! I let out the classical bloodcurdling scream.

Then I saw that it was a mouse.
And that he was kind of cute.
And that he was staring at me as intensely as I was staring at him.
We both stood there frozen to the spot for a good two minutes. I was recovering from my fright, and racking my brains for a way to both keep from hurting him and keep him from getting into the rest of the house, or going back to where he came from only to return again.

When I started to move, I moved very slowly (my heart still pounding).

I eased my way over to the cupboard and softly took out a used yoghurt tub.

The mouse didn't bolt.

I stretched gingerly over to the counter for the scissors, and began to poke holes in the lid while keeping half an eye on him.

He moved a little, wiggling his nose and adjusting his position but stayed where he was.

I (half determined, half skittish) moved closer and closer until I was able lower the container down over top of him, trapping him inside it. He didn't blink. He was still definitely alive: whiskers wiggling, ears twitching. I experienced considerable misgivings about my endeavor when his tail was sticking out from underneath the container and that was all that I could see of him. His tail was not nearly as cute as the rest of him.
I took a piece of cardboard and slid it underneath the container gently, and heard him scramble onto it as he ran out of room to stand. Then I slowly turned him upside down and replaced the cardboard with the lid.
I stood there holding the container for a while trying to sort out my conflicting impulses of disgust and maternal nurturing, my sense of public health responsibility and my sympathy for all things persecuted and misunderstood.

Then Matthew came home.
We took him outside and let him crawl into a shady spot at the base of some lilacs at the bottom of the church lawn, entrusting him to his own fate. Poor little fellow.
We figured out that he must have eaten some poison and was so content and blasé because he was extremely high.

I hope he didn't suffer too much.

He was so cute and soft and furry and brown looking.

My husband's unconscious strikes again

So Matthew had a dream last night.

In it we were having dinner with my parents (who are moderately charismatic, evangelical Christians). My Dad asked me to pray before our meal, and (as Matthew tells it) we were all getting ready to pray, waiting for me to begin, when my Dad piped in:

"Come with your power!"

(not an unusual prayer to the Holy Spirit used by charismatic evangelicals)

And I, apparently irritated by the interruption and the contrast of his style of prayer with the Orthodox blessing I was about to use, taking full advantage of the ambiguity of "your" in his sentence, retorted:

"Maybe I will on Monday."




I'm still chuckling.

Attitude

I'm afraid I have to confess to having what is called a "bad attitude" lately. All my life I have been afflicted with what some call idealism, and others perfectionism, and which at its best is healthy conscientiousness, but at its worst....

I have been grumbling a lot about work. Why is it that when things don't go the way I think they should, I feel so tempted to jump ship, even though the reason I even have such ideas is that I care so deeply about the people I support?

Do I give up too quickly? I balk at the idea of doing the long hard work of being an agent of change. Part of the longness and hardness of it being that if you want your criticism listened to, it's got to be constructive, and presented very carefully, and through all the appropriate channels. I find myself so tempted to abdicate and shake the dust off my heels, but am prevented from it by the thought of the people who are getting the raw deal I'm so conscious of.

Does being aware of a problem make you responsible to do something about it?

I have been dismissed in my concerns before for being the only voice on something because others around me either didn't notice or care. For some reason I am not content to just continue doing what I think is best, while letting everything else around me go the way it should chance to go. I tell myself that that is what a saint would do: take responsibility for the task at their own hand, and pray for everyone and everything else (and themselves). Only sometimes am I able to do this.

Is it just pride?

When I think about it I realize how much I make myself sound like a lone voice in the wilderness, some kind of martyr for my principles.

The level of responsibility I have at work (quality of people's lives are at stake) is bringing some ugly things to the surface of my heart which ask to be addressed, and which I hope, by God's grace, to weed out some day. All the faults I find around me cloud my perception after a time and dominate my whole experience untill all I feel is frustration, anxiety, and anger towards work.

And then I went into work today for the first time after an eight day break, and saw that some things had been changed. Things which I had despaired of being able to change. I'm clearly not the only one who cares. And I was reminded too, of all of the things that are so good about the people I work with, and that the organization is on an upward swing (however gradual).

It is likely I will change my occupation in the near future, whether to go back to school or find something closer to home. But I want it to be because it is time (kairos) for the next step, and not because I have quit in bitterness. And I want to do the best that I can realistically do while I'm here, in humility, with gentleness, and most of all hope and faith.

Pray for me, a sinner!

Some things must be said

quietly

or they will be quite
unintelligible
to the small
who
live
in
all

the in
be
tween

places


your humble host
Copyright 2001

Welcome to my humble burrow

Here is the entrance! Considering that I leave such long comments on the blogs of others, verbally crashing on their virtual couches, so to speak, I have decided that it is probably time for me to get my own place, and air my thoughts in my own space...

I have selected small lodgings, for I have chosen to be a small creature, in the hope that it will prevent me from getting too long winded, or big in the head.

You will find it easiest to come through my small door when and if you are striving to be, as i am striving to be, little.

little /lit'l/ adj. [slang of cheryl & shannon] 1 humble, unpresuming, content. 2 meek, usurping no power, without guile. 3 childlike, frank, inquisitive