That’s not FAIR!

From Sunday’s prayer of confession:

 …we have coveted blessings you wisely and righteously gave to others.

I recall a friend handing out M&Ms to her children and mine.

All six of them stood around their little hands cupped and lifted as she dumped a few into each one from a big bag. As soon as they landed in her son’s palms he counted them and looked furiously at the others’ estimating they had more. He began whining about how unfair and without missing a beat his mother took them all away and said, next time don’t count. He didn’t,  but I saw him stealing glances.

Margie needs to stop counting.

You knew this would happen

This back door needed a new coat and I like a little raspberry with “Scandinavian Sky” (who gets hired to name paint colors?) the blue-gray color of our house, but perhaps I should stick to writing. Much easier to delete accidents.

Also noteworthy: scooping up spilled paint with a slotted pancake turner is not efficient. Or smart.

Getting Home

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound. – Herman Melville novelist, sailor. (1819 – 1891)

Recently I was asked to be part of an interesting (well, interesting to me) series on pilgrimage at Highcallingblogs. Mine was the last in the series and it appeared today. Thinking about home, how to get there, and how to stay there, is not so unusual for me, so of course, rather than writing about going somewhere I ended up thinking about what Denis and I have hoped to make and give in living here together. I was anxious about how it would fit in with the rest, but then plowed ahead anyway. I quoted from one of my still-top-ten-favorite movies Garden State. There’s something about that danged ark at the edge of an enormous dark hole, Paul Simon singing “The Only Living Boy in New York,” the rain and three young friends screaming into the abyss that makes me want to stay here and keep the lights on for a while longer. Etc, etc.

Sail me

The most recent issue of Image magazine had an image (hey, hey) on the cover that made me quit multi-tasking – which for me would be 1)  walking and, 2) carrying - a handful of mail to the kitchen counter where I sort it. I thought what is that?! It looked like a sail rising from a glassy sea. 

It was a surprise to learn it was a parish church specially commissioned and built by the Vatican in the year 2000 - a year of jubilee. They put out a contest, and an American architect, Richard Meier, won it. I’m attracted to this church and can hardly say why and wish like anything that I could see it in real life as it stands or sails past the edge of Rome. The author of the article in Image, takes us there attempting to give us the scale and setting of the building itself and its relationship to the surrounding community.

I was fascinated that the architect, about whom I know nothing, said he envisioned a fishing boat, something familiar to Christ’s early disciples. Not icebergs, as some have thought, but “the triune God, in the form of three nested sails of white concrete, which billow above the congregation, guiding, protecting Peter and the people of the church on their voyage of faith as they sail on into the twenty-first century.”

The author writes: “Much of the church form has this quality of inviting understanding while resisting thorough explanation, of presenting rigorous order but only taking it so far.”  That makes sense to me. Or not sense exactly? But the way it is? I find that on Sundays as I participate in our church services and as I take communion, prayerfully inviting Christ to be one with all that I am – to belong fully, to be thankful in adoration of his body and blood, I also want to anchor somewhere visually, really. It eludes me. Partially because for all our efforts to anchor our thoughts and to know God in our places of worship – there will always remain mystery in God’s presence with us.

Representing Trinity with these three sails opens a vast sea of joyful longing and possibility - for me. Although we believe God can be worshipped anywhere, anytime I think here, I would be viscerally reminded of how much I want, no, make that need him to sail me through each day to the end of life.

If you Google images of Jubilee church Rome, many more will come up that give a better context of its place and size. They also give a better idea of its organic human dimensions and placement within the neighborhood.

Wasted Time

This just out according to a recent survey: male drivers average 276 miles of driving while lost per year. This is because they don’t like to ask for directions or can’t admit they’re lost. Over a life time that costs something like $3,000 in gas money.

I don’t get this.

But it would explain why when we can’t find El Carumbas, I, not my husband, am the one to jump out of the car to ask directions from a pedestrian or insist we pull through a drive-up and buy fries (to make it legitimate) so I can ask directions. I don’t know why it is so difficult to say: “I’m lost. Can you help me?” As opposed to driving around aimlessly?

I also learned from experience that people under 25 usually know the way to the nearest coffee shop, but have no idea how to get back on the interstate. I’m quite sure that the money we spent on McD’s hash browns (purchased to sos not to make them hate me) saved us to justify the GPS we now own.

And if you think of the savings in terms of other items and services you’ll no longer need like maps and marriage counseling, Serena, (our GPS) was worth far more than what we paid for her.

So if you’re headed out of town on this holiday weekend, I think you still have time to run out and purchase a GPS before the stores close. It’ll be worth it and you’ll thank me.