"Long Love Stories"

I read emails from Gretchen Rubin writing on happiness. This week she sent out one with this quote: 

“Collectors are basically of two kinds; those who aim at completing a series, and those who long to possess things that have bewitched them. The former, of whom stamp and coin collectors are the obvious examples, enjoy the pleasures of a limited aim, and its comforting certainties. The latter may suffer ups and downs, changes of heart and deceptions, but they have several great advantages. They never know when some new love will inflame them; they learn a great deal more about themselves from their possessions; and in the end they are surrounded by old friends, with long love stories which they must try hard not to tell their friends.”Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood: A Self-Portrait

The last part of that quote resounds with me. I find myself telling stories of something I care deeply about and not too sure if my friends want to hear it or not. I guess that is one reason I like writing. You all can choose to come to my blog or not, I will never know the difference, read it or not, comment or not, roll your eyes or not. And I can share my long love stories regardless. 

Bean Report, Finally

I am a slow reader these days, not sure why. I finally finished reading Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow. Miss Language has been a fan of this series and shared it with Mr Music. Mr Music saw I was ready to read Ender's Game and was quite vocal that I must read Ender''s Shadow first, so that I would not "judge Bean ahead of time." Whatever that means. 

So, I finally did. 

Mr Music keeps asking what I think. 

Well, what do I think? I think I am not crazy about books where babies hide in toilets and children kill other children. And I never have understood why children have to command in this army, anyhow.

But. There were some interesting ideas and some good quotes. Those I marked were: 

"Do you know why Satan is so angry all the time? Because when he works a particularly clever bit of mischief, God uses it to serve his own righteous purposes."

"So God uses wicked peoples as his tools."

"God gives us the freedom to do great evil, if we choose. Then he uses his own freedom to create goodness out of that evil, for that is what he chooses."

So in the long run, God always wins."

"Yes."

"And in the short run, though, it can be uncomfortable."

"And when, in the past, would you have preferred to die, instead of being alive here today?"

"There it is. We get used to everything. We find hope in anything."  (from chapter 16)

~ ~ ~
and

"... the thing with brothers is, you're supposed to take turns  being his keeper. Sometimes you get to sit down and be the brother who is kept." (in chapter 18)

Seems like I have read these ideas somewhere before. :)

Latest Theory

Most colds I kill off with a large dose of vitamin C. But not this one. It is atypical. Good thing.

Today I have hatched a theory. It is not a cold at all. Some sort of alien cousin of this thing

has invaded the nooks and crannies of my body and occasionally attaches himself to my "cough center," whatever that is. 

Maybe a phaser would be effective. Or maybe Dr Who.

Any Way You Slice It

I am exposed to rather less advertising than most people but still sometimes something comes along that grabs my attention. 

On my email page the other day this photo popped up:

with the caption: Why women in their fifties look 35. 

Now, really. I don't recall ever seeing a woman of 35 with strawberries plastered to her face. And I am surely disinclined to try it. 

End of Winter Musings

Winter. This year it goes on and on. I keep bumping into one big question: What amazing thing is God doing with all this snow and cold?

Thinking about winter this way gives me hope. I am all about hope and watching for the first signs of life being brought forth from winter. I wish I were biologist enough to know how 
so much winter affects life. What is going on down under all this snow? Will the flowers and crops be especially abundant and beautiful? And the animals, how will it affect them? 

I think one way God uses nature is to teach us hope. He has made the ebbing and flowing of seasons a part of human nature; it resonates with us and makes sense. God says in Ecclesiastes 3 that He has "made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity into man's heart." What I learn from watching seasons change ~ maybe especially seemingly endless seasons ~ helps build hope into my heart. 

Romans 8:22-25 has been one of my memory passages:

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience

It almost feels as if nature is groaning under the pain of winter and waiting for spring, as Lewis showed when Narnia was under the White Witch's rule. What will all that snow give birth to?

But spring is coming. And what application does this have for different types of "winter" ~ what beautiful glory is God working under all the stuff I'd rather not experience? I am waiting with hope to see.

Not by Might

For me one of the deep truths - the sparkling ornaments that I learn from during Advent seasons (the time of celebrating Christ coming to dwell with us) is that victory really does not come from the kind of might I think it does. I have been mulling over some of the lovely sides of that ornament. 

~ ~ ~

I remember one of the first latin phrases I picked up in junior high, probably from a poem. Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all. True of God's love. We are reminded of that love with the birth of Christ, and then again, so much at his death and resurrection.

~ ~ ~

Not long after that, I got the same idea about God's love often conquering us quietly and seemingly from a place of weakness, in the Edwin Markham poem Outwitted:

He drew a circle that shut me out —

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

We drew a circle that shut God out. But He showed how large His love is by drawing a huge circle with Christ to take us back in.

~ ~ ~

And James 2:13 includes "Mercy triumphs over judgment." Not the usual cry of power.

~ ~ ~

Last week at a Christmas concert we heard this song, new to me. It moves a little fast, so the words are posted below.

This little Babe so few days old, is come to rifle Satan's fold;

All hell doth at his presence quake, though he himself for cold do shake;

For in this weak unarmed wise the gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field, his naked breast stands for a shield.

His battering shot are babish cries, his arrows looks of weeping eyes,

His martial ensigns Cold and Need, and feeble Flesh his warrior's steed.

His camp is pitched in a stall, his bulwark but a broken wall;

The crib his trench, haystalks his stakes; of shepherds he his muster makes; 

And thus, as sure his foe to wound, the angels' trumps alarum sound.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight; stick to the tents that he hath pight. 

Within his crib is surest ward; this little Babe will be thy guard.

If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, then flit not from this heavenly Boy.

"foil thy foes with joy" - there is the reminder that my soul longs for

~ ~ ~

Luke 5, So Far

I'm working my way through Luke slowly, more or less memorizing it (certainly less on that geneology). Anyhow. I have the great blessing of having been churched all my life, and am struck by memories as I work through the miracles of Christ: I am pretty sure my Sunday School in kindergarten must have worked through the miracles in Luke. 

Each time I read one of them slowly, I notice I have the sense of being in the room that was our church's kindergarten classroom. Last week ago I was there, in that room, being amazed when Jesus taught the crowds from a boat and then had Simon Peter let down the nets for a catch: today I am there to see the paralyzed man's friends let him down through the roof! to be healed and have his sins forgiven. I feel some of the same wow! as I did as a little child with layers of new understanding on top of it, and I can almost feel the lacy gloves, scratchy slip, and church hat I wore in those days.

~ ~ ~

I just love Simon Peter's "at your word I will let down the nets"
and then to see all those fish flopping in the nets.