Sunday night reflections

If anyone's wondering whether I did, in fact, sink since the latest signs of life here: there was a good bit of flailing and panic but I finally found some buoyancy and I'm still kicking. One of these days I'll write about that -- but tonight I think I'll shrug off the duty I usually feel to summarize all that's happened. That would be a chore -- thus at odds with my working definition of Sabbath rest.

Instead, I just want to capture one of those rare moments when the kitchen table is clear enough that the laptop doesn't stick, the floor is clean enough that my footsteps don't crunch, and a great weekend is coming to a close. Saturday was an unusually productive day; maintenance of this large, ragged property is endless but it felt good to restore some partial sense of civilization to it. I never get to every part of the yard that needs attention, but I do think I'm a little further along than I was last year at this time... And while running errands that afternoon, I stumbled across a yard sale with a used extension ladder and a seller willing to deliver it. So, now I can reach things like the motion-sensing light 19 feet up that burned out in 2006 -- or the small forest that's thriving up there in the gutters.

This (Sunday) morning I took the older two boys to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D -- their first PG film! It was loud, immersive, and fun even though the tone is a bit coarse (the president addresses an older man with glasses merely as "Nerd") and only the comely 50-foot-minus-1-inch woman sees much character development. (Big surprise: not everything measures up to WALL-E!) But it was plenty enough to impress two young minds: we've been hearing references to the movie all day. (And in case you're wondering: those 3D polarizing glasses are one-size-fits-all. You thought they looked goofy on adult-sized heads?) ... Sunday afternoon with my church, we read Mark 2, talked about paralysis and community healing, and painted prayer flags. I'm not sure who slipped young Timo the one tube of real acrylic paint in place of the kid-friendly washable stuff; fortunately we caught him in time before too many things got indelibly pink... It was fun helping him make handprints -- he makes such tiny ones.