Musings of a Loquacious Mind

"I Am A Rock"

To the Rhyming and the Chiming of the Bells!

As I got out of my car this morning I heard the 9am choruses of the local church bells, echoing across the cool autumn morning. These bells really needed a tune-up, but the sound of them took me back....

Back to my days at Carolina, when the Bell Tower would chime out their songs and church bells their hymns. Sometimes it was a game to see if you could recognize the song. Other times it was clear as, well, a bell. My favorite was when they would play the Doxology.

"Praise GOD from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him, all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost"

It took me back to my wedding day, when the bells in the belfry rang out for all around to hear the joyous news of a couple that had pledged their lives to each other. My brother, Stephen, took his job seriously, ringing the bells like he meant it, but you could also see the joy on his face at getting to do what I'm sure all of us have wanted to do at sometime and nearly swing like Quasimodo from the great clappers of the bells.

It made me think of the Wyoming Valley where my husband grew up, an area so dense with such great, old churches that the bells literally would call people to worship. And all of the families of generations that had been called to their small town church along the dusty roads to the sound of the bells.

It made me think of the picture that hung in the ladies sitting room in my home church that showed early-American life on a Sunday morning, walking a dirt road to church on a hill in their finery. I loved that painting.

But at that point I had crossed the threshold into the office, and I needed to put those thoughts on the backburner as I went to work.

The Good Side to Cleaning Mildew

Yesterday I decided I couldn't take my deck chairs being slightly green in the seat any longer - the mildew would have to go.

I got out my hose, a brush, and some really amazing orange stuff (that I was supposed to dilude but didn't I think I will, just to make it last longer; that stuff is tough!). I attacked the chairs, and then some bits of the deck where water spills over from the gutters and has left a slight green tint.

I sprayed some, scrubbed a little, and rinsed off. The mildew was gone. I used the water jet on the hose to clean the crack between the porch and the house. I cleaned the storm door - it's now gleaming.

If only life were so easy. When you neglect things in life, mildew can creep in. And it's not always as easy as picking the best cleaner, giving it a few minutes, and being totally gleaming again.

Or maybe it is.

Maybe I'm making life harder than it has to be. Maybe the key is finding the "right cleaner". The spots where I didn't use the orange stuff didn't respond easily to scrubbing. The spots without scrubbing
but with orange stuff didn't get fully clean, but only because I didn't let the orange stuff get all over by spreading with the
scrubber. I think the mildew actually liked the bath with just the water spray.

You can spray at mildew. You can scrub at mildew, and never quite kill it. It's still there. You need the cleaner.

Now, if the mildew had totally rotted through my deck (yikes!), the cleaner could get the mildew, but the rot damage consequences would remain. There are still consequences for mildew, even when the mildew is gone. And the mildew can come back, if I don't clean. I could try cleaning on my own, but if I use the cleaner I will actually be sucessful, and it won't be near as tough as the ineffective form of cleaning without it.

You just have to get theCleaner.

Who knew cleaning a deck could be a spiritual experience? If only I could find something positive about the bug bite that has my arm swollen!

The Magician's Nephew

Yesterday I reread The Magician's Nephew, by CS Lewis, the penultimate book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

For starters, let me reiterate that this is really the penultimate book in the series. It's not the first book. Yes, the action takes place decades (or millennia, depending on whether you're talking Earth time or Narnia time) before even The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but it's not meant to be first. Why do I think this? For starters, it was written seventh. TLTWATW was written first, then Prince Caspian, then The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, then The Silver Chair, then The Horse and His Boy, then The Magician's Nephew, then The Last Battle.

Also, it references TLTWATW. Things are written specifically to recall bits of that book.

Up until less than 10 years ago, when you bought the books they were ordered in the manner I have written. Then, at some point, someone decided to put them in order of when the action occurred. Of course, THAHB takes place entirely within a period that occupies about one paragraph in TLTWATW, but that's neither here nor there.

Think of it like this. You remember how in The Godfather (the movie, not the book, although the book does give the ancillary information interspersed after it gets started) they show current activities of Vito Corleone and his family. Sure, there are some historical segues, but by in large it is "present". They don't get into the history of Vito Corleone until the second or third (I've never actually seen them, I've just read the book, so bear with me) movie. Why? Because how can you care about the history of Vito Corleone if you haven't heard of him, if you haven't seen what he does?

It's the same with the Bible. I realize Genesis comes first in the Bible. That's not my point. If you had never read the Bible, would you start with the Old Testament? Maybe you would. But I wouldn't recommend it. Start with John! Start with the Gospels! Before you can care about the prophecies of Jesus in Isaiah, you have to know who Jesus was and why you should care about him at all. Not only does the other way around seem kind of boring, when you don't know what you are reading for, but you miss so much; reading after the Gospels is so much more satisfying, more rich, more nuanced, more interesting, more inspiring.

So is The Magician's Nephew.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system....

CS Lewis is well known for his more "adult" works. Mere Christianity. The Screwtape Letters. A Grief Observed. The Problem of Pain. The Great Divorce. The Chronicles of Narnia isn't a direct analogy to Biblical stories and principles. But some parts are. And the parts that aren't, are rooted in these themes that Lewis wrote about so often. So it is not a huge stretch to get insight while reading. I wouldn't say it is a substitute for reading the Bible by any means. Without the Bible to give it context, though, you're not getting the whole story. Every time I read the books - especially TLTWATW, TMN, and TLB - I start really thinking about my faith.

The thing that stuck with me the most while reading The Magician's Nephew this time was in the dawning of Narnia. How amazing must that have been? I tried to imagine being there at the dawn of time. CS Lewis describes pre-existence like a void of blackness, and in the blackness came a song, for lack of better description, and then a chorus of voices joined the song, suddenly and in harmony, as the sky filled with stars and the depths of the universe. Wow. Let there be light.

When Aslan created the trees they grew up at astounding rates, in very nearly the blink of an eye. It made me think of a teacher that was unable to share anything non-curriculum, unless specifically and privately asked. Rather than leaving the high school kids with nothing other than evolution, the teacher took a shoebox, and some plastic dinosaurs, and put the dinosaurs in the bottom. "How did they get in the box?" she asked the class. "You put them there" they responded. "Exactly. Any questions must be after class; let's open our books..." The trees that sprung up in Narnia were in an instant an old, ancient forest. If you cut anyone of them and counted the rings, clearly it would appear to be much older than seconds old. Who knew the true age? Only the creator.

The books themes spoke of the first evil, introduced to the world by man, and how the evil would win some battles, but the war was already won.

I'm so glad I'm on the winning side, no matter how many battles we may seem to lose in the world. The war is so much bigger, and our victory is assured.

As an aside, I used the word ancillary in this entry. In my mind, I thought this word was anticillary (like "Anti-Celery", those against bloody marys, perhaps). I am chagrined to find out I was so far off the mark, although the word means precisely what I meant and I couldn't make do with another. So we have yet another case where my vocabulary has atrophied. Yikes.

Labels: books

As she sleeps...

Nights of Rain and Stars

Labels: books

Why do movies do this to me?

I am testing an ability to email my posts in. Since this blog won't have so many pictures, I thought it was good ability to have.

I caught the end of The Princess Diaries on TV as I was waiting for my internet connection to log on. Dagnabbit if it didn't make me tear up a little. It's crazy!

The other day the same thing happened as I was working on a craft project with what was apparently the series finale of Charmed was on TV. Charmed! I was sitting there, with my duct tape in front of me, feeling all misty and muttering "Stupid Charmed with your stupid cliches and stupid sappy stupid music that's just so... stupid". When I get emotional I loose vocabulary, obviously.

Every time, EVERY TIME, I watch Armageddon I am practically boo-hooing by the time Bruce Willis rips off Ben Affleck's patch and says "Tell her yourself." And then I get doubly mad that something that's such a big nacho cheese-fest as Armageddon can do that to me. It's not like it's Schindler's List. This is a movie that lets Steve Buscimi be an astronaut. With Ben Affleck. And you know how much I dislike Ben Affleck.

Toss in a sappy score and I'm just a big baby. Pretty much half of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King I had damp eyes. I seem to remember a few moments in Vertical Limit that made me wipe my eyes - a movie so sucktastic that most of the other moviegoers (90% of whom I was with) were openly heckling. Television shows, movies, Hallmark commercials, it doesn't matter. My brothers and I used to make fun of my dad, who routinely tears himself up when praying, let alone the professionally contrived situations of Hollywood.

So I come by it naturally, but that doesn't mean I don't get just as mad when an Adam Sandler movie can make me weepy.

Darn my empathy!

Thirteen Things I Like About My Job

Thirteen Things I like about my job My office is 1.1 miles from my house, so I don't spend more getting to work than I make. I can come home everyday for lunch. I don't have to put my daughter in daycare, since my husband is home during the times that I work I get to work doing something at least tangentially related to my training and interests. Marketing is almost like advertising (or can be), and I do like web development, although I have never, ever done any sort of formal training with it. Since we don't really need the extra money from me working, it leaves more discretionary funds for amusement parks, presents, and crochet goodies I have high-speed internet at work; not so at home. My boss, who I currently share an office with, can not only fire off random pop culture references, but can recognize mine when I get a little random. (Sadly, Friday is his last day) Surfing Crochetville and Television Without Pity (in moderation) is work related (hey, if we're going to set up vBulletin forums, I have to have experience across different styles, right?) 7-11 is within walking distance, and being at work gives me an excuse to drink soda. Mmmm, Diet Pepsi. It is very, very good to get out of the house and have adult conversations. I have access to all sorts of computer goodies, like Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, Acrobat... now I just need to find time to use them after work. I'm better at my part-time job than I am at cleaning my own house, and it's good to do something you are good at, because it really gives me a feeling of fulfillment, accomplishment, and sense of individuality. I don't have to dress up. I wore overalls to work yesterday, and I'm wearing a Dr. Pepper T-shirt today. I can come in with my hair still wet, and I haven't even worn makeup to work in 3 months. I have started wearing sneakers, but I had been wearing slide-on sandals all summer. I don't have to answer the phone, and I don't have to make small talk with people waiting in the lobby. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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