The Sylvr Pen

Sweet, the happy chaos of the Christmas-in-July just past, as that amazing mix of personalities comprising family gathered at the Funny Farm to enjoy each other’s presence, and refreshing break from routine!

But to live that way always would fragment, frustrate, and exhaust me!

God: Out of, or In, Routine?

A retreat center I visit provides a great and needed service by “Getting you out of your routine to experience God,”—because our routines today tend to eclipse God’s presence and kill our awareness of Him. More blessed, however, is a home routine that keeps the way open to experience, and enjoy, God everyday. If we have to get out of our routines to experience Him, something’s lacking in our routines.

Soon I want to write about blessed “holy routines,” but now I’m just thinking how set daily patterns of housework, finance, daily living and giving and order-keeping leave margin for peace, for communion with the Lover of our Souls.

Ironic, but true: If that retreat center inviting people away from their routines didn’t carry out its own routines faithfully, it would have little or no blessing to offer. No retreat center worth its name operates without routines, but has a place for everything and everything is in its place. Meals cycle round at set times, as do gatherings for prayer and worship and insight sharing, and time slots for pursuing what enjoyment might compose any particular retreat’s theme (as, quilting, scrapbooking, soccer camp).

In my own little life right now, routine-disruption and object-displacement have been frustrating my efforts, wasting my time, trying my patience. I wander about searching for shoes, Bible, journal, scissors, and on and on—anything moved out of place at least once by my sleeping in a different room from usual, washing and dressing in a different bathroom, placing this sharp object or that poisonous compound out of tiny hands’ reach.

Blessed Ordinary

We needed all that displacement for the time just past, but that was a special case. Now I need to function without the repeated hindrances of seeking misplaced items and the undisciplined rolling away of the day’s time, lost forever.

Thank God, I did keep one (“holy”) routine, and mostly kept another. Rising early, setting the coffee a-brew, and settling down quiet alone with God, before all the day’s lively people-activity, gave spiritual and emotional ballast to the rest of each day. I also managed to spend time, most early afternoons, doing the “routine home-retreat” I’ve found so beneficial in the past few months and didn’t want to jettison.

Routine keeps us from “where-did-I-put-that-now?” scavenging, keeps our lives in sync with our body’s rhythms, levels us to steady, counteracts our cultural tendencies to ADD distractedness, keeps order in our lives, hearts, minds, spirits, emotions, even our relationships.

Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of daily routine.

So much I haven’t written about, much more than I can now say in the catching up, the trying to catch up. And I’ve been lagging, with procrastination born of ordinary tasks piled up to where I don’t know where to start, like which piece of laundry to pick up first and wash what color clothes and linens…

Too much unsaid, like the things we should have said, wanted to say, to loved ones, but people rushed in and rushed out, and it’s only—again—at the last hour of the last evening or morning that we reach that deep level of communication, at the core of the heart and of life.

They came, they laughed, they enjoyed each other and the freedom from nagging demands—cell phones off, laptops tucked out of sight, email curtailed—and they voiced their gratitude for the chance to breathe deep.

Now they’re gone again, leaving behind them piles of wrappings from Christmas in July…

(what we almost always do, with birthdays falling then and all those other gifts not given when Christmas came, or autumn or springtime birthdays or Mother’s or Father’s day or…. We play catch up with that, too. Try to. And then rush on)

… leaving behind piles of linens to launder—and piles of blessings to count in the sudden silence:

The wonder and joy of seeing the boys grown men, grown good, caring fathers. The wonder of the little ones, their wonder at the world around, earnest desire to help with everything, of baby warmth and big, full-souled, toothless smiles.

The laughter echoes silent in the silence somehow and I think of all the other things I didn’t tell about: the garden bounty: overload of strawberries—we never had so many…

overload of peas, right on the heels of the children’s exit, giving us busy-work to obscure that awful silence…

overload of fatigue from having said yes to too much in the two months before they came, and the determination never to do that again (but didn’t I resolve that before, and forget?)

Yes, too much to tell. So many blog posts all blipped here in this one—and then all the other things not even mentioned.

I don’t know the value of this blogging for others, or even for myself, perhaps, but I do know this: if I don’t do it henceforth, I’ll feel, as now, that I left too much undone, too much I didn’t tell about.

And so I write.

This evening I load up the car with baskets full of wool, both spun and unspun, some still in locks from sheep who once romped the Funny Farm pastures. I toss in some cotton and some flax. I don my thrown-together “Bible-era dress,” and drive off to a “vacation Bible school”  to demonstrate drop-spindle spinning, as in Jesus’ earthly boyhood hometown of Nazareth.

Non-business

It’s “just a hobby.” Who needs to drop-spindle spin in America’s Northeast today?

In a southwestern touristy area, Native American primitive spinning and weaving might help provide a livelihood. But elsewhere in the USA, even hand-spun yarns for sale come off spinning wheel bobbins, not drop spindle shafts. Drop-spindle yarns sell in Third World settings. People there also use hammers to break rocks into pieces, to pile by the roadside and sell. Who would do that for a hobby?

But drop spindle spinning has become a hobby in affluent America, much as it did in Italy centuries ago, among wealthy women who used ornate spindles as they sat and talked or contemplated life. Today I also see lovely ornate spindles in my high-tech world, have a friend who fashions beautiful stained glass ones. And I know a lot of people–women and men, girls and boys, who drop-spindle spin, as “just a hobby.” Why?

Why a Hobby?

It’s time to define hobby. Webster’s Unabridged Encyclopedic Dictionary says it’s “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation.”

How refreshing, in our enterprise-driven, “fame-and-fortune” fixated world! And thus, a plausible reason why people drop-spin.

Once you get past the frustrations of learning either wheel or spindle spinning, a more relaxing, even soothing, activity is hard to find. Even people who sit with spinners at “work” feel life’s pressures ease, as they watch that wheel or spindle go round and round. The motion even calms careening children and lulls babes to sleep.

I know women (including myself) who in times of crisis, robbed of midnight slumber, head for their fiber stash and start spinning, just spinning, till their bodies untense and their minds let go the jumbled fears and tangled worries, as if they were lining up and straightening them out along with that fiber now turned yarn.

Just for Amateurs

The word “amateur” also comes to mind–in its original sense, rather than what it has come to imply today. Still defined first as “a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons” (i.e., as a “hobby”), by definition number three, that person gets considered “inexperienced” or “unskilled..”

Yet even God is an Amateur, as this blog post so beautifully points out, discussing the book by the same name. Who can approach His workmanship? Yet what He created was done for love and enjoyment. How sad if we lose that kind of motivation, and do every endeavor for Mammon, or deadly dull duty!

We never know, either, how God might use our amateur pursuits. I certainly didn’t with this one!

So. Enjoy a hobby today!

I was just sitting there at dinner, minding my own business, that last evening of the women’s retreat–beside an empty chair. A woman I’d never met “happened” by, and asked if she might sit there. Certainly, I said, and as we ate, we chatted. Turned out, she was director of women’s events.

Because I make quilts, I commented on the framed patchwork on the walls. Becky (the director) said these blocks came from Quilt Weekend, held every year. If I liked patchwork, I might like to come to the next one, in just two weeks.

Absently, I “mm-mm”-ed.

Fabric and Fiber

She told more about the weekend, and its customary “Quilt Talk” that turned the focus toward the gospel. This year a short drama would depict Rehab and Ruth, as mother- and daughter-in-law, planning a fictional memory quilt symbolizing God’s grace in their lives–for newborn Obed  (ancestor of Jesus).

She mentioned how a weaving instruction session she’d attended made her want to include some fiber info in the Talk, but that she didn’t know enough to do it herself. Since I also spin and weave, and had learned about preparing fiber, I told her about how awful retted flax (for linen making) can smell–so maybe that’s why no one searched Rehab’s roof for Israelite spies.

“I always wondered about that,” she said, looking at me with an attention I couldn’t quite figure out.

“I’d really like you to come to Quilt Weekend,” she added, as we left the table after dinner.

But I surely didn’t need another retreat so soon. So I just said something lame like, “We ought to get together sometime.” And  walked away–but with an uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t doing something God wanted.

Fleece

Back in my room, it kept nagging; so finally I prayed, “Lord, if You want me to come back here in two weeks, would You just bring Becky right to me tomorrow morning? Then I’ll say something to open the door”

Early next day, as I sat drinking coffee alone in the lobby, who do you suppose was the first person to come walking past me?

Only I just stammered, “Uh… hi,” and she passed by, leaving me more uncomfortable than before.

But a moment later, she reappeared, bearing flowers for an arrangement somewhere. This time I asked about Quilt Weekend.

She wanted to show me some pictures. After lunch. (When I was supposed to be leaving, with the group I’d come with.)

While my group waited later, and I perused her Quilt Weekend scrapbook, I knew. All right, I said, I’d come back.

Then she told me: She’d prayed for someone to come tell about exactly the kind of things I’d discussed the previous night!

So I went. And before I did, I worked hard condensing my info bit, constructing a display, and practicing drop-spindling (not a polished art with me!) When my husband heard my talk was limited to about ten minutes and wasn’t even to include the gospel, he exclaimed, “You mean you’re doing all this work, and driving all the way over there, to stay overnight, just for that?”

“It does seem crazy,” I replied weakly, “but I think God wants me to.”

Assurance

Confirmation came on the Sunday between. A visiting missionary spoke at church: Nothing in his first two years of foreign work had turned out as he’d planned–and he had worked so hard. Finally, throwing up his hands, he decided just to “go play basketball,” just because he loved it. And then, through men wanting him on their team, and their playing together, the ministry finally opened up.

That same Sunday I also “just happened” to read something related to the parable  of the talents, in which the master commended servants faithful in a little assignment, and put them in charge of a greater one (Mt 25:14-30).

That’s what happened in this case, too. I went and did my ten-minute blip. And two years later Becky asked me to do the whole quilt talk. In it, three historic scripture-themed patchwork blocks I sewed told the gospel.

Continued…

Anything else? Well, in a couple of weeks (with God’s help!) I’m scheduled to demonstrate, at a VBS, drop-spindle spinning, as people did in Jesus’ time and culture. And before long I hope to be “spinning a yarn” or two of another kind: parables of sheep and goats, spinning and weaving, and living and dyeing–here, on this blog.

Hobbies heavenly? Not necessarily.

But not necessarily not, either!

Today’s specially earmarked—for remembering. A Memorial Day.

We need Memorials (of various kinds). We too easily forget.

But I’m talking about more here than national history…

“Forget Me Not!”

Lately I’ve been memorizing Psalm 103—“Bless the LORD, O my soul…and forget not all His benefits…”

And the word “remember” has been resounding in my mind.

It abounds in scripture. It re-echoes throughout the Psalms—often amid someone’s struggle with anguish, depression, fear, or uncertainty. God’s word repeats and repeats it as a command to His people.

But I—but we—so easily forget—sometimes when our own depression or fear fogs our thinking; sometimes just because life gets easy and our mind gets lax.

What to do about our tendency to forget? Scripture gives some clever—but solemn—examples and hints…

From the Great Instruction and Hint Book:

Special Days: From weekly Sabbaths to yearly feasts, to semi-centennial jubilees, their purpose was to help God’s people “remember:” God’s six-day completion of creation, His deliverance from bondage and death, His holiness and our need of a sacrifice to atone for our unholiness…

Symbolic foods: Passover lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread, recalling God’s rescue from bondage and death. Bread and wine representing Christ body and blood given for our redemption…

Objects of reminder:

Manna in the Ark of the Covenant (daily provision)

Twelve stones in a river and twelve others piled alongside (walking through dryshod).

A stone named Ebenezer (“Thus far has the LORD helped us.”)

An ephod arrayed with twelve unique precious stones (representing twelve delivered tribes)…

Special tassels on garments (“Be holy”)

Written Remembrances:

Of Joshua’s God-given victory via Moses’ holding up of hands (“Write this for a memorial in a book…”)

Of God’s commands (on Moses’ tablets, on engraved stones at the entrance to the promised land).

The word delivered through the prophets of old down through time, to become the canon of scripture we have today.

Any “book of remembrance” (like in Malachi)…

Personal Memorials

I have my own personal memorials, besides the special days and symbols of the church at large (like Christmas, Easter, the weekly Lord’s Day, and the deeply meaningful Lord’s Supper breaking of bread)–my own unique reminders of God’s love, help, provision, and deliverance in my individual life. Though their dollar value is close to nil, the big truths they remind me of are precious beyond price.

Some examples:

A little bottle of clear glass drops, reminding me of God’s compassion, of how He knows all my sorrows and keeps “my tears in His bottle” as the psalmist poetically puts it.

A round stone in our garden that we’ve moved from state to state—a stone I like to call Ebenezer (copying Samuel the judge), to remind myself how real through my life has been “thus far the LORD has helped…”

Needlework scriptures or pictures on walls, remembrances of God’s blessings, or leading, or instruction—or of the stand(s) I and my husband have taken in faith.

Journals filled with answers to prayer and evidence of God’s hand in myriad situations.

And special blog posts, scattered among the fluff and the philosophical, testifying to God’s amazing dealings and the wonder of His providing love.

Memorials: good to have, indeed!