Park and Vine, a store in Cincinnati, is now carrying our MarketBags. I am sewing like a crazy woman to get us ready for the Yellow Springs street fair on June 14th. It is still the early stages of our business, but things look promising.
Just a quick note to let you know that I have started a green business with friend, Sarah. MarketBag will soon be online to provide people with the option of purchasing quality fabric market-style bags as an alternative to plastic grocery bags. They are constructed from rescued fabrics that have already lived lives as drapes, tablecloths, shower curtains, and a myriad of other things. They hold about twice as much as a plastic grocery bag and are generally washable. In the mean time, if you’re interested in finding out more or ordering, email me at linda@marketbag.net.
Ungrateful, changeable wretch that I am (considering my last post), I am almost crazed with desire to escape Cedarville and all that it is. Enough said.
A couple of weeks ago I had my annual resurrection experience. When the weather warms up for a couple of days, things begin to green, and the light of the sun grows noticeably longer, I come out of the shroud I’ve been living in and live again. I rise from the dead every year as the daffodils begin to bloom and signs of leaves appear everywhere.
I have picked the first asparagus of the season in our garden and noted with great delight that some of the blueberry bushes are laden with buds. My dwarf lilac (moved from a non-nurturing spot in the yard) has its first blossoms ever after having been mowed over too many times to remember. The peonies are almost at their height and have begun to form buds. Our spinach and lettuces are up, and soon it will be time to plant the warm weather crops. My heart sings as I surround myself with life.
I could never live in Alaska. With the long, dark winters, there would be so little time for me to actually live. Ohio’s winters are too long as it is, but I’m happy for the days of life it affords every year.
I had my first dream in Italian last night. Well, partially in Italian. It mostly consisted of me trying to ask someone to give me an envelope. Only I didn’t know what the Italian word for envelope was. So, it is not a triumph for my knowledge of the Italian language. But it is a start. Va bene.
What do you do when you have five children, have just kicked out your abusive paramour, and have exactly $45 more than your rent for the month because your former lover, the father of your youngest three children, stole your food stamps card when he left? What do you do when you have no vehicle to get to food pantries in the city? What do you do when you can’t afford the child care for your five kids so that you can even begin looking for a job? What do you do when you have no phone to receive calls from prospective employers even if you find a way to apply for jobs on foot that are within a couple of miles of your house? How do you wash your dishes without any form of soap? What do you do when you have twins of 19 months and have nothing with which to diaper them?
This may be the plight of one woman that I know, but she is not the only one who is caught in a similar cycle of poverty. Poverty is a trap from which it is almost impossible to get out. It lays its snare, lies in wait, and won’t let go of its victims without the victim losing something dear. More often than not, getting out of poverty requires the leaving behind of many of one’s closest friends and being disowned by those that one has possessed (and been possessed by) in a way that the middle and upper classes can not grasp. Leaving poverty behind requires a wrenching and clawing out of a trap that will not willingly let go.
I feel so helpless as I watch hopelessness feeding bad choices and an attitude of fatalism that leaves its mark on multiple generations.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
Ash Wednesday, yesterday, marked the beginning of the season of Lent. Observing Lent is something I have done for only the past several years, so it is still quite new to me. But I have grown to count this as one of the richest seasons of the church calendar.
I don’t fast during Lent. I can’t afford the weight loss. And anyway, I’m too attached to being able to stand up to go without food for more than the few hours that pass between meals.
In the past, I’ve given up chocolate, sugar, or some such thing, but I’ve been careful not to tell anyone other than my husband what it is. I do this not because I think it is more spiritual for people to keep it a secret but rather, because I find that it helps me take the focus off of myself. It also helps me understand better the discipline of suffering (yes, going without chocolate is suffering in my very privileged world) while continuing to love and serve the ones that God has placed around me. In short, it helps me identify in some infinitesimal way with the life of Christ.
I am struck by the Prayer Appointed for the Week* in this first week of Lent:
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in me a new and contrite heart, that I, worthily lamenting my sins and acknowledging my wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
In this season of penitence, I am oddly filled with joy, knowing this about God: “…you hate nothing you have made…” This includes me, my enemies, the poor of Springfield, all the people groups around the world, every green thing that grows, every strange, ordinary, or wonderful animal, and every other large and small thing he pulled out of nothingness.
As for the rest of the prayer, I am a morbidly introspective person and am keenly aware of my own failings, knowing that I need a “new and contrite heart” because I cannot always say, along with God, that I hate nothing he has made. It is too easy to hate others, myself (gulp!), the natural world, or God himself (gasp!) when they do not fulfill my expectations and serve my own desires and convenience.
But the beauty of celebrating Lent is a whole person kind of grasp of the enormity of God’s love for his beloved creation and the suffering he was willing to undergo to put all of creation to rights. This is what I celebrate and revel in in the deep places of my soul during Lent. May you do so, too.
* Taken from The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle
The last couple of days have started the season of Cold Pants when it becomes painful to sit down after walking in a cold, brisk wind. It was about a year ago when I put forth my Cold Pants Theorem and proved it.
Honestly, when I go out in a cold wind, I can’t believe that my pants will ever be supple enough to bend with my body when I need to sit down, especially when I’m wearing jeans. They hardly move while I walk either. It’s as though they are frozen into one position, like the proverbial dirty pants that one can stand up in the corner on their own.
One of my delights this month, however, is a beautiful bluish vintage jar full of Paperwhite Narcissus bulbs given to me by my brother-in-law and his wife for Christmas. It sits on my kitchen window and has been in bloom now for about a week, defying the grays and browns of the landscape and the wind whipping through our backyard as if it is late for a soul-selling appointment with Mephistopheles.
In the winter I find my little joys wherever I can: flowers in the house, candles, tall mochas, and warm cinnamon scones. It need hardly be said, though, that I would trade these quickly for the coming of spring and summer.
“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line — starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King’s Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.”
From Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
I saw them again! Alas, Santa, Snowman, Rudolph, and the Little Soldier Boy were not dead dead last year. They live once more. Perhaps they received a resurrection of sorts. Quite possibly they were just mostly dead and easily had the breath of life placed in them once again through some form of diabolical CPR. A curse on the head of the person who perpetrated such an act of treachery on all offended by kitsch!
I suspect a conspiracy of Evil Kitsch Villains (EKV’s - the branch of minors in this league are the KJV’s - Kitsch Junior Villains). They seek to destroy the nation through a further weakening of artistic sensibilities. And then the world…