A Road Less Travelled

“Take off your shoes, we’re going outside.”

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I have something new to add to my resume. I’m not sure exactly how this would be described as a job description, but I can cut a sandwich into the Omnitrix symbol. And it doesn’t matter what kind of sandwich either. Cheese, pb and j, some sort of meat sandwich, I can cut them all. Who wouldn’t hire me?

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Um, I wasn’t actually planning on writing this. I sat down to write and felt like there wasn’t anything to say so I started writing whatever came to mind just so the page wouldn’t be blank. And then it was so lyrical I had to finish it and now I am sharing it with ya’ll. You have my humblest apologies.

I need to write something. I’m just fiddling my time away with Sudoku, the numbers swirling in my mind even after the book is down and the light is off. The world is turning into numbers in grids, rows, ordered and precise. I pencil down possibilities, possibilities that reduce, shrink, narrow until there is one option and it is penciled in dark and deep. With each number written down the rest of the grids, the rows revolve and shift. What once had been a two, a five, a seven now can only be five or two which makes that number over there a four. The world on the nine by nine grid is simple, scientific, clean, sterile almost. I clutter it with the possibilities when I know it wants simplicity and order. As the possibilities shrink the clutter fades until soon there is only one number in each box and the nine by nine is as it should be. My imagination wants to assign personality, emotion to the numbers on the page, but the grid restrains me. There is no room for imaginings or fanciful musings. The Sudoku page is a place that is here, is now. It is without any thought about what that means or whether it is happy about it. I should hate Sudoku. The grid should repulse me, the numbers offend, the rows a final insult. Instead I dream in Sudoku, like a new color just invented in my mind. The grid is a friend if such a word can be used for something so impersonal. The numbers are like tools or puzzle pieces familiar to the hand. The rows just one more place for me to assert my mind and hold dominance. Sudoku and I have reached an accord. There is peace between us and so I rejoice, pick up my pencil and open to Guru Puzzle 4.

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this morning
bacon
with scrambled thoughts

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alone
in the lamp’s glow–
distant thunder rolls

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too much daily life
too little brave adventure
just give me dragons

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Truly random thought of the day- I like folding dress shirts. The fabric creases so nicely and the seams are so obvious. When done well the shirt lays so flat and all the lines are clean. And then there’s the fiddly bits with the collar. I like folding dress shirts. It almost makes me want to get the iron out.

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I went to church yesterday. It was Sunday and in our world this isn’t unusual, but it was the first time I’d been in two weeks. It’s amazing what two weeks away from the worship of the Almighty and the fellowship of the saints will do to one’s week.

Sunday afternoon at home was a bit more stressful than normal because we were watching two extra children for some friends. And after all the children were either returned or in bed Seth, Crystal and I sat down to play a game. Loud funny music, a couple rum and Cokes, and some tired, stressed out people don’t make for a really intense game, but it made for a fun time. At one point Seth got laughing so hard about a passage in the Bible he started crying. A jar of pickles later I had won the day and the game. For a full-contact, in your face, rules crunchy economics game I do pretty well. This time, though, I crushed my opponents like circus peanuts. Crush, crush crush!!

It was a good Sabbath. It was restful and delightful. I can’t wait to do it forever.

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once again
with some distress
aware of my tongue

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Things break. That’s hardly a deep thought. Things break. Moths eat cloth. Rust corrodes steel. Thieves steal valuables. (Sound familiar?) Add to the list: toddlers rip paper, floors (with a little help from gravity) shatter glass. Etc, etc, etc.

This small and obvious fact has been brought to my attention quite often lately. Like when my favorite nifty pen slips out of my bag and shatters on the floor almost before I knew it had dropped. And I just sigh, because it’s a familiar sound that doesn’t surprise me at all. But for some reason I stand there and think about how often I drop things. Or how often my tongue trips and the words slip away and just a split second too late I try to catch them, but can only wait to hear the shatter on the floor.

And as I look back at all the things I’ve broken I can only wonder why there weren’t more. As often as my tongue slips, why do have any friends left? And I realize how often God must step in at that vital split second before the friendship shatters, and He catches it, and then hands it back to let me slip and drop it all over again.

And I sweep the shards of ceramic into the trash without a second glance.

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