May Mumbo Jumbo
Emptiness of time despite it being
filled—"Fulfilled" time is very different love
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, LPP~
Happy June from Bozeman/Sidney,
I'm currently typing this from good ol' Sidney, Maine. I flew home a few days ago to look at a house we were quite sure we were buying. Well, sureness (surety?) being inversely proportional to fate, the inspection was overwhelming and we are still searching. There's a possibility that we'll put an offer in on another house before I board the plane for Bozeman, but we'll try to trick fate with a little "reverse psychiatry" and keep our certainosity to a minimum.
Meanwhile, back in Montana, Meghan is busy working her two jobs: nursing at the hospital and walking Jack—and making sure he doesn't pass out with his head in a gopher hole. This is now by far his most favorite activity. I think his record is 96 seconds without coming up for fresh air. In fact, his new move is to use his body weight to jam his head as far into the mound as possible. Then he just lays down to deep-breath lungfuls of gopher tang. (Or maybe it's Jack's way of doing his breathing exercises.)
We probably should have named him Carl.
We made a trip to Salt Lake for Meghan's sister's 40th birthday. It was nice to get out of town for a bit, especially since Montana was temporarily gifted some fresh, Canadian-grown wildfire smoke. Everyone was much happier for the weekend.
A couple weeks ago, we finally decided that the random snow storms had passed and it was safe to plant a few plants. I am fairly certain that I have never planted anything in my life, but it was fun making an afternoon of it. Meghan started her vegetable garden in the raised beds in the back, and I picked out and planted a few flowers for the front yard. After almost killing one in first week, I now obsessively monitor their water intake. It's amazing how quickly a Dianthus barbatus can recover. Within minutes it went from looking like it got stepped on to looking perfectly healthy. Cohesion-tension, man!
Here are a few things I found worth your time:
- Another poem I've read and listened to several times is Naomi Shihab Nye's "I Feel Sorry For Jesus."
- For the Life of the World (which is thankfully back to dropping regular episodes) has been doing a series on "bringing psychology to theology." They're all worth your time, but the interview with Elizabeth Hall on "Tolerating Doubt and Ambiguity" was especially good.
- Top read of the month: Jennifer Banks, on "taking our natality as seriously as our mortality."
- I enjoyed this interview with Jenny Odell on her new book Saving Time.
- Anna Havron's post on "being a better person online" is exactly right.
Richard Ansdell's "The Rescue" — Sarah Kellam has a fantastic overview of the artist and the painting. But I also loved reading Joy Clarkson's commentary. This is from the latter:
[The parable of the lost sheep] centres around a question: ‘What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?’ (Matthew 18:12).The way the question is asked seems to imply an affirmative answer, but this painting reveals that a ‘yes’ is by no means self-evident. From the danger to the rest of the flock, to the immense physical and practical burden, to the potential economic loss, such a calculation makes no sense, and yet to Jesus such a venture is clearly worth it.
Jesus’s evident loyalty to pursuing the one sheep illuminates the care of the Divine Shepherd, whose love is not utilitarian, efficient, or disinterested. Indeed, the trouble seems to increase his joy: ‘he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray’ (Matthew 18:13). The Shepherd delights most in his troublesome sheep.
Not much from me on the writing front last month:
- I wrote a little reflection on Tim Keller.
- Last year I wrote about Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual. I recently picked Andrew H. Miller's On Not Being Someone Else: Tales of Our Unled Lives off the shelf, and it's got me thinking about it again.
That's it for May. We can now officially use the word officially to describe our extensions. October will bring more road-tripping and traveling, which will—house or no house—end with us back in Maine. We're enjoying Montana, but the anticipation of home is something we're enjoying too.
On that note, here's Elizabeth Bishop with an absolute favorite.
Filling Station
Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.
Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
esso—so—so—so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.
Thanks for reading! For more commonplace stuff, you can go to tinyroofnail.micro.blog. Or you can email me at tinyroofnail@hey.com. Or you can just wait for next month's newsletter.