the dementors are breeding
It's 11 AM, Monday. A is at school, has an extended day today and Wednesday, which is a beautiful thing. I am dragging, though, after two marathon-type weekends of fun and exhausting extravert activities. I just finished my breakfast now, after sleeping in this morning due to the kindness of my husband, and I'm watching the minutes of blessed silence slip away into the "wasted" category of my brain. Even if I know I needed the rest, I still see this time as so precious and anything not filled with doing stuff as a lazy slothful waste. "I should be doing X right now." "I should call Y right now." At least I don't need to clean the house right now--we had a party planned for last night, so everything is clean, though only one person showed up to celebrate. Why? Suffice it to say that artists need at least one person in a car who is not an artist, or they will become hopelessly lost on top of being late. I know from experience. Most county art teacher meetings were conducted with half the people there on time, and the other half panting in a half hour later after driving around cul-de-sacs near the school--or in completely different neighborhoods. You'd think we would be more spatially aware and good with maps, but most directions aren't written for visual people. "Turn right at I-874 S, go 0.6 mi" instead of "pass the decrepit strip mall and the next road has lots of political signs down the median, turn towards the McMansion neighborhood with the green sign." That I can do.
So our weekends have been jam-packed, but promise to taper off a bit this coming weekend--only one party that I know of (I ought to check to make sure), and we're not traveling 600 miles anywhere either. We had such a great time visiting friends in Boston, and going to the Seven Deadly Sins show in Troy, NY, where--surprise!--my paintings won a prize! Yay! I don't want to be filled with pride or inspire envy...heh. But I know everyone's been just lusting after these pieces, and greedily snapping them up...ok I'll stop. Because no one has yet "greedily snapped up" either of them. That's fine, as I want to finish the other five to have a complete set of deadly sins. So I can hoard them. Is selling a sin, a sin? Discuss.
I say the dementors are breeding because it's so foggy and dreary outside, and has been for a week, which is what happens in harry potter when these foul creatures suck all the warmth and hope and happiness out of people. It never fails, that even now when things are going so very well with me, and when I am truly feeling healthy and like I am doing what God wants me to do, dementors really do swoop in right on the heels of any joy. I don't even need to read the news for it to happen. It's very true, what I heard in the sermon this week--we are in an in-between world, where God's kingdom has come but not fully. Christ has conquered ultimately, but we are still waiting for the end in a world that totally sucks, where it appears that evil has won and it's vain to hope for justice. But that hopelessness is a lie, and there is "light and high beauty forever beyond the reach of any evil," like Sam realizes in Mordor.
Some might think, "sheesh, aren't you morbid? Merry Fricking Christmas???" But it seems like it's appropriate especially now to think of these stark contrasts--the inbreaking of Someone so pure and so helpless, so utterly poor and disgraced born into a brutal world, casting off the high beauty of heaven's perfection to be with us. For him to live here and die here so that we--beyond all of our wildest hopes--can be taken forever out of the reach of evil. In the meantime we know how terribly evil and brutal life is, and every joy is tinged with grief.
If we refuse to see that, to deny reality, there is a far greater disconnect to deal with, and one that has no good explanation. Why aren't you happy then? Why isn't there ever enough to satisfy? Why, even at the heights of success and praise, is there an emptiness no award can fill? If this world is it, then there is no good reason for the ache. But if we are truly in an "already but not-yet" world, it makes sense. The longings point to their only fulfillment, to the only King whose reign will never end.
So our weekends have been jam-packed, but promise to taper off a bit this coming weekend--only one party that I know of (I ought to check to make sure), and we're not traveling 600 miles anywhere either. We had such a great time visiting friends in Boston, and going to the Seven Deadly Sins show in Troy, NY, where--surprise!--my paintings won a prize! Yay! I don't want to be filled with pride or inspire envy...heh. But I know everyone's been just lusting after these pieces, and greedily snapping them up...ok I'll stop. Because no one has yet "greedily snapped up" either of them. That's fine, as I want to finish the other five to have a complete set of deadly sins. So I can hoard them. Is selling a sin, a sin? Discuss.
I say the dementors are breeding because it's so foggy and dreary outside, and has been for a week, which is what happens in harry potter when these foul creatures suck all the warmth and hope and happiness out of people. It never fails, that even now when things are going so very well with me, and when I am truly feeling healthy and like I am doing what God wants me to do, dementors really do swoop in right on the heels of any joy. I don't even need to read the news for it to happen. It's very true, what I heard in the sermon this week--we are in an in-between world, where God's kingdom has come but not fully. Christ has conquered ultimately, but we are still waiting for the end in a world that totally sucks, where it appears that evil has won and it's vain to hope for justice. But that hopelessness is a lie, and there is "light and high beauty forever beyond the reach of any evil," like Sam realizes in Mordor.
Some might think, "sheesh, aren't you morbid? Merry Fricking Christmas???" But it seems like it's appropriate especially now to think of these stark contrasts--the inbreaking of Someone so pure and so helpless, so utterly poor and disgraced born into a brutal world, casting off the high beauty of heaven's perfection to be with us. For him to live here and die here so that we--beyond all of our wildest hopes--can be taken forever out of the reach of evil. In the meantime we know how terribly evil and brutal life is, and every joy is tinged with grief.
If we refuse to see that, to deny reality, there is a far greater disconnect to deal with, and one that has no good explanation. Why aren't you happy then? Why isn't there ever enough to satisfy? Why, even at the heights of success and praise, is there an emptiness no award can fill? If this world is it, then there is no good reason for the ache. But if we are truly in an "already but not-yet" world, it makes sense. The longings point to their only fulfillment, to the only King whose reign will never end.
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