Raising Productivity

My beloved decided on Friday morning that we needed to have a just laze around the house weekend. Not too long into Saturday, a few minutes after her pretty green eyes opened, that changed into "We need to get some things done around the house!!!" I think this was due, in part, to the fact that large amounts of dishes had accumulated over the days I'd been gone, large amounts of dishes I had left alone Friday. J had told me, "You didn't make the dishes, you don't need to clean them up. You just leave them for me" as she left Friday morning. Ordinarily, I would have ignored her and done them anyway. In the future, I will likely also follow that path. But, for this past week, I wanted to conduct the experiment of letting her handle everything. I couldn't stop myself from vacuuming & sweeping, but I left the dishes untouched.

Luckily, I didn't then have to plunge into the dishes Saturday morning. I am not a morning person and I don't enjoy doing backed-up dishes that someone else has made. J & Boot popped out to Starbucks. By the time they returned, I had arranged myself to pull off my delicious, if absolutely true, excuse for not busying myself with housecleaning right away. I had to study. In fact, I had spent most of Friday night sprawled on the living room floor doing just that. I was happily immersed in Luther, Zwingli and those fellows Saturday morning when J brought me a vanilla latté, kissed me and looked at my books and binders approvingly. She got the kitchen mostly clean before she flopped onto the bed with the boys. Boot was watching a football game on the t.v. and Pie was watching "Mystery Science Theater" (and laughing a deeply pleasured laugh every few minutes). I moved on to my reading of Michael Gemignani's Spiritual Formation for Pastors: Feeding the Fire Within for class in two weeks. Hey, I have to have the entire book read then, it's good to get ahead. It felt like cheating, though, because it's truly an enjoyable read.

I finally forced myself to stop reading, though, and made a pre-emptive strike on the closet so that I wouldn't have to finish the kitchen job. We have been meaning to re-organize our closet & I decided this weekend was a likely time. I managed to get the job done in one afternoon, aside from hanging some things there aren't yet hangers for. They have been residing on the closet shelves and would be much happier hanging. So, I left them out in order not to just get complacent about their folded status again. The closet looked so nice that I took a break in there, reading a book just for fun & enjoying the soft carpet & inquisitive cats. We ran some errands and had tacos for dinner.

Sunday morning, we went to church and really enjoyed the service. The kids of the church, young and old, were responsible for the whole service. I love to see a church that values its children so highly. Too many churches don't realize that they have much to learn from the kids, just as the kids do from the adults. The sanctuary was adorned with balloons, the kids' reflections made up the sermon and we all wrote prayers on varicolored paper airplanes & flew them all at the same time. We then picked up airplanes and took them home to include in our personal prayer time. I think that was the most meaningful part of the ritual for me. I know a good many people who would utterly disapprove of flying paper airplanes for the benediction, but what a delightful way to have our concerns carried to God! I can imagine a big grin spreading across God's face as they flew. It was our kids' first visit to that church. They thought it was very odd to have the children do the service, but liked it better than any of the others we've visited. I so hope that they will let me intern there even though they already have an intern.

On the way home from church, I exercised admirable restraint in not biting Boot's head off, literally or figuratively. He was asking what Hair is about. I told him & he said he'd hate it because it's anti-war & he hates people who are anti-war. He said that he hates "all those hippies who were against Vietnam"! AUGH! He spends all this time condemning people for not being Christians and for saying they don't believe in God, then he totally ignores the Christian message of love and non-judgment. Drives me crazy! This black and white phase of legalism has surely got to end soon. At least, I hope it's a phase. I remained very, very calm & said, "Then, that means you hate my mom." He said, "I guess I do." I wanted to pull the car over & wail on him because my mom is one of the kindest, best people I've ever met & deserves better than that. Since I am not the kind of parent who whacks the kids, I kept driving and calmly explained the reasons why I am against war, reasons that my Christian faith will not allow me to condone war. I told him that plenty of Vietnam vets also think that the Vietnam War, along with the present war in the Middle East, is immoral, unethical, just plain wrong. I told him that I don't condemn those who serve in war, I just hate that they have to. I hate that they come home and are treated like they don't matter by the government. I hate that so many young, young men didn't have any choice about whether to go to Vietnam. And I hate that some anti-war activists, who just didn't get it, spit on some of the soldiers returning from Vietnam. I told him that was plain wrong. I said that just because I think war is immoral and unChristian, especially when it is a thoroughly unjust war, doesn't mean I don't think the soldiers fighting it are bad. I told him that I am sure his uncle, who spent much of his life glorifying the Vietnam War & what the Marines did there, was really brave and was doing what he thought was the right thing to help his country. I also told him that I think the people working for peace are brave, too. I hope some of it sunk in. He didn't argue with me, at least. I see him headed right toward the military and I pray he veers before he gets killed fighting for government and big business to make a profit and "win" some kind of ridiculous pissing match.

Once home, we had some lunch & watched Hitch with Boot. It was cute movie. Even J, who hadn't wanted to see it, watched & liked it. We ran more errands and cleaned house more. I fried some catfish for dinner. So, while it wasn't a terribly exciting weekend, it was a perfectly lovely one.