A miscelleny

Today, I can't seem to gather my thoughts. Perhaps it's the migraine I seem to be on the edge of. But several things are kind of swirling around in here so I'm trying to get at least a basic sense of it, because some of them are important and worth thinking about when I can concentrate.

One thought has to do with a quote that I happen to love from Jelal ud-din Rumi. Yesterday, as I was looking at a blog that I follow, I noticed that this quote was a header for an entry: "Sell your certainty and buy bewilderment". Now, the actual entry didn't engage me nearly as much as the quote did, and I felt that this phrase was something that perhaps I was meant to think on for a bit - certainly, it's been nagging at me, whispering at me since I saw it. What certainties am I clinging to that I need to let go of, to sell away?

Another thought in the swirling mess that is my consciousness today has to do with churches. Not the concept "church" as in "Peter, go and build my --" but as in brick and stone, wood and cloth and water hookups and electrical connections, and sewage management and somebody's going to come in and build this thing. It's strange - I've been to many churches and synagogues, meeting rooms in bookstores, a couple of mosques, a meetinghouse, and other places of worship, but whenever I think of a church, I think of a tiny white clapboard one, maybe 5 miles at most from the Ohio River. It has acoustic tiles that were painted by someone (maybe in the 60's?) with devotional images. The stained glass windows don't have pictures, just squares of colored glass in the window frames. The organ and "choir loft" (a tiny stage at the back behind the wooden bench pews) take up the entire width of the back, and the sanctuary at the front is a simple wooden structure. That church was partly built by my great great grandmother. Whenever I think of it, I remember my grandfather's booming deep voice leading the congregation in hymns, of various relatives getting married in it, of funeral dinners in the basement. Of the story of my great grandfather who was outraged with the preacher for making fun of poor folks during the Depression (who didn't donate much to the roof fund), so he knocked that preacher into the rosebushes by the porch. Of the various family pictures of everybody sitting on the steps to that porch.

This was sort of inspired by someone else who'd been talking about a story in the Christian Science Monitor on mega-church development and the strains it's imposing on local infrastructure. One quote that struck me was a woman and her daughter who lived less than a mile from the church who were complaining that it would be shorter to walk than to drive to church when another church went in. So, um, why don't you? Better for you, better for the environment, your neighborhood... Maybe encourage both churches to run shuttles for those who can't easily walk? Encourage carpooling in your congregation? Maybe even begin funding a program in your church to serve breakfast to all comers after services? Give y'all a chance to connect to each other, a break most Sundays from making brunch (or make it a potluck or something to reduce the financial and work burdens of doing it), a chance at community outreach, fewer cars on the road since you won't be planning to go out after church...

And in there, they also had a story on the whole war on Christmas thing and on a congressman who wants to have a Koran with him at his swearing in. Look, folks, I don't care if you celebrate Christmas, Diwali, and the major Sabbats as long as you don't shove any of it down my throat. As for the whole Koran thing, John Q. Adams was sworn in on a book of law including the Constitution, which seems to me to make more sense than any religious book. But that's just me. (And by the way, I don't swear - neither by heaven nor by earth. I try to just tell the truth as I see it, and if you won't believe my word, why would you believe my oath?)

Finally, I was thinking last night, as I taught someone else how to crochet, of the women who taught me to crochet. My mom, who taught me the basics, and a series of older women who would watch my hands as I learned and say things like, "Your tension'd be more even if you'd hold your thread like this..." and "Let me see that bit you just did. That's pretty work." I'd watch them work their hooks through the fabric, the lace, the thread, and wish that the hook would flash in my hands, fabric dripping seemingly effortlessly off the end. Oh, how I wanted to be able to create beautiful things like that. I was so proud when I managed to make a doll blanket for my sister out of different kinds of squares and edge it in scallop edging.

Well, last night, it felt like I had somehow begun to pay forward some of their patience with me. This time, it was me saying, "Well, it's easier to pull the hook through if you turn it this way while putting on a tiny bit of tension by holding your stitch like this..." "Watch how I curl my finger to hold the thread a little bit out there..." and even telling stories of how clumsy I had been when first learning. And how I thought when I was little that perhaps they were crocheting the world...