Tag Archives: quotes

Useless Lumber

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This Saturday is the Annual Garage Sale at the home of our great Patriarch and Matriarch.  Last night Curt hauled tables and our first load of “stuff” over to his folks’ house.  We have two days left to explore more nooks and crannies for possible sale items before people start flocking around Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m.  Dad and Mom’s neighborhood join forces, with up to thirty families selling stuff in a few blocks.   All in all, this weekend is a great source of encouragement and thankfulness. 

Garage sales are the great astringent of life.

They make me thankful for:

•   The incremental nature of annual cleaning.  If you never go through your stuff until you are almost dead, the overwhelming task would finish you off.  Each year we imagine we won’t find anything to sell after our thorough pruning a year prior.  We are either self-deceived (i.e. we didn’t clean as well as we thought) or our tastes and passions have changed (e.g. little bunny decorative items now fail to make us sigh with pleasure) or an item has served its useful life in our family (porta potty – don’t ask).  Here is the best part:  it gets easier every year.  One sees progress. That itself is a huge encouragement.

•    Because it is an annual project, you can focus on different areas in different years.  This year, my husband went into the attic.  Ayup.  I need to go through the linen closet and our CD collection.  The point is that you don’t have to do every thing every year.  Lord willing, and the creek don’t rise, we’ll do it again this time next year. 

•    The feeling of buoyancy that comes with letting go.  It is not quite as good as losing twenty pounds, but a close second. 

•    The sense of martyrdom and sacrifice.  One needs a brave and stolid heart.  My great relinquishment this year is two boxes of empty canning jars, which reduces my collection of empty canning jars from 120 to 104.  I remember with fondness a time with three hungry boys when those jars were full of applesauce, salsa, peaches and grape juice.  I worry about selling the empty jars, lest my sons forget the former glory days of their martyred mother. 

•    A renewed love and respect for my folks, the ones who gave me my husband.  They love the beauty of a clean and ordered life; I keep hoping if I stand close to them it will rub off on me.  Their example constantly inspires me, but on these weekends my love for them surges. 

While I surveyed my house for potential sale items last night, I listened to this delightful piece from Three Men in a Boat.


George said, “You know, we are on a wrong track altogether.  We must not think of the things we could do with, only of the things we can’t do without.”


George comes out really quite sensible at times.  You’d be surprised.  I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life generally.  How many people on that voyage load up the boat ‘til it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think is central to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are only really useless lumber?


How they pile the poor little craft mast high with fine clothes and big houses, with useless servants and a host of swell friends that do not care a tuppance for them, and that they do not care three ha’pennies for. [with…, with…, with…]

 

It is lumber, man, all lumber.  Throw it overboard!  It makes the boat so heavy to pull you nearly faint at the oars.  It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness – no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the somber-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchids, or the blue forget-me-nots.


Throw the lumber over, man!  Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

                                    ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Done Daily?

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“He [potential tenant, newcomer to town] was worried about getting his laundry done daily.”

“Done daily?” boomed Ella.

“Done daily?” quavered Dimity.

“The man must be mental,” said Ella forthrightly, “if he thinks he’s going to get his washing done daily, in Thrush Green too.  What’s wrong with once a week, like any other Christian?”

          ~ Miss Read in Winter in Thrush Green

I’m listening to Miss Read’s book.  This exchange was so delicious I listened to it six or seven times.   The whole book has so many clever turns of phrases that I will either 1) listen to it once more with a journal close by  or 2)  get it from a library and copy sections into my journal or 3) order it from PaperBackSwap and highlight all the tasty morsels.

our near-empty hamper

Do you do laundry daily?  (Which is a silly question if  you have young children.)

We do at our house, “we” being my husband, the Laundry Czar.   He and I hold different doctrines on the desired frequency of  this task. (He also starts the dishwasher when it is 3/4 full.) What can I say about a man who loves doing laundry loves having the laudry done?  When he gets up in the middle of the night, he’ll put the load from the washer into the dryer.  And start a new one, if one is available.  We all fold clothes together in the morning and put them away.  

I read this quote to him, and clearly taking Ella’s position.  “This is too rich,” I crowed. “I must put it on my blog.”

“Just be sure to mention that I am ALL for the man,” was his cheerful reply.

~   ~   ~

In another century, a young friend took a job as a temporary mother’s helper.  She would phone me daily and report her progress.  “I did three loads of wash, I made dinner, and I read to the kids,” she exclaimed, drawing the word three into three syllables.  I paused.  I chuckled.  I checked my tongue.  “Welcome to my life, ” I murmured.

Thrift-in-Trifles Decorating

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Although the Doctor’s daughter [Lucie Manette] had known nothing of the country of her birth [France], she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics.  Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful.  The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seem to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved?
             ~ Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities  

I’ve been in homes that have this pleasant, comfortable, tasteful ambiance.   They are lovely places to live.

I think decorating know-how is a gift, don’t you?  Just like some women can wear rags with panache, some folks can take cast-off furniture and make a cozy home.  It doesn’t come naturally to me, but I can be taught.  My oldest sister and my youngest brother have “an eye” for placing furniture, for hanging pictures, for creating visual balance. 

Where did you learn this stuff?  From catalogs, magazines or television?  From floor models of stores?  Did anyone take interior decorating classes?

I have to see it modeled, usually in a friend’s home, and imitate it. 

Small Talk

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I’m tired of making calls.  I’ve run out of small talk and I’m overflowing with coffee and cakes.  My stop today was with an extravagant hypochondriac, who took me on a tour of her liver, her pancreas and her upper intestinal tract.  I was spared her bowels, thanks be to God, but we left her bladder reluctantly as time was running out, and we still had to cover her allergies.  At least I wasn’t forced to contribute to the conversation.

        ~ Elizabeth Shannon in Up In the Park,
            The Diary of the Wife of the American Ambassador to Ireland

Keep my mind free from the recital of enless details; give me wings to get to the point.  Seal my lips on my aches and pains.  They are increasing, and the love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by.  I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others’ pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

       ~ 17th Century Nun’s Prayer, unknown source

A Small but Indispensable Service

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(last summer’s flowers)

A garden…teems with life.  It glows with colour and smells like heaven and puts forward at every hour of a summer day beauties which man could never have created and could not even, on his own resources, have imagined…

Without life springing from the earth,
without rain, light and heat descending from the sky,
he could do nothing.

When he has done all,
he has merely encouraged here and discouraged there,
powers and beauties that have a different source.
But his share, though small, is indispensable and laborious.

When God planted a garden He set a man over it and set the man under Himself.
When He planted the garden of our nature
and caused the flowering, fruiting loves to grow there,
He set our will to “dress” them.
Compared with them it is dry and cold.

And unless grace comes down, like the rain and sunshine,
we shall use this tool to little purpose.
But its laborious–and largely negative–services are indispensable.

          ~ C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves

Hello? Spring?

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The first day of spring is one thing,
and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them
is sometimes as great as a month.
~ Henry Van Dyke

Snow on the car this morning.
Snow flurries this afternoon.
Daffs are still smiling, though!
I think of them as batteries storing sunshine.

*Addendum: At prayer last night,
a ten year old girl prayed,
“Lord, please make it stop snowing,
because it is the end of April.”

Neighbors are scraping
snow off their windshields
on the first day of May!

God Loves Clean Floors

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Update: Evidently the source of this quote can’t be found because Martin Luther didn’t really say it! Please see the links in the Vanessa’s comments below.

 
I’ve posted this quote before, but here’s another sentence to add.  And, frankly, I need the reminder.  I still don’t know the source of this quote, other than Martin Luther.  This quote is found in Mark Buchanan’s book The Rest of God, a book I’d highly recommend.

The maid who sweeps her kitchen
is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays–
not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps
but because God loves clean floors.
The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty
not by putting little crosses on the shoes,
but by making good shoes,
because God is interested in good craftmanship.~ Martin Luther

 

Death as a Tool of Love, Blood as a Bleach

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Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed church of God
Be saved to sin no more.

~ William Cowper

He has delivered us from the power of darkness
and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,
in whom we have redemption through His blood,
the forgiveness of sins.

~ St. Paul

How well chosen wine was
to stain our souls with remembrance!
He knew how it burst, vivid,
from the flushed skins of grapes
grown for this sacramental crushing:
a shocking red, unforgettable as blood
a rich brew in the cup, a bitter,
burning in the throat, a warmth within,
chosen well to each our lintels
with the paradoxes of
a high priest bound to his own altar,
death as a tool of love,
and blood as a bleach.

~ Luci Shaw

Good thoughts for Good Friday.
Be still.
Listen.
Remember.
Give thanks.

A Display of Ignorance

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Garrison Keillor’s response to a letter asking what is fresh lutefisk?

Ah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.  “I didn’t want to show my ignorance” – that’s the wrong road for an intelligent young woman to travel.  Showing ignorance is how we learn, it’s how we get strangers to tell us their stories, it’s how we experience the world fully.  False sophistication – putting on a cool knowingness – is the road to ignorance.

“What is that?” No need to preface it  with an apology.  I say this from bitter experience, Sarah.  I wasted some of the best years of my life in pretending to a worldly sophistication that stopped my education right in its tracks.  Even today, people looking at me imagine that I know all sorts of things that in fact I’m stupid about. […] Remember this little life lesson, Sarah.  Some of the great journalists of our time have found that nothing works so well in gathering information as a display of ignorance.  Happy New Year.  Garrison Keillor

I subscribe to A Prairie Home Companion’s weekly newsletter for one reason: to read the Post to the Host section.  I love GK’s writing voice, his sense of pitch. He responds to random questions about writing, potato salad, giving a eulogy, bookstores, sons who lose a writing contest, music, and the meaning of fresh lutefisk.  [his full response to Sarah can be found by scrolling to the bottom of the link.]   If you enjoy this, there are archives back to January 1997. 

False sophistication.  Guilty as charged.  Bluffer, nodder, phony me. Feigned comprehension. I remember the day in 1982 when my SIL said she was feeling ambiguous and I had no clue what she meant but murmured a vague response to cover up my ignorance.   The person who helps me the most  in this area is my cousin’s wife, who freely and naturally says “I don’t know what that word means; could you explain it?”  It is so refreshing.  No pretense.  No sham.  Ask and it shall be given to you…