the hidden places

I am in the middle of another home improvement project. Yesterday I was sanding the walls I had taped and plastered and ended up all white and powdery from head to toe. Hmmm...safety glasses might have been a good idea.

I am making a functional bedroom closet out of a miscellaneous storage space that houses ducts and an air exchanger. This means I have to finish the walls, paint, and install a hanging rod and shelf. Now I had never taped and plastered drywall joints before, but I thought that a small walk-in closet might be just the place to develop this skill. Sanding removes any mistakes you might make, right? I admit, it is not the prettiest plaster job I have ever seen, but after a quick second coat today, another round of sanding (does one just put on the old clothes you wore to sand the last time or do you put on clean clothes for every new work day? Where is that book on sanding etiquette?) and a coat of primer and paint, I think it will look fabulous.

I realise that hardly anyone will ever see the inside of this closet, and probably no one will ever inspect each corner or joint in order to point out the fine workmanship, attention to detail, and just plain sweat invested in it, but I will go into it every day for a week after it is finished and just stand there, looking around and smiling.

A hidden place is a good place to develop skills. I take great pride in my hidden places even though no one else might ever notice them, because the attitudes I have in my hidden places are the attitudes that will automatically come out in my public places.

These are the wonderful Webster's falls, hidden away near Dundas, Ontario. Taken May 27, 2007.

Comments

what binds us together?

For the past few weeks, I have been reading a book by famed psychiatrist M. Scott Peck which chronicles his travels (together with his wife) through remote parts of the UK in search of prehistoric stones. The book is part travel journal, part spiritual musings, part psychology, and part personal anecdotes. A mixed bag, to be sure, and not always a winning combination. At one point, I considered putting the book aside, not finishing it, but then Peck started writing about community. He is no stranger to the concept. He has led hundreds of community-building workshops over the years, helped start a non-profit organisation dedicated to fostering community, and written a compelling book about the topic, one which greatly impacted me when I read it oh so long ago.[1]

In preparation for a course I am teaching next year, I have been doing quite a bit of study on unity and community. Once you start thinking about it, you see and hear evidence of it everywhere. (See my blog on the impact of b…

job hunting

I am on the hunt for a job. PhD in hand, I am a theologian for hire. The thing is, not a lot of places are hiring theologians these days, and if they are, they are usually looking for scholars with skills and experience outside my area of expertise. Today I found job opportunities for those knowledgeable in Religion, Race, and Colonialism, Philosophy and History of Religion, Islam and Society, Languages of Late Antiquity, Religion, Ethics, and Politics, and an ad for a Molecular Genetic Pathologist. Not one posting for a Dramatic Theologian with a side order of Spirituality and a dash of Methodology.

I know, I know. My expectations are a bit unrealistic if I believe I will find an exact match for my particular skills. I know that job descriptions are wish lists to some extent, so no candidate is ever a perfect match. I also realize that one must adapt one's skill set according to the requirements of the job and be flexible. But there are so few jobs which come within ten or even…

lessons from a theological memoir and a television series about lawyers

It's a hot Wednesday afternoon, so let's talk about false binaries. Basically, a false binary or false dichotomy happens when a person's options are artificially limited to two choices, thereby excluding all other possibilities. Insisting on the limited choice of either A or B leaves no room for middle ground or another, more creative solution. In other words, a false binary assumes the rest of the alphabet (after A and B) does not exist.

Binary thinking is quite prevalent in our society. Either you are for me or against me. Either you are guilty or innocent. Either you are a Democrat or a Republican, conservative or liberal. Either you are a Christian or a pagan. Either you are all in or all out. Admittedly, it is convenient to see things as either black or white, but we live in a multi-coloured world and not everything fits neatly into two categories. This is why insisting there are only two choices when, in fact, other options exist, is labeled as a fallacy in logic an…

outWORD

Search This Blog