Skip to main content

what is it?

My French class had a party yesterday. We ate lots of ethnic food, played some games, sang French songs, listened to some students talk about their hobbies, and then they had a draw for prizes. I ended up with this lovely item pictured here. The only problem is, I have no idea what it is. At first I thought it was a candle holder, but I don't have any pointy upside down triangle candles that would fit. Plus, they would drip horribly through the silver wire. It can't be a vase because flowers have long stems. I guess I could balance an orange or apple on top of the two cones, but what would be the point? It is not a toothpick or chopstick holder nor a napkin or raisin reservoir. It could obviously be used as a cat toy but I don't think that is its intended purpose. A decorative trumpet-ish thingy perhaps? I don't know. What do you think?

There are a bunch of situations in my life right now that I just feel clueless about. I am learning to give myself grace to be less than all-knowing and all-capable all the time. It is a hard place to get to, this grace spot, and especially difficult to stay in when everything and everyone is screaming for an answer and looking for action (including me).

Grace, you are my friend, a gift from the benevolent one. Let me take hold of you and your weightless but oh so substantial and all-encompassing cloak and tarry with your gentle and gracious presence a good long while. At least until the screaming subsides.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more