3.5 Time Outs: Near Occasions of Sin

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is willing to count me among his minions, even though I’m also one The Jen F.’s minions, even if I did forget my 7 takes last Friday because I didn’t remember it was Friday.  Nice thing about Fridays is you get a new one every week.

1.

The people I’m trying to be nicer to are not helping me.  You who chew with your mouths closed? I have no difficulty being nice to you.  It is the people who pick fights at the breakfast table.  Those people.    I’ve had to switch acts of contrition, not just because I blank out in the confessional so I need something short and easy, but also because, well, I can’t exactly avoid “whatever leads me to sin”.  No sense pretending.  I think my pastor gets it.  He can’t avoid me all the time either.

2.

Speaking of bad influences:  I was having some trouble with the new Mass translation at first, not because it isn’t beautiful and everything, but because the first time I heard “like the dewfall” during the consecration, I giggled.  Not out loud.  But my lips sort of twitched.  I hope everyone else was looking at the altar. My trouble is the people I spend my days with.  They are so . . . juvenile.  It rubs off.

3.

This morning I read the wrong day’s Mass readings. The page marked in my missal had both January 3 and January 4 on it, and did I know what day it was?  No.  I didn’t even wonder. I just read.  But hey, you have good stuff to look forward to tomorrow.

–> First let’s just admit it, 1st John can be a little overwhelming, hmmn?  Even if it does fit right in with that whole “resolutions” theme we’re all talking about.  But I like this bit here, I think makes a good hinge for the could-be scrupler:

It was to undo all that the devil has done, that the Son of God appeared.

So that’s my consolation when I read in Psalm 97, “Let the rivers clap their hands,” and my brain goes all middle-school on me, not in a good way.   But look, here’s a nice river picture to clean the imagination:

The funny thing about poetry and photography, is that they aren’t like the real world.  Rivers don’t have hands that clap.  If you stand in the Narrows of Zion Canyon, this picture is not what you see.  The water isn’t all pearly and shiny.  It’s wet and icy cold, and you aren’t thinking about how it looks (normal old water), you are thinking: Snowmelt.  And the walls of the canyon are not so flat and washed out; they surround you, and make you forget the entire rest of the world, and you can touch them, and you would never have believed in them if you had not seen them yourself.

But people like the photo.  I think because the shiny-pearly water makes it feel like fairlyand.  Like rivers with hands that clap.   Like the world as we know it is supposed to be, if only the wreckage were undone.  Which is how you feel standing there in the canyon.  You know that whoever made this is so much bigger than you.  And entirely able to undo the madness.  And that you were meant to be a part of that.

3.5

. . . sidewalks.

Please.  Cut it out with the weird car ideas.   Just build a sidewalk.  A good one.  Wide.  With proper curb cuts.  That goes all the way to store.  Just like roads — we don’t build roads that stop abruptly because one of the neighbors didn’t want to cede a right of way, but hey, just drive over the grass and through the ditch, road picks up again in half a block.  Real sidewalks.  Don’t call yourself an environmentalist, or a fuel-security guru,  and then make it impossible for people to walk places.