bits and bants vol.46
easter expectations
I am thankful to finally be in Eastertide! Christ is Risen! I hope you are still feasting and celebrating. As my dear friend joked this week, we need to hold accountability meetings where we make sure we’re feasting properly for 50 straight days and we should do so by all bringing a bottle of champagne. Take that Exodus 90.
I trust it is completely spring where you are, we’re still hobbling our way towards warmth and I am dying to get into the garden and see things actually grow! I have a handful of bulbs starting to push out of the ground and I am/was dying of impatience as to why they are creeping up at such a slow pace. So I dug down a couple inches into the ground to investigate, and of course the ground still felt freezing! No wonder nothing is growing yet, the ground is barely warming up. No need to tell me how your tulips have come and gone a month ago, I’m suffering enough as it is, thanks!
But in exciting news our landscapers are coming to move dirt and create a large garden plot today! When we bought this property it was purely lawn and trees and when we realized the lawn had a very unpleasant undulating effect we knew this was a problem for the professionals. But it will be great progress and hopefully I can even begin planting some cold hardy things out next week. Momentous times!
I am forcing myself to write for 30 minutes right now or else there would be no writing and no newsletter. When I think to myself, “What to write?” I have a hard time pinning down any thoughts of worth. I always assumed that deep intelligent thoughts would return when my kids got older, but I fear the reverse is true. There’s even less time to think and write cohesively because so much more brain energy is being spent mentally organizing the increasingly tight social calendar of three teenagers in high school, and two other teenagers who want to go in all directions at all times. I’m not even over scheduled, but so much mental energy is consumed. I think it’s partly a me personality situation, I am on top of everything, and also a very intense time of life. This is the natural consequences of having five kids in six years—every stage is intense! I continue to just have increasing admiration with women with more kids with larger age ranges because it is so challenging to keep up with it all. I fear I may have the unrealistic expectation that more mental space will equal more original thoughts, but so far that hasn’t been my experience. It’s really just my brain being so thankful for mental space I just stop thinking altogether!
I should really write on expectations and pray more about my expectations. I would love to have my expectations shaped by the Holy Spirit instead of my anxiety. My growing/graduating kids, election results, conclave results, the collapse of the Oilers power play, where is the cat; all these things that hold my attention that I want to so tightly hold onto and worry about. My expectations are so far from what I can actually control. Then to worry that those expectations won’t actually happen feels like such a weird vicious circle to be riding. I used to assume naïveté and a willful ignorance in people who didn’t have opinions and expectations for all important world events, but now I’m starting to realize they are the most realistic and healthy among us. The correct expectation of the Christian is a life of suffering and the cross. The expectation of things not going our way. But it is hard to humble ourselves into what that really entails and how we actually live.
Is that too dire? I guess I’m trying to speak to the default prosperity gospel expectation we take on sometimes as Christians, that because we have faith our life will be easy, breezy, beautiful or that somehow because we’re faithful “God owes us”. I find I can slip into this thinking so easily without seeing that’s what I’m doing.
That’s enough self diagnosis for today.
bits:
As we pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis there has been a real wealth of terrific writing on his papacy and legacy. I’ve probably already forgotten my favourite pieces, but I have been reading so much this week that I’ve definitely approached over-consumption. I appreciated this piece by Fr. de Souza, this retrospective article with voices from Larry Chapp and Amy Welborn, and of course all coverage from
. I don’t even follow any coverage from people who either aren’t in Rome or are not The Pillar.I hope this piece isn’t behind a paywall because I found this look into the history of the Dutch response to the Nazi invasion and the Holocaust fascinating.
It is a very human trait to forget our wrongdoing and our group-think sins easily and quickly. I can only hope and pray that so many Europeans repented after their actions during World War II, I find it to be a really complex spiritual reality to think about.
I really loved this article on ozempic coming to dinner. What a terrible thought to have dinner guests over who you have cooked so hard for only push food around their plates. It feels so genuinely dystopian to me, like it’s come straight out of Walker Percy.
reading, watching, what have you:
the NHL playoffs have started so there goes the television.
I’m reading the mystery The Great Mistake by Mary Roberts Rinehart, which is feeling a bit directionless. Not the tight cozy mystery I’m used to.
I actually feel pretty uninspired in my reading lately. The book club reads haven’t excited me at all, or I’ve already read them, nothing new seems to have me eager to read, and I feel a bit unmoored. Like I need a really good, unexpected novel to surprise me. I will take whatever recommendations you have for me.
I’m off to get five kids in seemingly endless different directions this weekend. So the usual weekend situation. I hope you have a very happy second weekend of Easter! Feast harder, everyone.
hoping for sunshine,
Christy
Hooray for garden progress! My daffodils and irises are finally poking out here in MN, not blooming yet-but so satisfying to start yard cleanup these past couple weeks. Sadly most of my time will probably be occupied by digging up the many sizable tree suckers that we couldn’t catch while babies kept us busy the past couple years, but at least I get to start the season with a finished patio (which I built last year…so thrilled that my May will *not* involve hauling reclaimed bricks around like last year).
The bit about ozempic struck a chord with me for a different reason-many of my family members who live nearby and who often gather with us for celebrations have a lot of self-imposed dietary restrictions and it is a surprisingly huge hindrance to feasting together. When there aren’t actual allergies involved it’s so irritating that everyone basically ends up bringing their own food because they won’t trust that someone else’s food is acceptable. It’s so hard to actually host and offer hospitality when people are picky about what I’ve prepared, even when it’s taken those preferences into account.
A Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt was one of those surprisingly great reads for me a few years ago. It’s a “classic” quest adventure- easy reading but page-turning! People will shun me for saying it, but it’s like some of the best of Tolkien-ish without all the endless songs and odes to trees etc.