The Best Baseball Catch Maybe Ever

Solomon Sez...

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Orthograph #131 - Christ is Risen!

Foreclosure Predictors

I picked up a new client a couple weeks ago.  I met him when I repaired a couple holes in his girlfriend's house. He was impressed and asked what I did besides drywall. I told him I do handyman stuff and painting too.  Turns out he fixes up bank repo's to put back on the market. Usually they are pretty trashed.  

He said, "I have a house to paint inside and out. I have 2,800.00 in it. If you want to do it you can have it, otherwise I have a Mexican that will do it for me at that price." The price was less than half of what I usually do painting for. I thought about it for half a second.

I said, "Me llamo Esteban."

So now I'm on my second house for him.  I'm working for less than half of what I usually work for but I have over three times the amount of work I've had in the last two years, so I guess it works out.

The first house I painted last week had a powder blue room, a pink room, a room with bright red, canary yellow, lime green and shocking blue walls. The house I'm painting now has... hmmm, a periwinkle room, a Pepto-Bismol pink room and the master bedroom is powder blue. I'm beginning to think I see a pattern developing. I should market my idea to mortgage companies:  Show people a color swatch and see what they pick for house colors. It is a better predictor of foreclosure than perhaps even income.

As much as I love the bedroom colors, the thing I love most about the house I'm repainting now is the living room.  The thing I'm not crazy about is the blood splatters ten feet up on the master bedroom walls.  I don't even want to know. I'm thinking it might have something to do with illicit drug use.  But it makes sense.  After all, I think it would take conciousness altering substances for someone to do what you see when you walk in the front door. 

Isn't there a 911 Designer Police phone number you can call? 

"OK, ma'am.... Put down the sponge, raise your hands above your head and slowly step away from the paint bucket and no one will get hurt...." 

Even though I'm not getting paid a lot there is a rewarding sense about this job.  Even though I am missing most or all of Holy Week to get this job turned over in time, I feel like I am contributing to the spiritual well being of humanity by covering this up. 

Orthograph #130 - Guilt Free Zone

Orthograph #129 - Lenten Disasters

I thought about letting this stand alone, but as my 12th anniversary of becoming Orthodox looms in a few days I figured I'd add some personal annotation.

My first Lents were "successful" because I thought they were. I encountered the disciplines of the Church and I kept the fasts and attended the services relatively strictly. Of course I was tempted and "failed" in some ways and in good conscience and zealous humility I acknowledged my weakness and confronted my humanity. But Lent was a new toy. Or, in construction terms, a new tool. When I first got my unbelievably heavy 12" compound slider miter saw I gleefully hauled it everywhere.

After a dozen years, Lent has become less a "new toy" or a new tool and more of a "real job". Now when I have a job that REQUIRES my 12" saw, I reluctantly carry it from the shed to the truck and do the set up on the job site. But I need it to do the job well. Lent has become much the same thing. I love Lent, but it is also a heavy tool that I'd rather avoid using if possible.

The problem is Lent is like a "real job" now. But it has no time card to punch, no Human Resources Company Rules and write ups that go in my employee file if I screw up. The "threat of discipline or termination" is entirely in my own mind and imagination of my relationship with God and the Church. I've discovered that, once the novelty wore off and Lent isn't fun or some kind of ego trip or contest anymore, without a tangible "boss" hovering over me, I slack.

I think now after a dozen years, Lent is finally becoming real. The disasters are more real than the recipe gathering and label reading and chat room discussions of fasting and prayer fed by novelty and zeal without knowledge. Yes, certainly I learned some things in the early years, but they were things I knew from what I was reading that I was supposed to learn. But I think they were not true fruit but only seeds, and those seeds are just beginning to sprout and perhaps bear some flower. I am not willing to say they are even truly bearing fruit yet.

So in my second year of abject Lenten disasters, this year was not as bad as the last in some ways. The main difference this year is the lack of guilt and the enhanced sobriety. Less a focus on the plate and more a focus on the soul. Less a focus on the ingredients on the labels and more a focus on what makes up my character. Maybe I needed to finally utterly fail in order to finally strip away the facades and the "passion of novelty" and find the true function of the tools.

Perhaps I am on the downhill side of the graph. I hope so. At this point it is a projection and prognostication, not an experience.

My prognostication in the short run is I will watch this Holy Week from a spiritual distance and follow Christ to the Cross from afar... which is where I fancied myself in years past because I knew that was where I was told in the books that I was "supposed to be". Maybe in another dozen years I'll figure out where I really am this year.

Until then, I guess I'll just try to keep the Cross in sight no matter how far I wander from the self sacrifice on Golgotha.

Holy Week Creeps Up on the Bunny... and Me.

Unknown Bible Stories #1 - Feeding the 5000

"Delusion Tours" Offers Annual Lenten Retreat

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(For 5th Sunday of Lent From the Archives)

Orthograph #128 - There's No Place Like Home

Orthograph #126 - Homilists

Simply Beautiful

More about the making of the video HERE

H/T Alex and Miguelle

Orthograph #126 - Because I'm Special

Beware of Wearing the "Elder Badge"

I once saw an inexperienced disciple who used to boast in certain quarters about the achievement of his teacher. He imagined that in this way he would win glory for himself from another's harvest. But he only got a bad name for himself, for everyone put this question concerning him, "How then could a good tree grow such a dead branch?" St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

The corresponding Orthograph HERE