Sick day: the frivolous & not so frivolous

I lost my voice Thursday night, so yesterday was a sick day. I watched movies, read, made booties and Christmas ornaments & tended to some of my plants.

I'm excited that next weekend Jess & I are making a roadtrip to Omaha to visit friends and attend the Beggars Society meeting where Shane Claiborne will be speaking. I started re-reading parts of his book Irresistable Revolution and have been thinking a lot about what it means to be salt & light, especially after attending the Psalters concert in Greenville a couple of weekends ago. From Irresistable Revolution:

"We live in a world of dangerous extremes. "These are extreme times," Dr. King said. "The question is what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?" The world has seen Christian extremists who will blow up abortion clinics and dance on the doctors' graves. We have seen Christian extremists who hold signs that say: "God hates fags." But where are the Christian extremists for love and grace?"

Another book I've been reading is a volume of poetry from Czeslaw Milosz called "Second Space". Here are a few of his words (from "I Should Know"):

"Memory composes a story of shames and amazements.
The shames I closed inside myself, but the amazements
at a sun-streak on a walll, at the trill of an oriole, a face,
an iris, a volume of poems, a person, endure and return in
brightness."

And from "Jackdaws on the Tower"

"These are days when people seem to me a festivall
Of marionettes dancing at the edge of nothingness.
And the torture inflicted on the Son of Man on the cross
Occurred so thatt the world could show its indifference."