the couch

We are home.

After nearly a week of sighing longingly over its photo on craigslist, we have viewed the couch in person.  We have sat on the couch.  We have asked probing questions about the couch.  We have smelled the couch and checked its hidden seams for evidence of infestation.

We have purchased the couch.  We have loaded it into a borrowed truck and muscled it into our living room (necessitating the removal of certain door hardware to do so).

And now we are staying up WAY past our bedtimes, trying to get used to the couch.

It is mammoth.

We like it, I hasten to add - although the cushions do seem to tilt forward in a most unwelcoming fashion.  We are hoping to break them in (and we know we're good at that, since our thorough success is the primary reason we're getting rid of our old couch) and help them form new habits.

But ... it's mammoth.

And it's not alone.  It came ("oh, joy!" we thought) with a matching mammoth chair and ottoman, both of which completely redefine the word "overstuffed."

It didn't look big in its old house.  (Of course, there was nothing else in the room to lend a sense of scale, whereas here it has plenty of normal-sized furniture to dwarf.)

I was eager for a new couch.  I just ... didn't realize that it would look like it was trespassing.  How long will this last?  Can I get used to it faster by going in and out of the room several times - say, oh, four dozen?  Or will it take days ... ?  Months?

And yet, I like it.

I just feel sorry for the recliner.  It used to dominate the room.  Now it cowers in the corner, reduced in size like a great-grandmother, shrunken with age.



[pictures, added for Queenie:]

BEFORE:

AFTER:

(note the recliner, reduced in the background, and the mammoth matching chair,

together with its ottoman taking up three times the floor space of its predecessor)

(note also the primary use of the ottoman as a Lego table)

metamorphosis (2)

At the pottery studio, I prefer the wheel.

But there are other ways to shape the clay.  By a bank of windows looking out onto the parking lot, there is a slab roller (picture an old wringer-washer with just one roller bar on a table) for making flat sheets of clay for tiles or handbuilt items.  Just outside the studio, affixed to the wall at the edge of the showroom, is an extruder (imagine a sort of giant pasta- or playdough!- machine) for squishing out clay tubes of various shapes - smooth cylinders, long square boxes, star-shaped hollows, and more.  It looks kind of magical, really:  ball of clay in the top, pull down, tidy shape emerges at the bottom.

I never stopped to think about how the process affects the clay.

On the wheel, the clay is centered, bathed with water, and firmly but gently, slowly - often in three (or more) pulls - coaxed by fingers into a final shape.

Much different from being quickly forced from one shape to another by the strength of unyielding metal.

I'm thinking about the clay, now, feeling the forces of change on my heart.

"O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? 

As the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand.

Jeremiah 18:6

Am I - will I be - malleable?

Months ago, a woman I trust told me that God is getting ready to shake up my friendships.  She didn't know that some of my friends were then planning moves, both into and out of my life, physically and emotionally.

Sometimes it feels like betrayal, this change, and sometimes like grace.  Sometimes both.  But always, there is pain.  More the extruder than the wheel, is this process.

I've never been a fan of change - at least not change initiated by another.  It's unsettling to me, like someone else pushing my rocking chair into motion, or a child swinging the hammock I'm resting on.

Maybe the liquidating stage of the chrysalis is over, now, and the formation of the butterfly is beginning ... I hope.  I hope there will be something to show for the squeezing of my heart.

No, not hope.  I trust.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Hebrews 11:1

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, 
since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

hidden

Something else about the chrysalis
(another swallowtail flew free this morning):
it happens, hidden.  

Isolated,
enrobed in green,
out of sight,
the changes happen.

In darkness,
may be.

Outside our observation.
Beyond prediction,
were I the caterpillar.

Plump green fat-footed body
exchanged
for delicate black-winged velvet beauty,
curling, unfurling proboscis,
tentative touching antennae.

Plodding gravity-bound being
Transformed for flight.

Me?
Improbable.
But, true!

You?


And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.  II Corinthians 3:18

[more on caterpillars and metamorphosis:  here, here, here, here, and here.]

cozy

I'm sitting here by the fire this evening, and I keep feeling all these delicious new empty spaces in my house now.  The peace is such an untold secret .... but good secrets like that are for sharing.  It all started two months ago, I think, when I started doing coursework online that changed my focus from fitness to feasting.

I had hoped to lose a few pounds, but as I filled up my soul with truth, I began to shed excess everywhere.

What was first?  . . .  Books, I think.  I went through my shelves of fiction and "self-improvement" and gave away diaper boxes full.

It was like shouting in the Alps in avalanche season:  suddenly everywhere I looked, I saw deposits of unnecessary accumulation.  Out the door it went!

CDs and the CD tower.

More books.

Toys (the children, believe or not, helped with enthusiasm!).

Seldom-used bowls from the backs of cupboards.

Clothing (mine, and baby clothing languishing in the attic, "just in case").

Still more books.

Technological detritus.

Puzzles and games.

Papers that once seemed important.

[The funny thing is, it's actually difficult to think of what all I've gotten rid of - and some of this was stuff that we had to ponder over whether or not we'd miss it.  Needless to say, we don't.]

And as the stuff left, it seemed to release something in us that we didn't even know had been bound.

I painted a door.  He built a shelf.  I started sewing curtains planned a year ago.  He cleaned out the garage.  I painted another door.  He started building me a pottery wheel.  I moved all my pottery from littering my windowsills into a display case in my pottery room.  He attacked that ominous stack of papers.  I fixed a crooked curtain rod and hung a shade.


It's almost like . . . 
                             . . . the stuff we own . . . .
                                                                       . . . . owns us. 


And releasing our stuff, releases us.


Try it:  look around; can you find something to give away?  Something else?  Can you give until there are empty places?  Until you find yourself smiling a little more?  Until you see how restful blank walls and empty corners can be?

I don't know if it ever stops, honestly, if there's ever a time when there's nothing left to give away.  That's okay.  I don't think it's meant to be a task to be completed.  I think the giving's the thing.

And the spaces that are left - the wide open peaceful spaces - are the first reward.

There's also this strange security:  I didn't need all that stuff.  I'm okay without it.  I'm enough.

It's quite cozy.  I think you'll like it.

refining

Does silver hurt, do you think, when its shape melts away in the crucible, and dross mars the mirror, twisted and black and ugly?

Does the caterpillar hurt as it hangs in a "J" and waits for the change coming under its skin, shrugged off to unveil chrysalis?

When it changes again, tight in shiny green, inexplicably growing wings, does it wonder and chafe at the change?  

When the chrysalis clears... 

...and the wings fall out new, does the butterfly, confounded, long for the old, the familiar worm?  I wonder.

Do autumn trees, losing glory a drop at a time, mourn for lost lushness of summer? 

Do they stumble on starkness and cold?  Do they sense any glimpse of the spring?

I wish I knew.

I wish I knew how silver endures the furnace it's in:  heat, and more heat, till purity reflects the face of the refiner himself.

"For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality."  I Corinthians 15:53

"to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds;

and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness."  Ephesians 4:22-24

"be transformed by the renewing of your mind."  Romans 12:2

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."  Galatians 6:9

"You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. 

O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever."  Psalm 30:11-12

"Be still and know that I am God."