Skip to main content

Interrupted by ... A SQUIRREL!


Clarke was reading my latest blog on his iPad at the kitchen window this past week and I was anxiously waiting for his comments…if any.  It was taking an awfully long time!  Finally he said, “I can’t concentrate. That squirrel keeps interrupting me!”

Now ‘that squirrel’ was on the other side of the closed window. However given that the sun was shining and the temperature was hovering just under the freezing point, three squirrels, thinking it was Spring, were playing chase, darting up to the window and away. Jokingly, I said, “I could write a blog about this!” and then I began to think…..

“How often do extraneous things divert us from doing what we plan? How often do we stop doing something for just an instant, never to take it up again? How often does that momentary distraction take us away from our path?”I suspect it has happened to all of us from time to time. One of the best know cases of being distracted, is when Jesus, in the story of Martha and Mary [Luke 10:38-42], says to Martha, who is busy rushing around getting the meal prepared, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”

We let ourselves get so easily distracted from what is important by the unimportant. Now, I happen to believe that those those pesky squirrels who were running about, proclaiming that Spring had actually peeked through momentarily, were the important things in the above scenario. So not only do we let ourselves get distracted from the important by the unimportant, we can’t even recognize which is which most of the time!

And this led me to wonder where else this happens in my life? Where else do I confuse the important with the unimportant? Is it important whether there was or wasn't a virgin birth; whether Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians or if it is pseudographical; if Peter actually walked on water or not? And I could go on and on….

Perhaps like with squirrels, it is not what actually happened so much as what it is pointing to. The squirrels were pointing to the imminent arrival of Spring after a hard winter. The questions above and others like them point to larger truths as well. Truths like trust, love, compassion and justice. Truths I so often push aside in favour of the more concrete, the more visible, and yes, the more readily acceptable.

In this society we live in, where the important thing seems to how busy we all are, will you take a few minutes this week to focus on the unimportant, the non-concrete, the ‘socially’ unacceptable, to look a little harder for that really important thing you might be missing?

Comments

  1. orangefatcatApril 2, 2014 at 12:21 PM

    what an interesting blog Lynn, i agree, we can easily be distracted from that which is important in life. Sometimes we are not aware of how easy it is to be side tracked. I often find this happens to me in prayer, I start praying to God and then from some reason other thoughts enter my mind and for some reason I am another line of thought and then I realize what on earth I am doing. I am glad that our loving God is patient with us in this respect. Sometimes I often wonder when we are distracted how dangerous it can be, for example when a person uses there mobile cells while driving and it is a good thing that the Ministry of Transportation now says it is an offence and one is charges because it has often lead to automobile accidents with either severe damage or death to the driver or someone else.
    I appreciate you statements of when Jesus was with Mary and Martha, and about Peter or other matters in the scriptures. Sometimes sitting in church one can be distracted by sounds around us or when the priest is administering the Holy Sacrements, people line up and often talk in line and it is often very distracting and quite truthfully in my opinion rude and disrespectful. Our focus should be on the matter at hand. I try to justify it by saying to myself that we are just being friendly however there is a time for being friendly after services not during services. Sometimes after communion when people return to their seats they are talking it is most distracting.
    We all love squirrels and chipmunks and look forward with such anticipation to spring that we can get lost with a realm of our own and not even realize it. We all do it because it is only human. I mean who doesn't love to watch the animal play and chase one another or if we see a few birds on the ground chirping and or even in a birdbath or bird feeder we are intrigued by it. However if something we are suppose to be doing is more important at that moment we need to train ourselves and discipline ourselves from being side tracked, and that is by no means an easy task.
    I can recall a time when driving down a country road when I took my eyes off the road as I saw a beautiful deer and because of this distraction I nearly ended up in a ditch. This could have been detrimental but thankfully I was all right.
    Your blog has certainly made a lot of sense and i really enjoy the tremendous thoughts you prepare when you blog. Today's subject was great.

    Thanks Lynn for sharing.

    Shalom, Terry

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Greatest Gift

“What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.” ~from ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ by Christina Rossetti Many of us will be singing, or have sung, these words at some time over this Christmas season. The first verse of the carol, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ begins with words that echo many Christmases here in Canada: ‘In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,’ and so we usually find it included in at least one of the services held at this time of year.  For me it has always fit in with the sentimentality of a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service. Yes, we can all give our heart to this young babe - after all who doesn’t find babies hard to resist~ The songs of angels singing in the heavens, a bright star in the dark winter sky, potentates arriving from a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Candle is Peace....

“ A candle is burning, a candle of PEACE,   A candle to signal that conflict must cease   For Jesus is coming to show us the way   A message of peace humbly laid in the hay” ~words by Sandra Dean What conflict does our society see as needing to cease? Many see a conflict within their family, where peace can be brought about by expelling/silencing someone who is the cause of the conflict, who is unwilling to go along with the family’s expectations or who is unable to abide by them through mental illness or addiction. Peace to them means quiet because no one dares to challenge the status quo. “All I want under my tree Peace and love and harmony Wrap it with a ribbon please I'll share it with my family." ~Chorus from ‘With my Family’ by Rita MacNeil, 1993 Peace for the country happens when the powers that be are in charge, making decisions that are followed unquestioningly by the proletariat   - no riots, no strikes, no protests there. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"On Giving Thanks"

Thanksgiving Is usually one of those ‘easy’ times for me.   It is easy to be thankful living with abundance, in safety, with family and friends – so many things to give thanks for, so many blessings undeserved. Some years and for some people, it is not so. What would Thanksgiving mean to me then? How would I deal with it? I came across this prayer not long ago ~           For that which was           For that which is           For that which will be          Thanks be to God And I began to wonder ~ Is the real meaning behind Thanksgiving not so much the ability to be thankful for those things we have in abundance? After all, that is easy.  But rather to be thankful for everything we have been given or experienced in life, or are now experiencing: the highs and the lows, the mountain-top experiences and the valleys of death, the deserts and the abundant har...
4 comments
Read more

"Nudgement"

As we progress through the season of Lent, we are urged by the lectionary aa well as by the words spoken from the front of the churches to consider how we live and what we do with our lives. Many of us take up a new spiritual practise perhaps denying ourselves something we enjoy or adding something to our daily routine that we think will benefit our spiritual growth in the long run.  What we can seen to be doing is in fact judging our lives and then trying to make them  better by doing ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’. Quite a while ago I received a note from one of the readers of this blog and it has stayed with me over the time since it landed in my inbox. ‘I just coined the term "nudgement" for myself this morning.  I was thinking of how EFM interprets "judgement" as something that surprises you or that you weren't expecting, which is a gentler notion of "judgement" than some of us grew up with, something that is enough out of the ordinary to urge us ou...
2 comments
Read more

The Reason for This Season?

Each year I have had a theme in mind for my blogs during Advent season, sometimes even having them written in advance.. This year however the well seems to have run dry. Advent is that season of the church calendar when we are called upon to prepare ourselves for the Christmas celebration that speaks of the entry of Jesus into history, and into our lives. As I sit here at the computer I find myself thinking of what I am doing this year, this week in particular, that will prepare me this participate fully in the Christmas event.  How can I become more cognizant, more immersed, in what is called commercially, ‘the reason for the season’ ? This is what I hope to explore over the next few weeks and I would invite you to join me in that exploration. As the Advent begins I find myself getting out the Christmas decorations, thinking about writing the annual family Christmas letter, setting up playlists of Christmas music on my phone, filling Christmas festivities on my cale...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Theology of Food

Theology is defined as ‘the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially:  the study of God and of God's relation to the world’ [Mirriam-Webster online dictionary] A preacher began his sermon with the statement ‘There is no theology of food.’ which alone of all he had to say made me sit up and take notice.  Not only take notice, but to begin to consider just why it sounded wrong to me and what exactly was my understanding of the connection between food and theology… because I felt very strongly that there was one! For the better part of two years I was part of a Meditation group that followed their weekly time of meditation by sharing a light meal provided by the various members of the group. Over that food, experiences were shared from our everyday life, ideas were voiced, and connections were made, all of which echoed our various understandings of just what it meant to try and live as a Christian in today’s world. This was theology, t...
Post a Comment
Read more

"The Usual Suspects" - The Shepherds

Just who were these shepherds that Luke has in his version of the Christmas Story? Why pick them? What was their role to be? ‘ In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,  ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,  and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’  When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has ta...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sameness

“What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.” ~ Audre Lorde It was the last sentence of this quote by Audre Lorde, an American writer and civil rights activist, that caught my attention. I knew what our differences were! But I started thinking and wondering about just what our sameness might be…. As members of the human family we all have the same need for food, for water, for shelter from the elements. But the food, the water, the shelter can vary depending on where we are and the conditions there.  Here in Canada we need shelter from both the winter’s cold and the summer’s heat. In the tropics, the winter’s cold isn’t so much of a problem. So our housing needs are very different.  The diets of people differ depending on what is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage of Time

This year has taken forever and at the same time has gone in the blink of an eye. I wonder if you feel the same way...   Last March the prospect of a month’s lockdown seemed to be forever. Had we realized then that 10 months later we would be looking forward to another 10-12 months of COVID before the vaccines have reached everyone and we can begin to relax our precautions just a little, it would have felt like forever! Time, however like religion , is a human construct, at least according to Christopher Hitchens. I remember seeing a television show where Hitchens explained how time doesn’t really exist. It is something that humans used to explain the disconnect between for example sunrise and sunset, or when you start on a walk and when you got to your destination. We have quantified that disconnect and used clocks and calendars to keep track of it. His point was that there is really only this moment right now, and what we are doing during it is really all that is. Sounds sort of ...
1 comment
Read more

Hung on a Nail

While it wasn’t my first inclination on reading this sign, I feel a need to unpack what it is saying to me. Too often I am apt to pooh-pooh an idea or a metaphor without looking more closely into the meaning within. It is a saying first of all that relates to a first world problem. We are part of the minority in this world who actually have keys to worry about…who have houses [yes, more than one often] who have cars, who have valuables that we feel the need to protect.  So the person doing the hanging is prosperous with the goods of the world, if not by their own standards, by the standards of the majority of people living today. So what else do we hang on nails?  Car keys! I’m sure we have all heard at some time in our life, the story told of someone going to the nail where they always hang the car keys, only to find that they aren’t there, follow by frantic searching which fails to unearth the keys. Sometimes this story ends with the person saying a prayer askin...
Post a Comment
Read more