Home Repair, Lost Names, and Reformations Large and Small

It's been a good, but unusual, writing morning.  For reasons unknown to me, I woke up wanting to know the timeline of cottage repair a year ago.  I decided to go back through blog postings of last year at this time.

I came across this nugget in this post that made me think I had a poem beginning:

"Those home repair/improvement shows don't show the mountains of wasted raw materials: the tiles that cracked in the wrong place, the carpet cut in the wrong place, the gobs of masonry/plaster/paste that we thought we'd need but didn't, the lumber that split the wrong way when the saw hit it.  No one fights on a home repair show.  No one hurls tools in anger/disgust/frustration.  No one dissolves into weeping."

But I wanted to get a more pressing project underway.  I am responsible for the more interactive worship service tomorrow.  I needed to write some prayers and to find some images for Reformation Sunday.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we are living in a remarkable time:  type some words into a search engine and voila!  I had the images I needed.  And it was fairly easy to get them into the PowerPoint template for the service.  Not for the first time have I thought of the connection between Luther and easier printing technology and our own time of technology that makes it easier to communicate (see this post for more).

I went back to my blog posts about Reformation to get ideas for the prayers.  They were easy to write.  Would they have been this easy if I hadn't had those blog posts?  I doubt it.

I decided to write a poem.  But first, I decided to finish the poem I wrote the other day, the one that was inspired by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat's poem that you can find here, a poem inspired by Luisa Igloria's prompt: Write a poem about your secret name(s).  If you like that prompt and want others, see this post. 

And then I wrote parts of a poem inspired by the above blog post.  It begins this way:

No one dissolves into weeping
on the home repair shows.

I envision at least 3 stanzas beginning with 2 lines:

Competent hands hold the tools
on the home repair shows.

and

No mountains of wasted supplies pile up
on the home repair shows.

I plan to fill in the rest of the lines later; my writing time draws to a close, and I soon must go to spin class.

But let me record another joy in my morning's Internet ramblings.  Much of yesterday I spent creating the Winter schedule.  I walked to look at classrooms as I tried to envision a schedule that would work with everyone's needs.  I created a schedule and sent an e-mail to my department asking them to double check to make sure I had created a schedule that would work for each person.

One of my department members keeps a blog, and this morning, I discovered this blog post with this revelation about her schedule: 

"The only glitch seemed to be the availability of a half hour during my work day to finish this process; I needn't have worried since my schedule for next quarter presents an entire hour between classes! How propitious! It seemed all was falling into place. I was told that even traveling should not be a problem."

I had worried that she might not be happy about the changes I made to her schedule to be able to grant her request for extra time between classes, but come to find out, I was part of a day of blessings. 

I went to a goodbye party for the director of admissions yesterday, and everyone spoke so fondly of her as they toasted her goodbye.  I slipped away, fighting sadness, that funeral feeling that no one would cry at my absence.  I was pleased this morning to be reminded that something as small as working out a schedule request can be a blessing, can be part of bringing good into the world. 

Some reformations are huge.  Some are small, but can have a dramatic impact on a single life.

It's been a good morning.  May the rest of the day follow.