BEAN BAGGY

I've been neglecting my duties here, of late, and can only plead busy or distracted or recuperating from the holidays or chasing after a two-year-old, but those can encompass just so much. There's just not much circulating in my fuzzy brain lately, and it's one of those silly things I've contended with all my life---I rarely have an original thought, I think.

I can read the numerous blogs I enjoy every day, and pick up one little idea and just run on with it til the cows, etc., but it seems so inane to copy a thought or a saying or a circumstance, and prink around with it enough to pass off as my own. So I never want to do that. Still, the ideas and the memories are elusive these busy times, and I suppose it's what you might call a dry spell, for want of a better term.

Years ago, I subscribed to about ten of the smalltown papers around the state, just for the news and the fun and the different reporting styles and society doings. I've spoken of one of them in a post last year: http://lawntea.blogspot.com/2009/01/hometown-news.html and the avid readership of all the local publications was surprising.

Once, one of my favorite papers had a little typo which was just too good to miss. A dear, dedicated older woman of great spiritual strength and impeccable character wrote the column for her little area of the circulation---a little community with hardly a name, let alone a zip code. She always closed her column with a Scripture verse, with a few words of encouragement and enlightenment as she was led.

One week, the verse she chose was Matthew 7:3, concerning overlooking our own faults whilst we speak and think harshly of others' sins. And her writing might have been a bit shaky---so many of the smalltown "reporters" mailed in their copy on notebook paper, jotted down between hanging out the clothes and putting on a pot of greens for supper. Or, perhaps, the typesetter was not quite up to par that day---anyway, the line which appeared in the paper, bold-face type and printed for the world to see, was:

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the bean that is in thine own eye?"

That was just the most charming, endearing, hilarious thing I'd read in a LONG time. I told it to my family, friends, Sunday School class, and would chuckle or smile at the oddest times when I thought of it. The kids and I made a thing of it---if one of us was not feeling well, we had a bean. If we didn't want to do something, we were hampered because of our bean.

It grew into a long-term silly phrase---I'm sorry I can't help you/volunteer/go/sell magazines/ drive the Cub Scouts/hold an office---I have a bean in my eye.

And so, my lallygag of late has no excuse; I'm sure I'll do better in the new year and be more regular in my correspondence, as soon as I divest myself of this pesky bean.

moire non,

rachel