It's morning, and I'm sitting in my chair, looking at my mass of books around me, thinking about getting dressed. Am also thinking about where I got a huge amount of my stuff - thrift stores.
I thrift because it's fun for me. I thrift because I've gone a long time without buying new clothes, and it has affected me - when I was younger, it was an obsessive desire of mine, to buy new clothes, and they were always too expensive, because I was always broke. But I bought them anyway. It amazes me how much I would spend on just one garment - $30 for a skirt?
I am more frugal than I sometimes realize, and conversely, I am a spendthrift who has a thing for texture, history, and small collections. I have a complex relationship with items. By complex I mean I am not a fan of people who will negatively and easily dismiss this relationship. I'm not saying I'm always justified. But I want to know why I do or do not do things - just because; but also, so that I can change when I recognize a problem.
Anyway.
Japan.
The devastation keeps bringing up something for me that has been gnawing at my brain for a few weeks now - sacrifice and compassion. I've had another complex battle this last year, with my faith, and I've recognized that amongst a few other key components (more on that some other time), my spiritual life hinges upon those two things. (Yes, I just wrote "upon".)
I know a lot of people are justifiably disgruntled or downright hostile towards American Christianity. I know a lot of people are disgruntled or downright hostile towards people who are disgruntled or hostile towards American Christianity. I am not professing my total theology here, and I'm not rabble-rousing, but I was reading Isaiah 58:4-14 this morning, and it punched me in the face with its summative take on the relationship between sacrifice and compassion.
At the very least, it reminds me to loose myself of the desire to collect and contain, to minimize in my heart the desire to always feel full and satisfied and comfortable. It is a benefit of having dwelled on this in the past, in that I know that - as this passage subtly says - to give, to sacrifice, creates something new in absence.
So anyways. I don't need to buy anything for myself for a good, long while. As I am still broke, and should remember how much I have, and how little others have, in devastation and otherwise. I'm not saying this to make anyone else feel smote. :) It's just where I'm at in my head.
