Hymn in three parts

Part One: Reduce

It was the day for getting rid of things. I was ruthless. I was getting rid of t-shirts not just because they didn't fit or had holes but just because I do not need ten t-shirts. I don't.

I took out two garbage bags of clothes. I didn't even stop to count the things inside, because getting rid of a number was not the goal any more. (Plus I was afraid that in the process of counting I would rethink some of my purges.) The goal was not getting rid of things; it was just to have what I need, and no more.

I took the piles of clothes out, and when I was done, I walked in to my closet and sighed, "Thank God for the things I do not have!" And I meant it with all my heart.

Thank God that the poor will have their clothes back. Thank God that my mind is free from the deadly attachment I had to those souvenir shirts. Thank God that I am, for a moment, sure of myself without the support of my things.

Part Two: Reuse

What's a financially strapped would-be spinner to do? It hardly seemed like the right time for me to start up a new, potentially expensive hobby. I did not have a spinning wheel, a drop spindle, or even the correct supplies to make a drop spindle out of an old CD. More significantly, I did not have any fiber to spin.

Which is when I remembered the cheap little pillow, whose stuffing was trickling out of several growing holes.

When I want to do something, I do it. I don't let a little thing like being broke stop me.

Spindle? Leftover piece of dowel rod, plastic lid from a tub of oats, old CD, super glue. Fiber? Polyester stuffing- impossible to comb, incredibly short draw, dingy white. It's like spinning rainclouds. (And if I could do that, by the way, I'd have plenty of fiber, and those clouds would do more good than they are sitting in the sky pretending to think about raining.)

The results could charitably be described as slubby. Actually, they could charitably be described as yarn. But it's something. At least I'm not ruining good fiber on my first sad attempts. If I can spin this, I can spin anything. (My own hair is next on the list. From short draw to loooooong draw in one fell swoop. I promise, no one will get my knitted hair as a present.)

Part Three: Rethink

I hate patriotic "hymns". Hearing them in church makes me want to vomit spectacularly, all over the "hymn"-writer's shoes. I heard this week (maybe from Bruce Ware) that there are four major world religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Americanism. I concur, with tears.

But then I discovered a hymn in our old Cold War-era hymnal that made me rethink the "patriotic" hymn, from a guy who must have known the best and the worst of this country.

Thou Judge by whom each empire fell,
When pride of power o'ercame it,
Convict us now, if we rebel,
Our nation judge, and shame it.
In each sharp crisis, Lord, appear,
Forgive, and show our duty clear:
To serve thee by repentance.

Search, Lord, our spirits in thy sight,
In best and worst reveal us;
Shed on our souls a blaze of light,
And judge, that thou may'st heal us.
The present be our judgement day,
When all our lack thou dost survey:
Show us ourselves and save us.

Lo, fearing nought we come to thee,
Though by our fault confounded;
Though selfish, mean, and base we be,
Thy justice is unbounded:
So large, it nought but love requires,
And, judging, pardons, frees, inspires.
Deliver us from evil!

-Percy Dearmer, 1867-1936