Inconsequential Saturday....

This is where I write about any old dross that happens to pop into my head at the moment, most of it from the past week.

First off, I am currently reading "The Pillars of the Earth". I can not put this book down. I am reading it in the bathroom, on the treadmill, in front of the TV, in the garden. My hand is cramped from holding it. That is how good it is. Seriously, I recommend it. It's long. Nearly 1000 pages but each page is so richly written that it reminds me of Taylor Caldwell. You feel very present in the world Ken Follett has woven.

Ordinarily I don't jump on bandwagons, particularly the Oprah bandwagon. In my own defense, I bought the book two days before she announced it as her pick. It was prominently displayed at the bookstore and I had no idea it would be Oprah's Book Club Selection.

That said.... :)

Thanks for the responses about my vanity dilemma. Yes, these things are a dilemma for me. I'm a purist in most senses of that. As a friend of mine once said, if I was a Christian, I would be a fundamentalist Christian. I'm very aware of that tendency in my own thinking. If we don't truly live something, how can we claim to believe it?

I'm also on the ascetic side. Pleasure is hard for me. Not because I believe it gains me any particular merit but because somewhere in the hardwiring of my brain, I've connected pleasure for pleasure's sake with Bad Things. So when I believe I might be using the clothing for the wrong reason, it makes me question my own motives.

The clothing is to remind me where my home is, where my soul is at most peace. Doing something that, something so physical and obvious, keeps my mind focused.

But I can see where it's certainly acceptable for others to find pleasure in it. And I want to accept that graciously.

I read a post that disturbed me this week. Let's just say it was entrepreneurism gone wacky. It is only one example of the lowering of taste and class in a culture that seems to be in freefall. Marketing for the sake of marketing, not because it improves the world or our place in it, but simply because it can be marketed without any particular backlash. People have become desensitized.

And a part of me wants to get up on the soapbox and encourage people to mindfully consume, to choose purchases carefully and look not only at the object itself but where the object fits into a larger construct. That part of me is winning at the moment.

Someone once told me that everything we do is a political statement. Not political in the horse race sense of that, but political in the sense that we are supporting certain values, certain ethics and a way of life by the way we choose to consume and what we choose to consume.

I believe this is true. Nothing exists in a bubble. While it is far from me to interfere in the holidays that are coming up for most of the people who read here (not for me, thankfully), I would ask that. Directly. Please. Be careful. Choose carefully.

Your choices matter.

Okay. Enough dross for one day.

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