Rambling - May 8, 2025
Christ Church is having the Rectory painted. It’s been over twelve years since it was done, so it was time, both inside and out. The exterior needed all the cracks and crevices to be filled in to keep the shell watertight. There were bits of wood that needed attention because of minor rot. And it gave us an excuse to update the color! As lovely as the Rectory is, and as much as I’m a fan of “Big Brown”, the big brown Rectory stood out in our colorful neighborhood for its lack of color. Now it’s a lovely deep blue.
We are so grateful for the painting. On the inside, it’s been twelve years of an active family, raising young kids along the way. Paint can get dingy and faded on its own, but it also gets marked up along the way, too. The paint will be as much of an upgrade as it was when we painted the parish hall. It’s not quite like being in a new house, but more than a year after we did it, I still celebrate the freshness of the offices post-repainting. And, for all that we’re looking forward to getting the new paint on the walls, a lot has to happen to make painting possible…while we’re living in the house!
The effort will be worth it in the end, but it is effort, nonetheless. We had to prepare the upstairs bedrooms and dormers in anticipation of the start of interior painting tomorrow. It’s not quite as bad as moving, because you don’t have to touch everything or empty every drawer, but it is a good reminder of how much stuff we have and continue accumulating. Just getting the master closet ready for paint was a chore. In theory, we’ll be able to use this as an excuse to downsize some items before they go back in! We’ll spend a few nights on air mattresses downstairs, as all the furniture in each bedroom will be clustered together in the center of each room. Then we’ll swap and get everything downstairs ready – although that will be easier to achieve.
I’ve probably rambled before about the benefit and the effort of moving. It can remind us of what we really don’t need – “Wow, I haven’t seen that in ten years!” It can also remind us of what is important – “I need to be sure not to lose track of this.” It’s healthy to go through our things and get rid of miscellaneous stuff, as we do seem to accumulate plenty of it when we stay put for any particular amount of time. Too much stuff in our lives is unhealthy physically and spiritually. While I’m not ready to subscribe to the tiny home movement, I see its allure. I had already begun to see a shift in how I view things, like my clothes closet before the painting plan. For example, I know I want to reduce the size of my wardrobe and the amount of “fast fashion,” or “disposable clothing,” as it’s known, that is a part of it. Plus, it would allow for fewer microplastics in my clothing. (Yes, I STILL hear about that pesky plastic spoon sermon regularly.)
One of the gifts of the Easter season is the invitation to be fully alive and to understand what life is intended for. We are, having understood the gift of Easter morning–at least in theory- able to be free from the worries of this world that drive things like consumerism and the sense that we don’t have enough, or worse yet, aren’t enough in and of ourselves. “The weight of sin that clings so closely,” as one prayer says, is no longer ours to bear. We have been made new once again by the saving actions of God and Jesus’ sacrifice, which means we are set free from the patterns we used to follow if we want to be. We can spruce ourselves up a bit with a new coat of proverbial paint and let the freshness of resurrection life fill us with goodness like a deep breath fills our lungs.
We can be made new, not just at some future moment of death and rebirth. It doesn’t need to be as hard as moving all the furniture in our lives around, and we don’t even have to dig into every closet. If we choose, we can simply accept God’s refreshing goodness and redecorate one space at a time. We can renew a friendship or let go of resentment. We can honor the temple of our body, and we can also celebrate and use the brains God gave us in new ways. We can rediscover the altar and prayer places in our lives and meet God in the midst of God’s creation. Whatever the refresh looks like, it’s ours if we want it. This reality isn’t only reserved for Easter. We can do this work anytime, but if it’s been a while, now’s as good a time as any.
