There but for the grace of God...

I never used to understand why so many people liked to go shopping. Hopping in the car and going to the mall just wasn’t something I could ever seem to enjoy. Yard sales? That’s a different story!

But now I’m a stranger in a new place. (Well, fairly new… I have a few acquaintances, but no friends.) And all of a sudden, I’ve discovered a dormant love for shopping! OK, well, not really a love of shopping, but a big desire to get out of the house and go somewhere, anywhere, and do something other than unpack boxes and discipline children.

Yard sales are still my predominant form of shopping, and now auctions as well, but I also find myself just wandering up and down Wal-Mart’s aisles. And even as I unpack boxes and boxes of junk (both my own and some inherited from my mother), I’m out hunting yard sales and auctions for more stuff! Some of it is justifiable (I really did need those diapers from Wal-Mart), but I am doubtful that I really need to be doing so much shopping.

Why, I ask myself, am I doing this? Mostly, as above, to get out of the house with its overwhelming piles of work and a solitude shared only by two-year-olds. I’ve met a homeschooling mom at a yard sale. I’ve made side deals with people at auctions. I’ve had real conversations, even if only a few minutes long, with other adults. In addition, I’ve become vastly more familiar with the roads of my area and found some great deals.

Once again I realize I have been guilty of being judgmental. I used to think less of people who seemed to like shopping for the sake of shopping, but now I realize that I am no different. Instead of condemning others’ behavior, I should have been sympathetic, whether they loved shopping because of boredom, loneliness, stress, or just the love of the hunt coupled with the blessing of having enough money to pursue shopping as a hobby. There are many worse things shopaholics could be doing with their time and money than shopping!

=)

Guest Blogger: Subaico Now

Here is a guest blog by Periwinkle Percival:

I was reading our local paper during break at work. I read two things of interest: Oprah Winfrey is heralded as a great spiritual leader, a "hip, materialistic version of Mother Teresa." The other was an advertisment for the "best seller" in junvenille literature: Walter the Farting Dog II: Walter Goes on Cruise.

I am glad that the author of the article on Ms. Winfrey had the discernment to verify that hip and materailistic are not descripters of the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta. After that, the analogy breaks down for me I think, much in the same way that someone might try to decribe to me a sunlit night or a moonlit day.

Wow. I am stunned at my incomplete childhood, having missed out on the the epic of Walter the Farting Dog. Superman, the Lone Ranger, Batman, and any other hero figure from my youth or my parents youth just cannot begin to compare with the uncomparable Walter. Seeing as how this is the SECOND book of this inestimatable series, I forcast that a movie will come of it, if it has not been already cast. A line of toy accessories is sure to follow that. I am reserving my place in line at Toys R Us now.

This must be a small glimmer of what St Benedict, and the other fathers/mothers of the monasticism must have seen and felt as they surveyed the world around them. To be sure, the world ALWAYS was evil and depraved; at absolute rock bottom. It also appears that having hit rock bottom, the world has begun to dig.