Skip to main content

Friday Five: Your Workspace Edition

Over at RevGalBlogPals, Revkjarla writes: I don't know about you, but I am a notoriously messy creative worker.  My workspace at home, and at my office is always littered with books and papers and mail and pens and keys and mugs....and tchotchkes (momentos, weird things, etc.)   I am looking right now at a pair of dice that someone gave me that have "God" on each side, so that anyway you roll 'em, you end up with God.  Different, right?   
So, this Friday Five is all about YOUR tchotchkes in your workplace.  Describe five things in/on your workspace (however you define workspace--I tend to spill over onto bedside tables, end tables, coffee tables...create wherever I land) that are special to you!   Bonus points for pictures!



 Oh, honey, the disaster of my desk means my workspace usually looks like this. I'm a member of the Flat Surface Society, meaning if there's a flat surface, I'll stack stuff on it. And I'm not likely to change. I clean my desk post- Christmas and post-Easter, every year. :) 




 Here are my tchotchkes...


An icon of the Holy Trinity or of  Jesus and the travelers to Emmaus. It all depends on your view of it. 
A large rock given to me as a gift from a local United Methodist pastor. There are holes drilled through the rock and small dish glued to the bottom to hold lamp oil. The wicks are fed down through the holes. I love it and I don't light it often, but I like having it on my desk. 
A little large to qualify as tchotchkes, but nevertheless- these are my Mother's Day hats from our preschool. Every year we have a Mother's Day tea (Grandmas, Aunts, Friends, etc) and the kids have made these great hats. I suppose I will eventually have a wall-full! 
This is a beach rock from Nome with an iconic picture of the Holy Family decoupaged onto it. I received it (along with 2 others) from the three Little Sisters of Charity who lived in Nome, Alaska during the time I lived there as well. I housesat their cats when they went out of town. The rock makes me think of the Little Sisters, the prayer room in their house which I used more than once, and my time in Nome. 
I couldn't seem to get this picture to  load with the correct orientation. Oh, well. This glass paperweight is the only sign within my office of the school where I received my Master of Divinity. I'm proud to have to gone to Yale Divinity School and it's not a secret, but my diploma (written in Latin) seems a bit overdone and I haven't yet hung the sketch of the quad that was gifted me. So the paperweight lingers on my desk, often covered with papers (ironic, isn't it). And it brings many memories when it surfaces. 

Comments

revkjarla said…
The Flat Surface Club? Really? How do I get a membership? I adore, adore the nativity rock, and the oil lamp rock....
Someday, I want to VISIT your office!
I confess that I had to try to clean up my desk before taking a photo of it.

I love your photos, especially the hats.

Popular posts from this blog

I'm In

A few weeks ago ,  I was using voice-to-text to compose some prayers. After I was finished speaking the whole list, I was proof-reading the document and   realized that everywhere I said “Amen”, the voice-to-text wrote “I’m in”. “Amen” essentially means  “may it be so”,  but what would it look like to end our prayers with “I’m in”. What would change if we rose from our knees, left our prayer closets, closed our devotionals, and moved with purpose toward the goals for which we had just prayed.  Lord, in your mercy:  Grant justice to the oppressed and disenfranchised (I’m in) Cast down the mighty from their thrones (I’m in)  Console the grieving and welcome the prodigal (I’m in)  Welcome strangers and attend to the marginalized (I’m in)  Grant the space for the silenced to speak… and listen (I’m in)  Fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty (I’m in)  Forgive others as I am forgiven (I’m in) Be merciful as God in h...

Top Ten Things to Learn from the book of Job

Readings: Job 1:1-22; Job 38:1-11; Luke 8: 22-25 10. Job contradicts Proverbs.   The writer of Proverbs offers the hope and consolation that people who live wisely and faithfully, according to the will of God, will flourish and prosper. The very first chapter of Job says: it ain’t necessarily so. You may well live righteously and with great integrity and, still, terrible things may happen. A faithful life is not an automatic buffer to calamity. Due to this contradiction between the books, both of which are categorized as wisdom literature, we are reminded of all those who have gone before us who tried to make the Bible speak with one voice. It doesn’t. The Bible has many voices, some of which are quite dissonant together, but they sing one song about the presence and providence of God.  9. Job is an old story, but a young book, relatively speaking. Since Job doesn’t mention Abraham or Moses or the laws or the Temple, some interpreters have considered it the oldest story ...

While to That Rock I'm Clinging (Epiphany 2025)

I recently read a book that contained this line, “God can only be drilled out of us, not into us. I can see that now, from a distance.” God can only be drilled out of us, not into us. The author was discussing the griefs and losses of her life, but also her awareness of the larger scope of the movement and power that carries us all, even in the difficult seasons. You do not survive these seasons by thinking there is no God unless the idea of a God who cares, who is slow to anger, who is abounding in steadfast love has been drilled out of you.   How does the idea of God get “drilled out of a person”? In today’s scripture passages, we have an example of people who have held on to the majesty and mystery of God, even in times of trouble. Then we also have a person whose awareness of the Divine has been drilled out by a desire to retain power and worldly influence.  The magi or wise men were probably Persian astrologers or maybe Zoroastrian priests from the same region, modern-day...