I suddenly miss so many people this week. Why doesn't everyone live here? Why do we all have to be friends three, four, five and six hours away? Why? My circle of friends grows smaller the older I get and I wonder whether that is because I have learned that a wise man keeps good company [and so in my quest for wisdom, less friends seems more apropos?], or whether it is because I have learned that the circle that I am included in finds that we are all content with just one another, no need for more or many. Just you is enough. Sounds pleasant, but not very Kingdom minded.

Mrs. Kinnen and PB were talking about shyness and selfishness today. One quoted Elisabeth Elliot telling a story, "Shyness is the height of selfish living." I know she's right, it was the realization of that a year ago that began the shedding of my reclusive and inclusive behavior. I also think that once the shyness has worn off though, once you and I are friends, the tendency to remain just two is so strong. Now while two heads are certainly better than one, I hardly think that Solomon's wisdom was directive to that as an end. Two heads are better than one, but sometimes when we've come to the place where one is so comfortable and two are acceptable, but any more is simply unabidable. Ugh. It makes me sick to think of the selfishness of my heart. I wish so much to not place blame on my personality or my nature. I am redeemed, why do I still have to be an introvert? How can being non-confrontational build relationships instead of walling them off? How can intense dislike of small talk be a positive route to godly honesty? When I find that talking about things like the weather and the newspaper and asking if you'd like to go to lunch becomes a burden, and it is fairly often, I must reconsider my passion for relational discipleship.

Grow me up.

I crumble, and it doesn't take much. Jax and I drove to Potsdam today to buy a White Pine from the firehouse, but on our way stopped to drop off some things at the library. First mistake. There, right inside the door, is a three foot by three foot whiteboard advertising a Book Sale today at Peyton Hall. Few minutes of the final daylight and finding the perfect tree aside, I immediately conjure up all of my choleric marbles and demand we stop at the book sale first. She suggests we eat. I haven't any money to eat. I haven't any money to eat, but I have money to buy books? Yes. I buy:

Letters From An American Farmer - J. Hector St. John de Creveceur
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander - Thomas Merton
Pilgrim At Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Crooked Little Heart - Anne Lamott
and three quarterlies called Story

All for a whopping five dollars, which, I might add, I couldn't have eaten anything good for anyway.

So Jax bought me chai and a pumpkin muffin. I like the poppy seed ones better, but they were all out. Darn.

Oh yes. The tree. Don't ask me when we'll set it up. We planned on doing it tonight, but I insisted on dependency and so we waited for Sean to come home. He didn't get home until 1am, which is too late to put up a tree. So maybe tomorrow. Probably not. Too much to do, so little time.

Ah. Clichés. Why is everything I say always already patented?

So I am surrounded by boxes of Christmas decorations which have yet to be hung, strung, lit or set, and no desire whatsoever to do anything with them. I sat and poked a thousand cranberries into toothpicks and poked them through the holes in a cone shaped screen. It will be a cranberry tree when it is finished, but this could be a while. I put it back in the freezer for now. I decided since decorating will be on me this year, that we'll go with a more traditional look. Cranberries, oranges and gingerbread works for me.