Saved-the Scratchy Edition

I am thinking this morning about discomfort and being saved from it.  It's hard not to think about it....I'm itching! A lot. I apparently have something that is rather inelegantly called "lake itch" which I seem to have acquired from my little kayaking adventure on Monday with the Soul Sisters. Apparently some of the lovely little creatures that live in the lake like to also like to camp out with us, and if you don't quit yourself of them quickly enough after leaving with the water they get..... er...under your skin and create little bumpies and all manner of itchiness.  My resident expert who has spent a whole lot more time on and in the water than I have tells me cool showers and calamine and time are the remedies of choice. So I have been freezing and slathering myself as directed. Dosing with Benedryl last night helped too...it either calmed then down or knocked me out enough so that I slept through them.  But I am grateful for whatever little salvation comes from the itch.  They don't all itch all the time, but seem to take turns.  It's distracting and annoying and I am happy for moments when they all seem to "sleep" at once. R says it will all pass in a few days.  It cannot come too soon.

So as I sit with the folks whose discomfort will not pass so easily, those whose pain is not assuaged by a cool shower and some topical analgesics, I think about being saved from our various pain.  How we save ourselves and one another, how we are called to this.  That Samaritan heard the call. Heard it enough to go and reach out and offer help to someone who probably thought he was about as attractive as one of my little biters.

Saving Myself from Things I Should be Doing

Yes this is procrastination blog post.  There are things I could and should be doing.  I could tie up a couple work-related things in the last few minutes of the day.  Or I could slog along some more on the half-finished sermon for the nursing home service for Sunday. I have energy for neither of those things.  Nor do I have any deep thoughts about the topic of "Saved" or any other topic for that matter.  I am way more tired than I should be for a Tuesday....especially one that was the first day of the work week. 

There seems to be a lot of what my friends across the pond refer to as whingeing going on around here. Both R and I seem to be dealing with a lot of folks who can't quite seem to get their stuff together, make messes of things, don't seem to want to take responsibility for the fact, and want to blame others....loudly and at length for it.  It's making us both a bit cranky with these folks.

Are they my neighbors, too? Oh bother.  I just hate it when the Gospel refuses to leave me alone, even when I want to leave it.

July Here!

Apparently June sneaked off somewhere while I wasn't looking and left July behind.  NaBloPoMo tells me there is a new theme for the month and I'm tempted...again....to try this posting every day business. Partially because in my efforts to restore some spiritual and other disciplines to my life, daily writing might be a good one to add to my newly re-born yoga/morning prayer routine.  Plus I like the theme. "Saved."    Indeed...I could write a bit about things I've "....kept, rescued, or otherwise prevented from being lost forever,"  but I could also write about how the same has been true for me. About all the ways that I have wandered off, gotten lost, strayed and stranded in the wilderness of my own creation time and time again, and how I just keep getting....SAVED. The strange ways in which that has happened, how I have resisted it and resist it still...and the puzzlement in my mind about just why it is I do so.  I get saved myself about once a day I think and maybe on a good day....I wonder I might be doing some saving for someone else.

So I may give it a go....this NaBloPoMo.  Every day?  Oh who knows? Perhaps.  Or maybe just a little more.