I wish to express a big thank you to all my readers and please know how enjoyable it is to read your comments. I appreciate the time you take to write and share thoughts in response to the poems and prayers. Over the next few weeks I will be taking a short break from “posting” and hope to resume towards the end of July. Over last few days I have been helping in the garden/yard to tie up plants and flowers, and to add some string to encourage the deer to pass on by! The deer however seem to enjoy the flowers by night! While tying up some plants I chuckled to myself as I recalled the following story from a friend. He shared with me that when clearing the house following his elderly mother’s death he came across a tin marked “string too short” and inside a whole assortment of pieces of string which were considered too short! Perhaps you have tins like that. Tins of old used stamps, tins of buttons, tins of broken pieces of chalk, tins of snapped elastic bands! And on and on. The generation of folks who lived through the Great Depression threw nothing out, salvaging what they could just in case it might come in useful, just like a piece of string once considered too short! Luci Shaw was born in 1928, and is now in her 95th year, her parents would know only too well those days and years of shortages and rationing through two world wars. No doubt little was thrown out just in case it might come in useful. I share with you today her poem What To Do With Bits of String, and as you read it might memory take you to those tins and boxes in your parents’ or grandparents’ house and as you once again open them in your imagination, ponder the stories that could be told. Read those last few lines once again!
What To Do With Bits of String
We are expert at extraction, making
something out of something else;
a cat’s cradle for the kids. A rag rug.
A torn loaf for turkey stuffing or Eucharist.
We take traces of a fractured dream
and fashion a plot for a new novel.
Old tires make for resilient highways.
My friend rips out worn sweaters
for new scarves.
Women in Africa
roll old magazine pages into beads,
varnishing them for sale in other worlds,
jewels from junk. I rescue river stones,
sea glass and beach shells for ornaments
along my window sill. They cost nothing.
Try it yourself. See what lovely new thing
God can make from what is common
and discarded. Including your own life.
Call it recycling. Call it renewal,
and you’re getting at the heart of it. Luci Shaw: Sea Glass 2016
Prayer:
Loving God,
Today I offer my prayer of thanksgiving,
for Spring becoming summer, for lilies that
surprise us with a splash of color for days on end.
Today, I offer my prayer of thanksgiving,
for memories of childhood homes. I imagine
walking through the doors and rooms, and opening
those cupboards and drawers,
stuffed with unusual things, and so many bits of string.
Today, I offer my prayer of thanksgiving,
as I remember the washing hanging on the clothes line, with
shirts and socks, sheets and swimsuits
blowing in the wind.
Today, I offer my prayer of thanksgiving,
for Spring becoming Summer, for lazy days, ice cream,
and fireflies.
Loving God, thank you for life and love.
Loving God, thank you for friends and family.
Loving God, thank you for rest and renewal. Amen.
Prayers, Poems, and Christian Ponderings 
I can’t imagine finding a treasure greater than a tin labeled “string too short”! That provides such a good, albeit tacit lesson, and a marvelous legacy even though likely unintended to do so. I’m certain that anyone of my generation could provide stories of parents’ and grandparents’ depression-era habits born of necessity.
Ironically, our culture isn’t doing enough of making something out of something else given the trash we are generating and its impact on our planet. But that’s an entirely different subject.
Wouldn’t you love a conversation with Lucy Shaw. Her common, everyday subjects always hold a deeper meaning and provide such good food for thought and this poem brings me all sorts of childhood memories, notably one about rugs of all things. In the early 1950s there was a company that made carpets from customer provided rags and wool scraps which were weighed and then credited towards the purchase of rugs. My mother and her friends made all of their own clothes, and kept all scraps in a box which was eventually sent to the rug company in exchange for “30 and 40 pound coupons” to reduce the price of carpeting in our house. To our amusement, my grandmother could not imagine using someone else’s old rags for her carpet.
I’m now thinking of labeling my box of random buttons, “Buttons that don’t match.” And about the last lines of the poem.
Enjoy your much deserved blogging break and thank you for each and every post. The good thing about blogs is that they can be read, enjoyed and re-read.
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