Raw ingredient Monday

In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are.

Nicholas Chamfort

Today I post the ingredients to the thought coalescing in my head. I haven't drawn the connections - my connector has been in the shop for repairs and it's being very slow about re-booting. So ... here are the ingredients.

That quote from Chamfort first. It is indeed the small things that show character. It's easy to ignore other people's small things. "It's no big deal," we tell ourselves when we saw the glance of pure malice from the bully who didn't get his way. But it is a big deal. It's not what he didn't get. It's that he didn't get it, and that his response was not humble or fluid or sanguine or disappointed. If someone near you is frustrated in his desires and you see the glance of malice, you have seen the small thing that should sound as a warning bell for you. Don't ignore that.

Then there's this ingredient. I've a kid whose new favorite song is this.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis

The fall of the year is here. That's the bowl for all the ingredients. The connections are being made within the season's increasing coziness and increasing pressure. At this time of the year, part of me wants to turn into a hyperactive squirrel, canning, organizing, putting away, painting, filing, cleaning out, getting ready to hunker down ... and part of me just wants to stand and breathe it in because the fall of the year suits me down to my toes. I long to soak it in all the way to my spine and let it stain my cuticles and scent my hair. In the fall I want to be totally still - pure feeling - all perception.

And what I want to perceive has everything to do with the approaching Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. I think that maybe the ingredients go into the bowl which is the fall of the year, and they are stirred by angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven. At this time of the year, the angels stir the world, and every once in awhile I can hear it happening.