no such thing as unemployed time

It has been a strange week. Time passes differently without an external work schedule; days merge into each other with more alarming speed. Where did they all go? How much of them did I waste and what could I have done differently?

In the midst of musing on this - not worried, but aware that things are a bit out of sync at the moment - it was good to come across this while continuing on through The Sacredness of Questioning Everything:


'All manner of things being redeemed' forcefully reminds me of Tom Wright's conclusions in Surprised by Hope.

I take this to be in full agreement with Frederick Buechner, when he writes, 'All moments are key moments'. And with Adrian Plass, when he states that, 'Nothing is wasted'

And I think the same point is made in the wonderful wordless telling of Carl and Ellie's adult life together in the movie UP, which I saw this week. Every life is an adventure.

Which ties back to the poem that I took the title for the blog from. I am being told this again: 'It all matters. Pay attention.'

'...you are speaking for the ones who are being squashed...'

Mainly I am posting this so that I remember these links. I've been watching a two part interview with the Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, which is available here and here.

I have loved Leunig's drawings ever since my friend G gave me a copy of The Prayer Tree. Perhaps just a short time later I bought copies of two Frederick Buechner books, which had Leunig drawings on their covers. There is a sweet robust vulnerability to his figures. The images and the books go well together.

And I find Leunig in the interview to be wholly winning - amazing awkwardness and pained honesty. Beautiful really. The anguish in his question, Why am I not allowed to mourn for the children of Gaza? tears me up. And his description of Piccasso is very funny. Besides, who couldn't love someone who shows covers the ground between this:

and this:


I tried to draw someone after Leunig's style. In the end was maybe too much like a copy - I'll post it soon. The person I drew ended up very closely attached to a poem I like, which I'll have to go and find.