Fruits of my Sluggishness

I’m reading Way of the Ascetics by Tito Colliander right now. What a book (by all means, check it out! It's actually available for free online, click here). I’d like to post a quote from it, but since the book is so compact and surprisingly short, I’d probably end up posting it in its entirety here. Looking at my bookshelf the other day, I realized for the first time that most of my books on Orthodoxy are rather brief—no more than 200 pages, if even that. Why is that? So much knowledge, so much wisdom, literally scrunched into the simplest and most profound written form. I think there’s a saying about how a wise man can say in one sentence what a fool needs paragraph upon paragraph to explain (Karl, feel free to chime in with the correct quote… :D). As for me, my ramblings prove I am the fool.

Here is one quote that struck me, though:

“The holy Fathers’ counsel is to begin with small things, for, says Ephraem the Syrian, how can you put out a great fire before you learned to quench the small one? If you wish to set yourself free from a great suffering, crush the small desires, say the holy Fathers.
“Thus it does not pay to come to grips with the hard-to-master great vices and bad habits you have acquired without at the same time overcoming your small ‘innocent’ weaknesses: your taste for sweets, your urge to talk, your curiosity, your meddling.”
Oh my goodness… here I am, trying to climb and conquer the mountains of lust, envy, pride, laziness… when all the while, I’ve yet to even crush the anthills under my feet. The small comforts: a cup of expensive coffee, a bottle of Reed’s after a “hard day’s work,” a new dress, a new book, my idle curiosity that leads me to glue my eyes to People magazine, or some other worthless fluff. It is the “innocent weakness” that assures me ‘I deserve this,’ when truly, there are no excuses for my self-indulgence. In fact, as I write this I’m snacking on some chocolate dessert that someone in the office brought in… Meanwhile, my work ethic is dwindling in inertia… these small comforts truly distract me from doing what’s needed.
Lord have mercy (3x)

Speaking of distractions… here’s the fruit of some of my laziness

I stumbled across this commentary on a Skippy Peanut Butter commercial. I think I saw this ad once, and dismissed the computer animated gyrating elephants (in hip-hop street clothes, beachwear and Rastafarian knit caps, nonetheless) as fast as I’d dismiss any equally disturbing attempt at an ad campaign. Yikes! Commentaries like these make for a good laugh—I’m glad someone out there is baffled by the sheer idiocy of it all! Goodness… I’m glad I don’t eat Skippy.

UPDATE: MORE ART! Thanks to Job, you can now view some additional slides of my art on his website! These are some of my more "formal" works: all recent acrylics and watercolors that were featured in my small showcase this last December.