On Independence and Inconvenience

I am in a pensive mood tonight (and again, knitting progress has been minimal, which I wholly attribute to my lack of classes this semester i.e. no lectures to knit through) so be warned, this will be a rather meandering blog post.  I'm also positive that this post will sound less impressive than it did in my head when I composed it on the bus ride home from school, but perhaps you can make it sound more grand as you read it.  Just imagine it being read in the voice of the Movie Trailer Narrator or perhaps in a posh British accent.

So, what was I pondering?  I was pondering what it is that makes me so unwilling to inconvenience people.  I do not think that this trait is limited to myself only, but something more ingrained within Canadian culture.  I would rather inconvenience myself a great deal than inconvenience someone else a little bit.  I ponder this as I need to find a ride to a retreat tomorrow, yet find myself hesitant to ask people that are going, lest they feel like they HAVE to transport me and in the process are consequently annoyed.  Now, I'm sure that most of them would be more than happy to drive me if they have room, and yet I find myself thinking about looking up bus times and otherwise avoiding the necessity of being dependent upon someone else.

Because, let's face it, that's what this is really about.  Dependence.  Our culture places a very high value on being independent, and we push our children from a young age to learn how to embrace independence.  While I believe it is healthy to be independent, we have glorified it to such an extent that we no longer know how to be dependent on each other.  However, dependence is vital to community.  People are not meant to live isolated lives, supplying all of their own needs.  This is something that many North American churches in particular seem to have forgotten  (for those of you new to this blog, I speak in the context of the church as it is my primary community).  We see the Bible verses exhorting us to serve others and contribute to their needs, yet when it comes to ourselves we say, "Oh, I'm ok.  Really, it's nothing.  You don't need to go out of your way for me."  And in not allowing others to help and serve us, we miss out on a great opportunity.  Because as we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and dependent, we put ourselves in a position of humility.  We are no longer trusting in ourselves, and as we allow other people to serve and honour us in that position of vulnerability, it builds bonds of trust and friendship that are deep and lasting.  It also makes us more sensitive and attentive to the needs of others so that we can serve them joyfully with a heart filled with gratitude for the ways that we ourselves have been helped in our times of dependence.  And most importantly, it teaches us in a real and practical way how to be dependent on God, because he will always honour the person who positions themselves in humility.

This is really me talking to myself now (or perhaps the Holy Spirit talking to me as I ponder) because honestly I have SUCH a hard time with this.  I dread being dependent on others and I'll go leagues out of my way to avoid it.  For example, when my sister and I flew back here after Christmas holidays last year, our plane got in at 11pm.  The airport is approximately an hour's drive from where I was living at the time.  I made my excuses.  "It's too late for anyone to be able to drive all the way out there to pick us up."  "My roommate who has a car won't be back till the next day."  "Everyone else who has cars, I just don't know them well enough to feel comfortable asking them to drive out and get me."  And so, I didn't even attempt to locate a ride home.  As a result we had a painful all-night journey that involved sleeping a few hours at the airport, taking a night bus all the way downtown, getting accosted by strangers at the bus stop, waiting in the rain and foul-smelling slush with our luggage getting wetter by the minute, taking three more buses until finally arriving home at 6:30am, just in time for me to change and head out to my first class that started at 8:30.  It was terrible.  I could have saved myself (and my sister) so much trouble if only I'd put down my pride and my independence, and asked someone to pick us up.

Let me give you another story as an illustration of how this attitude is part of our very culture.  A friend of mine, let us refer to him as S, who moved here from Jordan told me this story (which I may not remember 100% correctly, so forgive me if I'm fuzzy on some of the specifics).  Right after and his family moved to Canada, they got an apartment, and introduced themselves to their neighbours in the apartment building.  One of these neighbours was an older man who had lived in that apartment building for 10 years.  Now S casually mentioned to this man that he only needed to come by and ask if the man needed anything.  Shortly after, this man suffers some sort of severe health failure (I forget whether it was heart or lung-related) and as he's in dire peril, he does not go to any of his longtime friends, but he comes to S.  S drops everything that he's doing to bring this man to the hospital.  While he was in the hospital for the next week S went to visit this man nearly every day, though he had known him only a very short time.  It could have been a complete stranger, and S would have done the same.  Muslim culture places a high value on loving one's neighbour, and they actually live that out.  In our culture we're very good at being nice to our neighbours, but in the process we have lost track of what it means to love them.  We expect people to be independent, and things that inconvenience us elicit complaints.

So how do we as a culture, and more locally, we as a church, combat this destructive form of independence that keeps us apart from each other?  I think the first step is to learn ourselves how to be dependent, to keep us from being prideful in our independence and what we've accomplished, and to keep us aware of  the courage it takes to ask others for help not knowing whether they'll say yes or no.  The second thing we can do is to constantly verbally let the people around us know that we are available and willing to offer help when it is needed.  We can learn a lesson from my friend S and make sure to communicate to others that they can come to us if they need anything.  Even if we can't provide the help the person needs, we may be able to direct them to someone who can.  Often we just assume, "Oh, of course So-And-So knows I'd help them if they needed it" but likely So-And-So does not know unless we clearly tell them so.  The third very critical thing we can do is to avoid complaining about helping people.  Even if we really are annoyed by that friend that keeps on asking us to borrow Y or do X for them, the minute we complain about it we signal to everyone that hears us that we don't like helping and don't want to be bothered, keeping those people from coming to us about anything in the future.  It takes a lot fewer words to tear down trust than to build up trust.  Sometimes it's just really hard to find the joy in serving others that we're supposed to have, but I think that learning to be dependent ourselves will nurture that within us, and that even if we serve others purely out of obedience to God and nothing else, he will honour that as well and show us that joy.  It all comes back to love.  How far are we willing to go to love others?  God has already gone the whole way in his love for us.  If we're serious about being a community that lives out the love of God, we can't be complacent about it.  Love is active.  Love slips past all our defenses and boundaries and shows us the world in a way we've never seen it before.

Still, it's tough.  As I tell myself these things, I still am faced with the imminent decision of who to ask for a ride, and I have to fight against my willful independence.  The difference between knowing and doing....well, that is part of what God is teaching me this season.  It's all part of the journey, right?  One step at a time.

If you've made it to the end of this post, bravo!  Perhaps you found all of this uninteresting and inapplicable, and you are certainly free to take it or leave it, since this is primarily my own meanderings to myself, but perhaps you have found it helpful and so I pray that you will be encouraged and blessed.

(And I really will have some knitting to blog about next time! Honest!)

Best birthday ever!

Though this is primarily a knitting blog, I take the opportunity every so often to ramble about goings-on in other spheres of my life, and since very little knitting progress has been made (more on that later this post) I shall tell you about my birthday! It's ok, you can ask, don't feel bad. I turned 27, which seemed very old 5 years ago, but now feels just right. And as my good friend David pointed out, it'll be a long time until my next perfect cube birthday, so I better enjoy this one!

So, the first exciting event of birthdayness happened the evening before my birthday, when I went to go see the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra playing music from Final Fantasy. It was marvellous. There is something breathtaking about being in the same room as a full orchestra, listening to the varied sounds produced by each instrument that blend together to create a cohesive whole. They closed with a rendition of the opera from FFVI, which was amazing. And then they did 3 encores. Bliss! My roommate joined me and though she's never played a FF game in her life, she really enjoyed the concert.

On the actual day of my birthday, I made a cake to bring in and eat with my coworkers. Yes, I reserve the right to make my own birthday cake, because I wanted to make my favourite kind of cake (carrot pineapple, yum!) and share the awesomeness of it with everyone else in the lab. The German guys from the lab next to mine even sang me 'Happy Birthday' in German. Overall, a very satisfactory day UNTIL I receive an email in my inbox that afternoon.

"Dear Ms. M.,
Congratulations on being a successful applicant from the 2009 Research Trainee Competition and on receiving a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Trainee Award."

WOW! Best birthday present ever!!! Basically, my salary just incresed by about 50%. And my day got even better because that evening we had a special impartation service at church to hear stories from our team that had just returned from a conference in Brazil and get prayed for by them. SO good! Seriously, I'm soooo blessed, and I know that this year is just going to get better and better!

Oh, and my small group from church also surprised me with a birthday cake (this was a couple days previous) so I was well celebrated all in all.

Now, in knitting news, I finished my sweater, but haven't yet decided on what sort of geeky embellishment to put on it. So I've just been wearing it as-is for the moment while I ponder. I'd say it's a pretty solid first official sweater. I'm now encouraged and feel brave enough to start on a cardigan. After Christmas knitting of course, since it's getting to be that time of year again.

I started and almost finished a head wrap for my aunt who is currently undergoing chemo for breast cancer. Unfortunately, I ran out of yarn and my attempt is 3 inches shorter than the pattern calls for. I started grafting it together to see if it would still work, but I think this one is not going to function. I have it sitting in a corner while I ponder trying to salvage it as a scarf, or attempting to re-knit it into a more traditional hat.

While I was pondering the head wrap, I began knitting a headband (Calorimetry from Knitty), from a project I'd frogged last year. I love the yarn, but the previous headband had been much too loose. This new one has some freestyle cables (I didn't have a cable needle on hand when I started it, so I've been cabling with my crochet hook) and is a much tighter knit which in turn means warmer ears and head. Pictures to come when I actually find my camera.

Also, if you're not tired of me talking about Darker than Black, let me tell you about how awesome the second season is. First of all, the first episode of this season was released on my birthday, and the first episode does not disappoint. This season takes place in Russia, and it seems as though a few years have passed since the incident that ended season 1. There are some new characters, but many old faces and like we saw in the first season, the writers of this show have no compunction about killing people off. I love the new main character they've introduced, a spunky girl named Suou, who looks like she'll provide enough optimism and energy to contrast with the grim contractors who work as assassins for various groups (and from the scenes in the OP, it looks as though she'll be sporting a hunting rifle as her weapon of choice). I made a new forum signature in honour of the beginning of this promising second season. Credit goes to the helpful guys at Gotwoot who provided suggestions for polishing this up into a very classy sig.


I'll post again soon when my camera is found, and I have pictures to share. Catch ya later!

Not Geeky Enough

I am nearing the end of the last ball of yarn for my sweater.  Overall, it looks pretty good so far!  I like that it's all knitted in the round.  After the horror that was the seaming of my lace cardigan, I look forward to only having to weave in the ends to finish.

However, it bothers me.  It's just....well.....not geeky enough.  Have you ever known me to knit anything standard, 100% by the pattern?  Certainly not, or if I have, consider it a momentary lapse of (in)sanity.  No, this sweater definitely needs some geekification.  But what?  I've been considering duplicate stitching a 'pi' symbol on the front, and fair-isle knitting as many digits of pi that will fit around the bottom.  My only problem with that is that my fair-isle tension is significantly tighter than my regular tension, and I'm worried that it won't be stretchy enough.  I was also thinking of perhaps duplicate stitching on some computer code or physics equations.  Or maybe I should go back to the video games realm of geekery?  So many possibilities.  Got any suggestions?  Here's me trying on the sweater, in-progress.

And speaking of video games, I have heard rumours that the Nintendo Wii is going to be dropping in price very soon.  This is a console I have been looking at for a while, but it's always been too expensive.  Maybe soon it will actually drop into my price range!  In particular, with the imminent cold and rainy weather, I know I won't want to go running in the mornings, and if I buy a gym membership on campus I'll have to drag my clothes and towel with me to work all the time.  Not an ideal situation.  However, if I had a Wii, I could get Wii Fit Plus which is coming out next month with even more fun games and activities!  I do have a $50 Future Shop gift card from switching cellular phone providers this month, and we'll have to see what my budget looks like, but there might just be a Wii in my future!  

First though, I need to get a TV.  And a bed.  And a kitchen table.  And a bookshelf.  And fix my computer which may have died beyond all repair.  I did get a free bike recently (through a very bizarre string of events....ask me sometime, and I'll tell you the story), but it needs a lot of work.  When will I be moved into my new place?  Well, at the rate things are going, it might take us another month to get all the remaining stuff we need.  Until then, it's sleeping on the floor/couch, and borrowing wireless on the laptop to watch low-resolution youtube videos, sitting on top of unpacked boxes.  At least we finished painting all our rooms though!

Presenting the Kitten Cam!

Attention:  The kittens are now large enough to escape from their box, so the kitten cam is now offline.  However, if you want to look at adorable pictures of aforementioned kittens, please visit this site.

Recently, my brother adopted a new cat.  Or rather, the neighbours got evicted and left behind a small army of cats as well as a house completely filled with garbage and cat feces (not even joking here....I'm horrified that they had small children living in that kind of an environment).  Anyhow, the humane society carted off most of the felines, but one became friends with my brother and his roommate, so they decided to adopt this friendly little girl.  Not too long after, she surprised them with a litter of kittens.

What is a technologically-minded friend of felines to do, but set up a webcam of course, to have a streaming  live feed of kittens from anywhere on the internet!  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

The Kitten Cam!!!!  (click me!  click me!  I dare you!)

(Note: The Kitten Cam shuts down at night to allow the kittens some sleep, so if you don't see anything, check back in a few hours)

It's so addictive.  I keep it open in the background all day long at work.  The cuteness is liable to cause you to say ridiculous things and giggle at the screen.  Or explode. Much like the following xkcd comic:

 If you live in or around the Ottawa area, two of these adorable little fluffballs still need a home.  You can send any inquiries about adoption to me (sarahluvscats [at] gmail dot com), and I will pass them on to my brother.  

Kitties!