…Actually, Sparrow is quite certain that pick-axes are far outdated in the event of mountain-climbing, and wholly unconvinced that rubber grip boots have ever had any part to play in the activity whatsoever. Whatever the case, she has lately found herself far from resilient when facing her duties. Oh, dear, quite the opposite: early this week she suffered through a bout of exhaustion, attempting a heroic plunge into her creativities and accomplishing only a dismal slog. Once she had slogged (slogged! Slogged emphatically, I say!) for a number of days, her energy suddenly made a roaring comeback. She rose! She laughed, spitefully, at the plagues of yesterday; and turning staunchly to the sunrise, vowed she would not see the end of the week unaccomplished.
But instead of increasing her productivity to glorious heights, as such strokes of energy are known to do, this one instead gave Sparrow into the throes of a curious plight. She found, much to her dismay, that the energy would not content itself with any one endeavor. Upon sitting down at her keyboard with the idea of polishing up a song, she felt the distinct urge to run downstairs and pound out more of her novel. Once situated for the latter task, she discovered a discontent that would not be fulfilled until she had returned upstairs and extracted the details of her mother’s activities in the kitchen. This completed and on her way back downstairs, she was suddenly overwhelmed with curiosity as to what sort of weather the day held, and toddled out to the porch to amend her ignorance. When satisfied, she returned to her novel, only to be greeted by a nagging guilt; thus, convicted of her sins and repentant in the extreme, she returned to the music she had abandoned, to shower upon it all the love and nurturing it deserved. However, she was not seated for long before she was caught in the throes of hunger, and traversed to the kitchen in order to devour the result of her mother’s exploits.
…So the day continued, and such was the productivity of Sparrow. She ended the day with a whopping few sentences of her novel rewritten, a bit of work done on a song recording which, in the end, was lost in a sudden departure of electrical power due to a thunderstorm, and plenty of exercise as she traipsed restlessly from one end of the house to the other. Oh, and a new post on her blog, which highlights her most recent (and despairingly unproductive) activity—that is, stargazing.
Unfortunately, the clouds have been too rampant in the evenings for her to properly look at the stars; but she has done the next best thing, if not the greater thing, because in so doing she has gone beyond the limits of what she could see by herself. Whenever she is feeling particularly small or full of longing, Sparrow is fond of curling up to flip through pages upon pages of photos taken by NASA, pictures of stars and galaxies far beyond our little world. It gives her shivers, looking into the blackness filled with stars beyond stars, and beauty, and loveliness. It feels as if she will fall right into the page, into the spaces between the stars, and fall forever. Which is a very small feeling indeed.
But Sparrow will not keep the feeling all to herself. Here, though only a little, is some of the beauty in which she has immersed her mind while remaining decidedly unaccomplished:
\
It is to your own stargazing that Sparrow will leave you, because her heart is aching. The beautiful colors God must see, when he looks at the dust he has funneled into the galaxies, the colors and pillars and clouds and towers beyond her wildest imaginings. Sparrow knows how very tiny she is; oh! she knows. And as a tiny speck of dust in a universe through which she could fall forever, it breaks her to tears to know that she is dearly, tenderly loved—not falling, but held; sheltered in the affection of the One who sifts the stardust.
And so, at the end of this unproductive day - no, for the naughty thing has stayed up too late and it is now the beginning of tomorrow - Sparrow wishes you well. She herself shall fall asleep knowing that far beyond herself, the galaxies are spinning and sparkling and singing the awe of the one who gave them the colors only He can see. And perhaps, as she rests tonight, the song of the stardust will dance through her dreams.
