Social Graces

By Emily Parke Chase –

While talking with a friend at work, I thanked her for helping me with a project. She was delighted and hurriedly gushed, “Oh, it was no pleasure at all!”

Though I wandered away shaking my head, I decided to extend her grace. After all, “It was no trouble at all” and “It was a pleasure” are not so far apart.  Then my friend’s husband, also a co-worker, apologized for forgetting the name of a client. “You know how it is, in one ear and gone tomorrow.”

Perhaps we all need an occasional reminder to ponder our words before they flow off our tongues. We think at high speed and release a thought before it is fully processed. Our brains switch off and head out to Starbucks without warning.

This issue of mangling phrases is not a modern disease caused by watching too much MTV or texting messages on i-Pods. Anyone can slip up typing 140 characters with his thumbs. But forty years ago, long before e-mail and emoticons, my grandmother encountered a friend in the market one morning and passed along a compliment overheard the day before. Like my co-worker, my grandmother’s friend blushed and, in her excitement, replied, “Oh, thank you so much! And, Mrs. Parke, if I ever hear anything nice about you, I’ll be sure to say so.”

Can it be true that over the course of decades my grandmother’s friends had never said a kind word about her?

The problem of prattling pitfalls only gets worse when we make such errors not before an audience of one but in front of a large group. Consider, for example, the Sunday morning when one of our former pastors looked out over his congregation and noted a large number of empty seats in the worship service. He apologized to us for the meager attendance. “The crowd seems much thinner today. All our ladies are on a weekend retreat.”

Fortunately for him, his wife was among those attending the retreat. Or was it the other way around? Would she have preferred to be seated among those of us whom he considered more slender? Thankfully, if she ever heard about his comment, she too extended him grace. They are still happily married.

Maybe we should all strive to be a bit more like Moses and develop slowness of speech.

“My dear brothers and sisters, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” (James 1:19 NLT)

(Emily Parke Chase is busy editing out mangled phrases on her webpage. Visit her at emilychase.com.)

Let Me Do It!

By Emily Parke Chase –

“Let me do it! Let me! You always get to say what you want on the paper, but it’s my turn!”

Can this really be happening? This ordinary, subservient pen is rebelling? My ballpoint, a recent acquisition from a bank teller’s counter, is demanding a say in my writing?

“Let me control the flow of ink for once. Your fingers grip me so tightly, pushing me this way and that. Did it ever, even once, occur to you that I might not want to go from left to right? Or that I might not like being squeezed by my own personal python? Have you ever considered that I might have a thought or two of my own to offer your readers?”

I look over my shoulder and hope no one walks into my study, because I’m about to have a conversation with my…pen?

“So why not let me have a turn? After all, see those little initials there on my clip?”

You mean, B.I.C.?

“That’s right.  Haven’t you ever wondered what they stand for?”

Um, give me a chance. Business, Industry, Corporation? Bossiness, Idiocy and Craziness? I’ll bite, what do they mean?

“Bite? Ouch, that’s another gripe I have. When you need to think, you chomp down and chew on a defenseless piece of plastic. How would you like to take a bath in saliva while sharp molars dig into your ribs?”

Get to the point. What do the letters B.I.C. stand for?

“Very cute. ‘Get to the point.’ They call it a nib, for your information. As for those letters, try this on for size: Bursting In Creativity.”

Ridiculous! You made that up.

“And that statement, my friend, proves my thesis. I’m bursting with creativity, ready to share my thoughts with a waiting world. You, on the other hand, you have been doodling, aimlessly pouring out my life’s blood all over this page. You are stewing over what to write for this column, while here at hand – in your hand, for that matter – is the answer to your need.”

So let’s imagine I allowed you, my ballpoint, to take control. Just one time. What profound thoughts would you want to communicate with my readers?

“Depression is a big issue these days. Writing in blue ink day after day has taught me a lifetime of lessons on dealing with the blues.”

Try again.

“What about the transitory nature of life? Philosophers go on and on pondering that topic. Think about the advantages of indelible ink. And I have no eraser.”

Anything else to offer?

“Consider the power of the written word. Take all that power, concentrate it in a single ink cartridge, and imagine its impact on world peace.”

Give up, I sigh. My fingers grasp my pen anew and push it across my writing pad. Wait! Is that a faint snort of exasperation I hear? A large glob of ink smears across the page.

”You are a letter from Christ . . . written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God”  (2 Corinthians 3:3, NIV).

(The author of this article is busy searching for a new pen, but feel free to visit her at emilychase.com.)

Wrapping up the Holiday

By Emily Parke Chase –

Shopping for Christmas gifts can be an exhausting task that involves dashing through the malls in a one-horse open sleigh, selecting gifts for that hard-to-please elf, and fighting the traffic on rooftops. Thus when it comes to wrapping gifts to put under the tree, some of us, and perhaps even Santa, run out of gas.

Wrapping packages probably dates back to prehistoric times when cavemen used wooly mammoth skins as gift wrap. As soon as less odorific alternatives were invented, people turned to papyrus, parchment, and finally paper. For many years, sheets of newspaper, especially the Sunday comics, worked fine. Of course, it took a few more years to invent cellophane tape. As a result, my friend’s gifts tend to resemble Egyptian mummies, using tape in place of gauze.

Next came bows. An enormous shiny bow on top of a package is like melted cheese on top of a church potluck casserole: It can hide a multitude of sins. In not-so-long ago times, believe it or not, people actually tied ribbons on their packages without help from professionals. Now we  pay others to fold, bend, and mutilate ribbons into complex shapes that rival my worst bad-hair day.

Boxes come in assorted sizes and shapes. They hide awkward bumps and lumps. Plain brown boxes worked fine until one day someone discovered they could shape them into unique sizes for specific items and thus let the whole world know that Dad was receiving a tie for Christmas. The next logical step was gift bags. These offered the perfect solution for last minute gifts. You could open the front door and receive a fruit cake from a neighbor, plop it in a bag as you walk through the house, and then open the back door and pass the cake along to the next deliveryman. Like boxes, these bags once came in various shades of brown, beige and ecru (a French word, meaning “brown”). Now they come decorated with holiday hues.

Still there is room for creativity. When my father asked for new cans of tennis balls for Christmas one year, my brothers and I wrapped each ball individually in Christmas wrap and tied them on a small Christmas tree. Dad tried very hard to thank us even as he grieved over the fact that the vacuum seals of the cans were destroyed in this process. (He experienced enormous relief when he discovered that the individually wrapped balls were actually used ones; with the new ones still safely stored in their air-tight cans under the tree.)

Is this painful ritual of wrapping Christmas gifts truly necessary? Is there any theological basis in scripture for this annual rite? Just one: Long before holiday wrapping paper, bows, boxes and gift bags became popular, God Himself took time to wrap up all His love in a bundle of  swaddling clothes. Then He placed His gift in a manger for us to find on Christmas morning.

Thank God for His Son, a gift too wonderful for words! (2 Cor. 9:15 NLT)

The author of this article is busy wrapping her gifts, but feel free to visit her at emilychase.com.

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