What happens when you cross a saw blade, hot weather, a long day at work, and a stair case that needs finishing…

 Thursday evening around 7pm. I was cutting some trim wood for a new staircase, it was hot outside and it had been a long day. I’m always terrified by small pieces when cutting, so I had all my jigs out, feather boards, blade down low. But I reached over to stabilize the piece and on the way back three fingers got torn up, I didn’t lose any digits thank God. But it happened so fast, I hardly knew what to do. As it so happened Michelle was driving up just as it happened, I grabbed my hand, blood spilling out all over the place and she knew just looking at me that it was bad. I held a rag to my fingers as long as I could before looking, the pads of fingers two and three where all torn up, and number four had a slice taken out. No bones touched, just mangled flesh.

I was so angry that I actually marched back out to the shop and finished cutting the piece with a towel wrapped around my hand! Once that was done I allowed my family to talk me into a visit to the local ER, not much they could do other than a tetanus shot and some creative bandages wrapped around my finger. By the time I hit the ER, the pain was in full force. So I got pain pills as well, and sympathy from the nurses which always helps.

That was three weeks ago, as you can imagine typing is not fun right now, in fact I work at a keyboard, so I only did half a a day at the office on my first day back, and my productivity disappeared. This is my first chance to actually do some typing without bandages, and I’m already starting to get sore. There has been a lot going on, but I can’t type for very long and after a long day of coding, the last thing I want to do is come home and hurt my fingers more.

I have been reading the Church in History series started by John Meyendorf, I’ve gone from 33AD all the way to the 600’s, and I have immensely enjoyed the series, the thing I like best about the books is that they are written from a scholars point of view. Meyendorf is Eastern Orthodox, but he doesn’t play favorites, he tells it like he sees it and gives credit where it is due. I’ve learned a great deal about the early church and it’s cemented many of the reasons I finally started moving to the Orthodox faith. I’ll post more when my fingers are up to the task.

Speaking of the EO, we are still in a tentative wait and see mode, the service is so….foreign. I don’t know any other way to put it, there was structure in the Catholic Mass, and I understood how and why it was put together. But the Great Liturgy is so different and changing, I’m still not comfortable. What I wouldn’t give for some simple guides, but they seem hard to find. So I spend a lot of time listening and trying to learn what is being said. It’s not that the church is unsupportive, it’s just so radically different that it’s a struggle for me to come to grips with it, I miss the structure and simplicity of the ordinary form Mass.

I’ll post more as I continue to heal, today was the first day without bandages and by the end of the day one finger had started to bleed, so it’s back to bandages for a little while longer.

Peace

-Paul-