family thanksgiving

It has been a blessed holiday weekend. Rich and warm and full of family. I even got up at 4:45 in the morning on Friday to go shopping with Dad. We stood shivering in the dark in a line in front of Super Shoes so that I could get an extra ten dollars off of my long anticipated Birkenstocks. He jokes to the lady in front of us that he could have just given me ten dollars and stayed in bed! He made us a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner the night before, with a seventeen pound turkey for just Jon and Bekah and me and him. It was one of those perfect dinners that was delicious, but didn't give that awful stuffed-too-full feeling, that has followed many other Thanksgiving dinners. The night before that, on Wednesday evening, I attended a huge surprise party for Bryan, thrown by his wife Karah, my friend and kid's choir co-leader. I stayed until nearly two in the morning and went to spend the night at Moms, sneaking in, trying not to wake the dogs. There was some wimpering, but they settled down again until my brother trudged up the stairs, unable to sleep, slammed a cupbord door, and the barking let loose. Mom stumbled down the hall, grumpy as always when woken up. She takes the dogs out to the bathroom and Jon and I stand and look at each other sheepishly.

The other day Kelly mentioned a novel that she had just started. It is a novel that I have seen in Christian bookstores. The type that I usually turn my nose up at. Historical fiction romance romance romance. A Christian, laden with sexual tension, romance. Kelly dosen't take it with her when she leaves for Virginia and I pick it up and start reading. It predictable, with a few reverent little nods to God and faith before the characters start making out (they were previously, most conveniently, already forced into marriage). But I take it with me to Moms, and read before I go to sleep Wednesday evening. I read it at Dad's on Thursday evening. I finish it at Moms on Friday evening. And the thing that surprises me by the end is that the characters begin to seem like a family. They wash dishes and have a child and put wood into their fire-place.

I love families so much. I love my own. This morning, after playing with the dogs, and drinking tea I go with Mom, Bekah, Jon, and his girlfriend Tara, to a craft show in Lancaster. We split up into two groups and Jon, Tara and Mom wander off. While my sister looks at jewelry in the neigboring booth, I spontaneously buy a beautiful bowl. It is ceramic and painted shades of green with pale orange water-lillies. The edges are pinched up like a the ripples of a leaf sitting on water, and I decide that I want it for the rest of my life. It is made by a local, central PA artist, a young woman about the same age as me, and it is expensive. Way out of what is left of this months budget. This is coming right from savings. We walk around the show, and I feel the weight of the bowl in my hand and the misgiving that inevitably comes with an impulse purchase. For heavens sake, I just bought a pair of Birkenstocks too. But you can't return something that you buy from a local artist at a craft show. So I tell myself it was a good thing to do, to support the arts, etc. though I still have a bit of a knot in my stomach.

Upon returning from the craft show I head home. There is some problem with Kelly's and my phone, and when dialing the caller only gets a busy signal. I come home, unpack my new bowl and sit it high up on top of the counters with some blue pots and pans. I try the phone and find that I am not able to call out either. The bowl doesn't look right up there. It looks awkward and too crowded and it doesn't match. It is a very vulnerable feeling to have a problem with a phone and not be able to call anyone to help. The answering machine is buzzing strangly though, and I remember the advice that you should always have a simple, plug-it-into-the-wall phone, in the case of a power out. So I go purchase a new phone and answering machine, and the problem is, thankfully, fixed.

So now I am sitting home alone. I wash the dishes and pick up the pieces of hand-made paper that I made yesterday. I left them all over the living room floor drying on dishcloths. Thirteen perfect, embroidery hoop sized circles. They are white with brown flecks looking as much like flour tortillas as paper. I had forgotten to move my laundy over to the dryer yesterday, so I toss the dishcloths in and run the load again. I am lonely. I want a family. One right here in my own house. I tell this to God, and I think the first thing that I thought of was my bowl. That he has a home for me, like I gave a home to that bowl. That I am not a useless object that he wished he hadn't purchased, sitting on his top shelf, mismatched with the rest of his people and his plan. That he doesn't have any regrets. That I am adopted into an amazing family.

I climb up on a chair and take my bowl back down from the shelf. I clear off the table and place it right in the middle with candlesticks on each side. In the last delivery of our organic vegetable box, we got four ears of popcorn. They are to sit and dry for another couple of weeks before scraping off the kernals, so I lay the cobs of corn in the bowl. It looks perfect. Like harvest time. And I light a cinnamon candle and sit it beside me, watching the warm flame flicker as I write.

the last supper

This afternoon I went with my Dad to the nursing home in Rheems to sing with him. He goes every two weeks, and he and one of the pastors of his church have a low-key sort of service for the residents there. I have gone with him in the past, but it has been many months now and there are many new faces, and a conspicuous lack of old ones. My Dad has been studying and compiling old american hymns, and created a songbook for the people there with the music in the first half, and large bold print words in the second half. The songbook contains hymns like Shall We Gather at the River, His Eye is on the Sparrow, When the Roll is Called up Yonder, and many other more obscure tunes that Dad finds and teaches us. The residents know them all. My Dad loves this music, and I think we sang eight songs in a row, all the verses. I try to look at the white and gray haired crowd in front of us between following the words and the alto line. They span the range of being spunky and vocal to quiet with heads tilted to the side and oxygen tubes feeding into their noses. When we finish singing, Are you Washed in the Blood, one man in the front row, Mr. Green, shouts out that the song is terrible, that war is terrible, and his eyes tear up. Dad acknowledges, that, yeah, some people don't like that song, and moves on to a new one.

When pastor Jerry stands up for his sermon he asks, as his opening question, what holiday is coming up this week? There is some mumbling of the correct thanksgiving answer, but Mr. Green again jumps in with,

"Billie Holiday! I knew her, she was gorgeous." I decide I like him best.
"She was a great jazz artist."

Jerry pulls everyone back to thanksgiving, but I am afraid I didn't pay very much attention as I looked around the room, and wondered how I would feel being told to celebrate and be thankful in their situation. Many of the songs that Dad chooses to sing are about suffering, about waiting for heaven, about death really, and I feel uncomfortable singing it with them, to them, being young and healthy and able to drive my car anywhere I want to go. I wonder if that is comforting, singing about "loved ones in the glory" and "understanding better by and by", or if they would rather just forget for a while. I guess I won't know until I am with them someday.

"There is a beautiful painting here. The Last Supper." Mr. Green interupts the sermon. "It is beautiful. Right in this building." And again his face scrunches up with tears again, for just a moment and then it is gone. I like him better and better. At the end of the little service, after finishing with "Brighten the Corner Where you Are", another one that might make me furious if I were them, though they appear to be fine, Mr. Green tells Dad and I that we should make a recording. I ask him about The Last Supper. "It is right in this building! Do you want to go and see it?"
"Sure" I say.
"A lady, a resident here made it and gave it to us."
"Really?" Now I have no idea what to expect. I had planned on a print of the Leonardo, neatly matted under glass. I follow him through the corridors. We set off the alarm, since he holds the door open for a small lady pushing a walker. He leads me to their dining room, with bright colored table cloths and sunflowers in little vases. And he leads me to The Last Supper. It is printed on fabric. Sewn together around the edges, like a little quilt. The image is certainly based on the Leonardo Da Vinci, but redrawn, with much less grace.
"Look at their faces, their expressions" he says. "Look at the bread and the wine in the cups. Look at their hands and look at our Lord in the middle. Isn't it beautiful. What do you think?" His eyes begin to tear and there is a shiny splotch under his nose.
"It is lovely. It is very beautiful. Thank you for showing me."
"I was a colonel in the army for 44 years and then had a stroke. War is a terrible thing. My wife was an artist, and loved to paint. We traveled all over the world But she doesn't see now. A disease in her eyes."
"Oh." I nod.
"Sometimes that's just the way life is".
We walk back to through the hallways, I try not to look into the rooms too much. We set off the alarm again, he doesn't seem to mind. I find my Dad and he finds his wife.
"She is 101 years old", another lady tells me as they leave the room together.
I pick up the music stand and walk out with Dad and pastor Jerry. We push the button codes to go out the door and step out into the cold air.

I have noticed the tension of choice a lot lately. I hadn't wanted to come this afternoon. I had wanted to go home and nap. But as I always find, when I attempt to do somthing a little bit better than what I want, that I am glad I did. There are so many choices, day after day, between doing something for myself and doing something, that I somehow know in my gut, is what Jesus wants. And he probably wants it to teach me something really important, and maybe I will learn to love others a little bit along the way.

the church: yesterday, today, tomorrow

I had this great plan to lay out in three posts my history in the church, how I have grown, what I believe and to make it all sound great. I thought that I "got it". Got the church and knew my place in it. Today I feel like I am five years old and have to learn everything all over again. The senior pastor at my church announced his resignation this morning. He has been there for eighteen years. Since before my family and I began attending. It turns the church upside down and we have to look at ourselves again, see who we are, together, individually.

The fall of my freshman year of college, my parents seperated. I don't remember that time very well. I remember sitting in the lunch room at school, pulling the peel off my orange, and I remember my art history class, but I don't remember what was going on with church, or even very much at home. I do remember that after the separation, neither of my parents felt comfortable in our church, understandably, and both eventually left. As far as I know they were the first couple in our church to divorce. My brother and sister had begun to attend a large Evangelical Free church for the larger youth group, and homeschooled friends. I think I went to church with my friend Joella during this time. We tried a lot of different places, but were pretty snobby and nothing was ever good enough. But I didn't think that I could go back to Elizabethtown BIC, my home church, because I was the kid of the divorced people. And I didn't fit in. And I was an art major of all things.

Choosing to study art was really hard to explain to people in churches. I felt like I got raised eyebrows and it immediately stopped conversation. An art major. Nothing more to say. I think it was just before the church got saturated with the movement to embrace art. Now they are trying, and in some forward leaning congregations, artists are wonderful and are super-encouraged to produce relevant work that will both glorify God and wow the secular culture. But I think that is just as awkward for artists and much more pressure. They are just people who work hard hard hard to communicate something that they see. If you are going to do it right, it really isn't very different from any other job. You work. You get dirty and practice a lot. You just don't get paid.

So I floundered for three whole years. Three. No church home. A community of art students. A couple of christian friends here and there. A family that was broken, but very committed to faith, and my Mom and Dad both saw me though a lot. I was so thirsty for a community that cared about me. But looking back, though I would never recommend the church hopping thing to anyone, I am thankful for what I learned about the church at large. I visited a lot of places. Big, non-denominational churches, lutheran churches, mennonite churches. My favorite was an Assemblies of God church in Lancaster City. It was gospely and noisy and the people raised their hands and said "Amen". The worship leader had the hugest smile on her face.

By the end of my junior year I kind of hit my low point. It had been a tough year academically and relationally. I'd had my first romantic relationship with a classmate and it ended terribly. My mom was close to being engaged and my best friend Joella was getting married and was moving to New York City. The main thing that helped sustain my faith that year were some talks at the local Borders bookstore. I had been introduced to them the previous summer by Doug, a non-christian co-worker. A pure artist. He still sends me email updates about building a raft out of who knows what, and sailing from Manhattan to New Jersey, about hanging from some art installation on the ceiling of a museum in Sweden, about producing a radio show in Paris. He wanted to go to this talk at Borders one night because they were discussing the movie, The Elephant Man. He said it was being led my some pastor. I was highly suspicious, but thought I should go in case this pastor said something that I would later have to defend and explain. Not the case. It was like a drink of fresh water. I was introduced to Presbyterians. They were ahead of the curve, embracing art, the real world. They were savvy and cool and as solid as a rock. I was amazed and went every month that year. At the end of my junior year, I went to one meeting of the Reformed University Fellowship group at Millersville University, led by the Borders talk pastor.

And, I can't remember why, but one sunday I stepped back into Elizabethtown BIC, somehow dragged myself into the young adult sunday school class, received an immediate hug from an old youth group friend, and decided to stay.

At the end of my senior year I attended a conference in Florida with RUF, and attended a seminar about the church. Presbyterians are pretty tough about church. They say, in no few words, that you should be in one, and that you need it, that it is God's only plan for his people. I almost became Reformed myself that year, still dance on the edge sometimes, but at that conference, both because of learning, with a good deal of surprise, about the five points of Calvinism, and because they pushed so hard to commit to your local church, I ended up still Bretheren in Christ.

Tonight I was planning on going to a Derek Webb concert. Derek is the other influence for church of my college days. His sound is acoustic and folky and he is one of the most courageous, plain speaking christian musicians that we have right now. He has sometimes been called a prophet for our time and place, and he both calls the church to obedience, and also depicts God's huge love for the church in lines like these...

So when you hear the sound of the water you will know you're not alone...
When you taste my flesh and my blood you will know you're not alone.
I haven't come for only you, but for My people to pursue. You cannot care for Me, with no regard for Her.
If you love Me you will love the Church.

So when I got up this morning and got my shower, got dressed and drove to church I planned on hearing Derek tonight. But I walked in the doors and heard the end of the first service and knew something wasn't normal. There was a woman speaking, reading a letter about how much we appreciate the service of Pastor Hall in the last eighteen years. I stood out in the hallway, leaned against the cinder block walls under the loudspeaker and listened. He is leaving. And there would be a meeting in the evening to learn more. I so wanted to go to the concert. To be encouraged. To get away and think. But I knew way down in my gut. This is my church. I need to love it. I need to go and hear. Derek would tell me to anyway.

And the meeting was good. It will be a long journey. There will be an interim pastor and we will take our time relearning who we are. But as Pastor hall said tonight, our church dosen't belong to him, or to us, it belongs to Jesus. And He is the same yesterday, today, and He will still be the same tomorrow.

a little christmas, a little early

So I know that it is only the beginning of November, but this is way too funny to wait.

Click HERE to listen to what has now been labled the "Most Abominable O Holy Night" in the history of caroling. I know, I know, I'll do anything to make your season brighter. :-)

the church: adolescence

Hey, not sure why this post wasn't saved and got replaced by post below. If you've already read it, go down and read about birds. If not, enjoy.



I have had an off again, on again relationship with my church. My family began to attend Elizabethotown Bretheren in Christ when I was in third grade. I went to Sunday school and made friends, learned songs, colored pictures, memorized verses, made macaroni neckalces, went to camp. Overall, as a kid, church was good.
But as fun and enjoyable as church was as a kid, that is how awkward it became as an adolescent. In fourth grade I began to homeschool, and continued, except for ninth grade, until graduation. The youth group at church was big and I was the kid on the outside. Literally. Sometimes the group of kids would stand in a tight circle and laugh and talk about last night’s Saturday Night Live, which I had totally never seen, and it was physically impossible to squeeze in. But youth group... That is where I learned to love Jesus. I joined the quiz team in junior high. The others on the team were older, and were nice and very funny and I loved it. Our youth pastor Jim, was an amazing teacher. One of the best spiritual mentors I ever had. So, by the time I finished my ninth grade year in school, and decided to homeschool again, two factors in youth group were decided. I wasn’t gonna mesh with the SNL/ Austin Powers clan. I wanted to, they were incredibly cool, it just wasn’t happening. And I knew that Jesus really loved me.
Here is an evening that stands out as one of the most special in my life. I attended a smaller Bible study, maybe eight people. I remember praying together, sitting crosslegged on the floor. We were studying something like Ephesians. What I really remember was the struggle inside. It is one of those things that is easy to trivialize now, but I was in love, for real I think...and he was starting to see someone else. She was my friend, an amazing young woman that I looked up to. And they both sat in that room praying with me, and my heart ached. At the end of the evening, one of our leaders asked me to wait a minute before leaving. He left the room and came back with the flowers from the alter that sunday. Pink carnations. He and his wife were deacons and it was their responsibility to take the flowers that week and give them to whoever they chose. And he gave them to me. I went home that night and photographed those flowers from every possible angle, then I laid down on my bed and lifted my arms to the ceiling and I am sure that Jesus gave me a hug that night. A real one.
In tenth grade, when I began to homeschool again, I joined a co-op with other homeschooled students my age. I made some great friends and felt like I was in heaven. They read books instead of watching late night tv, and that year I read GK Chesterton for the first time. And we talked about it! Me and my tenth grade homeschooled friends. So I invested more there and began attending a little charasmatic church called Capital Christian, where many of my new friends went. It was a switch. They sang songs for a long time and I went through the whole, “am I ok if I don’t speak in tongues question”, and decided that I was. But it is interesting now that of the other students that went there, one became Catholic, one Messianic, one Presbyterian, so not many really stayed in the loose charasmatic tradition. Probably because we read too much Chesterton.
I think I maintained somthing of a dual relationship with both churches until graduation. Maybe I went to youth group in E-town in wednesday nights, and Capital on Sundays. By the time I graduated, I was fairly unconnected with both. Jim left his position as youth pastor to a new position as a senior pastor at another church, and all my homeschooling friends graduated and scattered. A lot was brewing with my family as well, and I entered college feeling very disconnected from any particular church. My faith was strong, but there was no support system to handle the changes to come.

blue heron, white egret

There is a white egret that lives down at the creek that we can see from the new office. At least there was. Rob named him Fernando, but like a great ship or explorer he may have sailed down south now. I am not sure if he was a snowy or a great egret. It was amazing watching him, though, always at a distance, such a bright pure white. There are gulls that sometimes sit at the creek too...and are also white, and sometimes seeing them, you'd think it might be Fernando, but weren't quite sure. But when you saw him, you knew. He was so brilliant and I could just make out the curve of his long neck. It reminds me of how CS Lewis describes hearing the voice of God in Till We Have Faces,

A god's voice...is not to be mistaken. It may well be that by trickery of priests men have sometimes taken a mortal's voice for a god's. But it will not work the other way. No one who hears a god's voice takes it for a mortals.

I am one of those people who asks God things and then waits with my brow furrowed until I think I can hear an answer. I usually think of some cool answer myself and then spend a fruitless amount of time trying to convince myself that God might have been part of that too. I am trying to stop doing that, because I do know that when God wants me to know something, he lets me know.





Last night I went walking on the trail behind our house. I have been very into Pilates for the last month, but I can only do it every other day to let my muscles heal. So I went for a walk because the fall air was lovely and I had to do something to make up for the hot fudge sunday at lunch at McDonalds. There is a crosswalk at the end of our road and the path crosses the street and then winds around a little pond. I stood waiting at the corner to cross, watching the SUV behind me. He stopped and honked and waved me on and just as I turned my head to cross the road, a Great Blue Heron landed on the bank of the pond in front of me. Herons are remarkably graceful. Even more the the Pilates instructor on my video. It was like his body and wings were water that had lifted from the pond. Like a swimmer treading water, moving in slow, smooth and perfect motion. I got across the street somehow and carefully moved around the pond watching him. I stopped directly across from and watched what I never thought I would see. He did what he was designed for and caught a fish. I could see it flapping and silvery in the his beak.

I walked on for a while and enjoyed the remaining patches of color in the understories. Some bright Maples and Beeches are still looking lovely. I ran a little bit and tried to walk remembering to hold in my stomach. When I got back to the pond a father and son were there fishing. The heron stood beside them, perhaps to rub it in that he had caught a fish and they had not. The boy watched him for a while and then cast his line over near the bird and scared him. On purpose. His father appeared to scold him, but then walked toward the heron himself, the bird cautiously stepped away, and the father took his spot at the pond. I guess to try to catch a fish. I felt like the guardian of the bird. Not that he needed it. He could have flown any time he wanted to, but I wonder why we have this tendency, as humans, to take advantage, to display our dominance, over something as amazing and awe-inspiring and "just minding it's own business" as a Great Blue Heron. Perhaps because it truly is better at fishing and more lovely than any dancer. But it is still so vulnerable compared to our fishing lines and SUVs.

I have had the hardest time this election season deciding who to vote for, whether I could stand to vote at all, and it might simply depend on which side of the bed I roll out of tomorrow. My mom told me that I need to decide what issues are important to me and then follow my consience. These two birds are important... I'd vote for someone that wouldn't shove them over to take the better fishing spot. Just not sure who that is.

So how does the voice of God come into this? I didn't have an outline for this post, and it's amazing how a writing takes a shape I wasn't expecting. But it ties together because his voice is our source. It called us, the earth, and every creature into existence and to being exactly what he wanted it to be. May he continue to do that everyday. Because his creation, all that he touches and shapes, is real, there is no mistaking it for anything else. The cell phone tower may look like a tree for a moment, but there is no mistaking a brilliant golden maple. There is no mistaking that our creator knows what he is doing.