losing things

When I went to Greece in my sophomore year of college, I bought a delicate byzantine cross pendant that I loved and I think I wore it almost everyday. It had five circles for the five wounds of Christ, each set over tightly coiled spirals of silver. I would post a picture here, but I have never again seen anything like it. One day, during my senior year, I walked into a morning class and discovered that it was no longer around my neck. Lecture was about to start, and I did the one of the stupidest, most responsible things I have ever done. I sat through the lecture, and only after the class did I go out and scour the sidewalks of Lancaster. Of course it was gone, and I never saw the necklace again. I don't remember what class I stayed for, which professor presented the lecture, much less anything that I learned that day. And I got great grades that year, but it wasn't worth it.

I have lost many things since then. I lost this year's calendar in February. I lost one of my car insurance bills and discovered the next month that I never paid it. I have lost ticket stubs, coupons, my car key, and ideals. I lost my job last year, and lost (almost) my fear of picking up the phone in this one. I have lost some friends, and have gained others.
It is ok to lose some things. Sometimes you find them again, or you never even miss them. It can also be good to clean house and drop some baggage.

But there are some things that we should take great care not to lose. Why on earth did I think that it was better of me to sit in a class than leave one of my most treasured possesions lying on a dirty concrete sidewalk? Did I think I would somehow be rewarded and find it again for good behavior? Nope.

Certainly when you consider the issue of losing things, there are varying levels of laziness, disorganization and forgetfulness, all of which I know about quite well. But even the best, most careful plans gang aft a-gley. So I don't believe that there is a reward or punishment when something is lost. It is morally neutral, which makes it, for me, even more difficult to understand. There is nothing that we can do about it. When something is gone, there is just no knowing if we will find it again. And we might not. Or we might.

Cincinnati

I am spraweld on my hotel bed, which delightfully has WiFi. It has been a long day. But a good day. I am at the Cincinnati Homeschool Convention representing CAP and we are selling out of all of our logic books already. Chris is peaking tomorrow about Latin which is good because there are lot's and lot's of Latin books to sell.

This is a nice hotel, that I secured for only $45 a night! Staying in a hotel is so glamorous. I don't know what it is, but I like it. Maybe it is ice in a little bucket, or the little bottles of things. And we don't really go for luxury at work. We try to be tightwads while traveling and there is nothing fancy about a homeschool convention in any way shape or form. But it is nice to have a quiet and pleasant room to crash in. Tomorrow will be TWELVE hours behind that table selling Latin books. I was not going to take a day off to make up for snow days earlier, but I think this makes up for them. We'll see.

AND, as a hint for a hopefully upcoming post. The Prairie Home Companion Talent show has now been graced by Karah, Bryan, Kevin and I. So if I can figure out all of the tecnology, I will be posting our entry here. So stay tuned.

Good night!

Worship conference

On Saturday I went to a conference with some of the members of the worship team at church. Dan, our worship pastor wanted to collect some of our thoughts about the day, and I posted them for the worship team, but I thought I would share them here too. The conference was led by Rory Noland, who had been the worship leader at the Willow Creek church for twenty years. Here is my worship team post. I'd love to here your thoughts too.

"Ok, I am a regular blogger, I guess I can start. I do have more thinking to do, but I have a few highlights in mind to share.

The conference was excellent. Really. And I don't say that if it was kind of blah or mediocre. It was packed with information, and with Scripture. Scripture everywhere. I want to go through my notes and just look up all of the verses, because they went by so quickly and I think I missed about half of them. Rory led several sessions, taught us some songs, prayed with us and challenged the teams with some tough questions. So here are highlights for me.


Highlight #1.

The first session focused on being a servant artist. Having been an art major in college, I can't even say how unconventional this idea is in normal art settings. But I do think it is one of the most important keys to making good art. You must be serving and thinking about something bigger than yourself, and bigger than the art itself, and this certainly fits with worship. We are serving God and he inspires our work and our words. At the end of that session we all kneeled at our seats for prayer, asking for humility, and for our worship to be a blessing to God and to our congregations.

Highlight #2
One of the very tough questions that Rory asked us to share with our teams was, "What does God like about me?" We all know God loves us, but he also likesus. We very timidly, and very humbled looked at each other around ou table, and shared what we thought God liked about us, what he delights in. And our answers were so different! And as I thought about it, I believe that they each described some of the most distinctive things about who each of us are.

Highlight #3

This one shoots right off of the last. One of the sessions was about creating authentic community, specifically in a worship team, and certainly in a local church. In this session we were asked to share with a small group of our team how we are really doing. How are you really doing? It is not a quick easy question to answer. I sat with Leslie and Nancy, and we shared with each other, and my respect and delight in knowing these woman multiplied by a hundred. This was the most important thing. Dan is right. The speaker was great, but we recieved far more from each other.
I am delighted and excited to share in worship with you all. Especially because there is a good chance that Dunkin Donuts will be involved!

Looking forward to hearing more thoughts!"

miscellaneous catch up

So, my time just seems to evaporate. It is just flying by. I started the post below on Sunday, and just finally finished and posted it. I am not even very busy, but I have a lot of activities, even if some of them are watching old episodes of Northern Exposure. I barely watch any TV, except for Wheel of Fortune with Kelly, but my Mom loved Northern Exposure when I was a kid, though I had no idea why. I needed something light and fun to watch and got it out of the library and I am hooked. They are all excellent charcters, and there are so many of them.

I have been trying to get Karah and Bryan and Kevin (our little church quartet) together to record a song and enter Garrison Keillor's talent show. This round is for people in their twenties, and I think we would have a decent shot at getting to fly to Minnesota and sing on the radio, but time is slipping away, and I am not sure we are going to make the deadline.

Yesterday Rob decided that I should learn how to make web pages. HTML is a big pain in the butt. Maybe it is because I am using a freebie WYSIWYG program for layout, but I think it is mainly the HTML problem. I am so much more impressed with Rob's web design skills now, though, and my attmpts are looking most dreadfully amature. Still, if I can learn some of it, especially for marketing purposes (these pages will be used for our next e-newsletter), I will feel much more independent, and like I won't need to keep bugging Rob for everything that needs to look nice.

And yesterday after work, I came home and was just sitting in the living room when a lady and a girl I didn't know knocked on our door. I thought maybe they were selling Girl Scout cookies. But no, they were letting me know that there was a fire right beside our house! It wasn't just beside our house, and it wasn't very big, but it was an electrical fire around one of the telephone poles near our house. The mother was already on the phone when she knocked, and the fire was put out quickly by several emergency vehicles, but on her way out of the driveway, this poor woman (except that she drove a Cadillac Escalade) backed into Kelly's car and dented her door. She was a really nice lady, and she is one of our neighbors across the street, and she was very flustered, and I hope we meet her again, but what a crazy half hour that was. We have had a lot of wierd things happen at this house, from this fire, to accident's on the corner, to a gas spill to a car flipped over in the lawn. I love this house, but I really hope that we stay alive to live somewhere else someday.

Well, this is rambly but I enjoyed writing it out. I am home alone tonight, and I don't know where Kelly is, and my Mom isn't home and I've tried calling her a couple of times, so I guess this is my evening's chatting and you get to listen in... Feel free to chat to me next time.

Yesterday, while it was kind of warmish out, I cleaned out my garden. I pulled down the huge salvia's that I started from seed last winter, and I cut back the few perrenials. I pushed leaves away from the sprouting tulips, and it was so refreshing to have my hands in the dirt again. The bed looks so bare now, kind of tender and so promising. There is so much space now for new things to start growing.

My Lenten praying has been good this last week. I am using my old book, Face to Face, which gives a passage of scripture for the different kinds of prayer. Adoration, Confession, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving, etc. My sunday school class is beginning a quarter studying prayer and hopefully doing it too! So I have been thinking about how I pray the best. I think I need a tool like Face to Face. It is helpful for me to have some direction, but also to have space to just talk to God, and let my mind bring up the various things and people that I would like to pray for. I often find that I don't really even get going in my prayer until I get to Intercession and Thanksgiving. It is surprising to me because I would think that praying for myself would be the best part, but it isn't true.

This week was the second to last Sunday with Pastor Hall at church. The series on Roman's has truly been like a blaze of glory for an exit. From remembering the Holy Spirit in us, and how God is making us like himself, to how much he loves us, these last few weeks have been so full of grace and glory.

I wonder, like everyone, where the church is headed now. I wonder who we are now as a congregation, and where we will be a year or two from now. Are we still Anabaptists? We are certainly evangelical, and growing more liturgical. We sing hymns and we sing contemperary worship songs. We have communion once month, and three scripture readings in each service. We laugh a lot while standing around in the lobby, and at least in the crowd I hang with, there is a remarkable freedom to be ourselves, which means not always perfectly reverent. We have about a million lively little kids, and a mob of awkard and wonderful youth. So I wonder what we will keep? We've come a long way, and I wonder where we will be going.

Personally, I would love to see more tambourine. I have been listening to oldies too much lately. It keeps me happy, and I could see myself with a tambourine, but I would have to stand way in the back. But seriously, I'm not sure. Maybe more traditionally Anabaptist hymns with lot's of accapella. And I wouldn't cut one Scripture reading ever. Other than that, I am not sure.

Maybe my church is like my garden. You knew it had to tie together somehow. A lot of strong and established elements are going to be pulled out, or are soon subject to it. I am really not too fond of change, so I'd be the type to let old things stay as long as absolutely possible (just ask poor Kelly who has been wanting to rearrange the living room for about a year) But maybe the ground is now ripe for new planting, and tender young seedlings will grow. I am absolutely convinced that Jesus is with his church and will care for it. No doubt, not one.