The View from Wood Road (and beyond)

No Longer at Wood Road

2010-09-28T23:29:00.002-04:00

Well, it has been a busy couple of years, and have not posted in quite, quite some time! I no longer live on Wood Road, but several towns further down the road, as I will explain. My last name is no longer the same either, as John and I got married last summer, on a sunny, wonderful Saturday. And we were married on the forth of July, which brings up all kinds of jokes about "Independance Day"!
So that ended my time living in the sweet white farmhouse in Hershey, and I joined him in the townhouse he rented, barely five minutes down the road, which had been becoming more and more like home in the years of our courtship and engagement anyway. We put up with the yellow roses on the wallpaper border in our bedroom, knowing that it would not be our home to stay and during the fall we began to search for a new home closer to Messiah where John teaches, which would also be closer to my job as well.
The house search continued for several months, and we saw many, many houses. I am blessed to be married to a guy with high standards, because I would have settled for a number of the places we saw, though each had drawbacks, from a yard too tiny, to needing serious renovation, to just not being "us". We learned a lot about ourselves and each other in the process, and thanks be to God, on Christmas Eve we saw our house, and it knocked our socks off. As it was a "For Sale By Owner" there were months of trying negotiations and again, if it had not been for John's steady perseverance, I probably would have walked off. But we settled on the house at the end of May, and those month of difficult waiting have just evaporated in the joy of moving in and living in our home. We hope, Lord willing, that it is our "forever" home. It is a beautiful all brick ranch, with an office not far from the kitchen, and a big yard with bigger trees, and endless opportunities. We planted a tomato and pepper patch in June and I am still bringing in the small harvest. We have fantastic neighbors with kids who ride bikes around and laugh and watch movies with us now and then. John walks through corn fields to get to work, and I have a new Messiah library card. Every time I walk down the steps from the back porch into the yard and around the little stone-lined shady garden with a lamp post, I take a breath, and can hardly believe how God has blessed us...and blessed me.
So this blog has a new home (but will keep the old URL address), as do I. Wood Road was my first step out on my own, and was part of the path that I needed to get me to this next leg of the journey...

Summer Camp

2008-07-08T21:17:00.002-04:00

Every time I walk outside in the woods in the summer, I remember my weeks away from home at summer camp when I was a kid, and I think of it because of the smell. The deep, musky, musty, spicy smell of summer. Of rotting wood and growing leaves. Of wet soil and tall grass. I went to camp for one week every year from third to sixth grade. That summer after sixth grade was my first year in middle school camp. That week was a great revelation to me. I learned about shaving my legs. I remember sitting on the porch of the lodge, looking around at all of the smooth legs and realizing I was the last girl left, who hadn't known any better (homeschooled, of course), still with soft blond fuzz covering my shins. After I got home, I got out one of my Dad's cheap disposable razors and went to work, and I remember sheepishly trying to hide the razor from Mom in a towel when she suddenly popped her head in the bathroom. As influential as that week was, I never again felt the need to go back to camp.

But there are two specific spots at Kenbrook Bible Camp that the smells of summer always bring back to me. Woodsy smells bring me back to a little dirt path that wound it's way down the hill to a tiny lake. The other is a big grassy meadow where we went to play capture the flag and where they held the crucifixion scene of the passion play produced each week for a new group of campers.

The camp was full of delightful places, and as much as I was feeling awkward there in my middle school years, I dearly loved it, and a week was far too short for me in upper elementary. There was a craft hut, full of pipe-cleaners and buttons and glue. There was a gift shop with little stuffed animals and all kinds of candy, and a bandanna with a map of the camp printed on it. There was a pool of course, with early morning swims, and an archery field, which I adored.

Last weekend I was privileged to be a delegate for my church at the BIC General Conference in Toronto. I have never been more impressed with a group of people in my life, or with the breadth of wisdom, ministry and geography for such a relatively small denomination. Kenbrook came up in conversations with others that I met there as it is run by the BIC, and I have been pondering how the church, in my case the BIC, or the church as a whole, has an arm that spreads through our whole life. My church offered half-off scholarships to go to camp, if you memorized a passage of scripture. Tonight as I walked, I tried to recite,

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from God, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let my foot slip. He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep."

And this is as far as I can go, but in fourth grade or so, I could have spouted the whole thing. This brings me to my quizzing years. Bible quizzing is not for the faint of heart, as in order to be competitive, students in middle school and high school memorize whole books of the Bible in a year. I stuck it out for a couple of years myself, not really getting to the memorizing stage, and then faded out in high school. But this week at general conference, I cheered for my church's quiz team as they quoted verses from Galatians to Colossians, and dueled teams from other churches in fierce, but loving competition, always congratulating a correct answer and always encouraging after a wrong one.

And now after the General Conference, I still pondering all that goes into church ministry and the strength of serving him together in unity. We learned about our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, and not pleasant parts, like Zimbabwe and Cuba. We reviewed our connection and covenant with Messiah College, and with other related ministries to all kinds of people from the mentally disabled to children in India. We also discussed some big domestic issues like health care, budgets, and same sex marriage. All throughout the conference there was no doubt that the hearts of all were in unity, but the particulars needed a lot of discussion, and there were some very heated moments.

Anyway, as I walked this evening, I felt very blessed breathing the hot, humid summer air, and beside a bubbling little stream, and looking over the cornfields, green with the recent rain. Again, some words from a familiar Psalm came to mind, that perhaps I learned in fifth grade.

"Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Savior, Teach us so to Rise!

2008-03-23T21:13:00.006-04:00

Note to Readers: This post was started last week on Easter evening. It needed some serious editing, though, so this Sunday morning, as I am passing time in the Cincinnati airport, soon to be home, was the perfect time to clean it up and get it posted.

Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

See Him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.

Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice complete.
“It is finished!” hear Him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die.

Early hasten to the tomb where they laid His breathless clay;
All is solitude and gloom. Who has taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes; Savior, teach us so to rise.

words by Pennsylvania hymn writer James Montgomery

My Dad has been studying the great hymn writers of Pennsylvania for several years now. There are more than you would think. Great hymns like "What Can Wash Away My Sin" were written right here in our own backyard. What a heritage and inheritance!

I love hymns. I love them like I love my church, the soil in my garden and the pillow I rest my head on each night. I feel like my soul has been steeped in them since I was an infant, and I can not remember a time that I did not know the most familiar of them. On the other hand, in the last few years, since my Dad has begun his studies, and since I began to listen to Indelible Grace music, (an ongoing project by Reformed University Fellowship to write contemporary music for the words of old hymns. Not because the old music isn't great, but to try to hook college kids on old, meaty, excellent, words. It worked for me!) I have discovered how much I don't know.

The above hymn is a perfect example. I first heard it after getting the new Indelible Grace CD for Christmas. This hymn is rewritten and sung by Sandra McCracken, one of my favorite musicians. The thing about this music is that it is dense. Very dense. The words and their rich, profound meanings are packed so tightly that I probably listened to this song about thirty times before I started to "get it." But once I did...I can't help but lift my hands as I drive down the road on each early morning commute.

Then I sat at my Dad's kitchen table one day, and he showed me a newsletter that he wrote for his church and was mailing out to the congregation. Easter was coming soon, so he closed the newsletter with a verse of a hymn by James Montgomery, who is one of the PA hymn writers he often talks about. As I read it, it began to click in my mind. It was the last verse of "Go to Dark Gethsemane". Looking at the words, they began to sink in a little bit more. Phrases like "his breathless clay", and "teach us so to rise" started sticking in my head.

On good Friday, I attended my church's Tenebrae service with John and opened the bulletin to found "Go to Dark Gethsemane". Very fitting for a Good Friday service, and for the first time, I heard and sang the words with their original music. It is lovely and temperate and somber. The last verse, though, wasn't there. Perhaps it was removed because it would jump ahead of the crucifixion and rush us into the resurrection. But when I looked in other hymnals, they also included only the first three verses.

This morning, Easter morning, the sanctuary was transformed. From the black drape hanging on a rugged wooden cross to a sprawling mound of lillies and golden forsythia. From dark candlelight to the sun pouring in the windows. From soft piano to trumpet and timpani, the glory, the Shekinah, of the Lord radiated through the room and through my heart and out from my eyes. And pastor Gene reminded us that all of our church, each person's involvement, and all of the care that we receive there is only, only because of what we celebrate this day, that Jesus conquered sin and death and is alive. And he is! He is alive and he is good and worthy of all the praise that we can try to give.

Last night John did a Google search for "Go to Dark Gethsemane", and he sent me the words to verse four. So, just as it says in Ephesians, that "his incomparably great power for us who believe...is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead...", Savior, teach us so to rise!

Christmas Morning

2007-12-28T19:27:00.000-05:00

My family stayed up until after two-o-clock on Christmas eve, trying to drink hot buttered rum (which is not quite as tasty as it sounds) and eating pumpkin pie. But for some unknown reason, I woke up at seven on Christmas morning, and decided to go out into Mom's backyard and photograph. These are some of my new favorites. If Christmas is not snowy, which it normally isn't in central PA, this is what it looks like, and I think it is so beautiful.

And one more that is not quite as beautiful, but also very much part of my Christmas morning.

okay okay...

2007-12-28T19:19:00.000-05:00

I know my last post was cryptic. I don't really have a reason except that sometimes you feel big things rather than little ones. I have been pondering the good and the love that seems to flow beneath us and hold all things together. I just meant love. From God, family and friends.

Love pours out and over

2007-12-05T23:26:00.000-05:00

I don't know where it comes from but it keeps flowing and spilling, swelling and washing. This is what love is doing to me.

Dear Reader...

2007-11-09T18:46:00.000-05:00

I am going to write this post as a letter to you. It feels more personal and like I am talking to you right now. It has been an up and down week, and tonight is Friday night and I am sitting at home blogging, hence I need someone to talk to. I just had dinner with my Dad and my sister, and have tried calling some friends, and Kelly even has a friend over as I speak, but I was hoping to go out and do something fun and worldly and distracting tonight, and I am put out that I am sitting at home instead. On the other hand, you, dear and faithful reader (if you exist) deserve to have something entertaining to read, and I will now supply what I can.

I have been pondering new aspects of becoming an adult this week, and particularly an adult woman. I found myself wearing all black twice this week, which is unusual, and I usually avoid it. But for work it is so sleek and clean looking. If the blacks match each other, that is, which mine did not, and my pants were a little bit too short, which also undercuts the desired appearance of long sleekness. Then I wore all black last night, while sitting at home, a pair of black sweatpants with an M on them for Mease, and a black boat necked chunky sweater, and I felt almost elegant. Another new adult thing is that I am finding myself wandering over to coffee shops to buy myself coffee and pastries in the morning on the way to work. Dark roast coffee. It is heaven. I am going to try to start waking up too late to make my own breakfast more often. I also just started an IRA, of all things. Nothing screams old and established like saving for retirement.

But, on the other hand, today I got to spend some time thinking about children, and what they would like. I wrote this story which will be featured in an email newsletter for work. The Latin portions are currently being proofed by someone who actually knows Latin, but I would like your input on it's plot and theme and literary merits. The thing is that without any intention of doing so, I managed to imply the impending death of two characters in this story! Is this too morbid for children? Is this what happens when one tries to write a lovely story about the fall? I mean, anyway you look at it, a turkey in a Thanksgiving story is going to have a difficult future...

I will leave it to you to decide... (Use Latin glossary at the bottom of the post. If you don't, it will not make any sense. Unless you know Latin. Aren't you glad I explained?)

Sincerely,
Joanna

One lovely autumnus morning, a young accipiter woke up from his sleep with a yawn and stretched his wings. There was a white gelu on the ground and the air was clear and frigidus. He looked out over the ager and pondered what to do. This was the first time that he would make the long journey of perigrinatio. He was a rather timid accipiter, and had been putting off the journey. “If only it weren’t so frigidus,” he thought to himself, “I would just stay here.” It was a homey place. It was messis time and the pomum trees were full of fruit, and folium after folium sprouting from his favorite branch had turned a rich ruber color.
As he sat looking about, a large black aranea crawled down beside the accipiter, and she said, “Good mane. A bit nippy, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you be heading Meridies soon?”
“Well,” he answered, “I guess so. I wish I could build an araneaum like you and just stay here.”
The aranea gasped and said, “You should be thankful to have such wings that will carry you to where it is warm. I will lay my eggs, and my babies will come out again next spring, but I will not live through this frigidus.”
The accipiter pondered this, gave the Mama aranea a gentle little peck, spread his wings and flew, turning his head toward the Meridies. He flew for a long time. All day he flew, until it grew dark and even then he kept flying. It was a bright evening, the plenilunium hung low in the sky. He flew past fields, lakes, cities, and finally rested in an oak tree in the center of the forest. It was still chilly, but he tucked his head into his wing, and closed his eyes. He was suddenly woken by a funny sound, “gobble, gobble.” The accipiter peered down to the forest floor, and saw a strange, fat bird with a bald red head looking up at him. “What are you?” he asked.
“I am a meleagris gallopavo,” the fat bird said, “How did you get way up in that tree?” “I am an accipiter, I have wings to fly, of course!”
“My, you are lucky,” the meleagris gallopavo answered. “I have to keep running behind trees to escape and to hide. It would be so much easier to fly.”
Suddenly a loud tramping noise was heard nearby, and the chubby bird hopped away shouting, “Good to meet you!”
The accipiter was a bit nervous about the noise as well, so he took off from his comfy branch and began to fly toward the warm meridies again.
“Maybe perigrinatio isn’t so bad after all,” he thought to himself. As he flew, he noticed that the leaves on the trees were greener than where he had started, and the sol warmed the feathers on his dorsum. He flew on for days and days, and his wings felt strong.
Early one mane, he met another accipiter, and called out to him,“Hello! Do you know if it is warm enough here to stay for the winter?”
“Oh yes! There will be a dinner tonight, celebrating the perigrinatio, you are just in time!”
The young accipiter smiled and beneath his feathers his heart swelled, just a little bit, and he was glad that he was an accipiter, even if a timid one, and that he had made it so far.

Latin Glossary

autumnus - autumn

folium – leaf

meleagris gallopavo – turkey

aranea – spider

araneaum – spider web

luna – moon

plenilunium – full moon

messis, seges – harvest

frigidus, gelidus – cold

gelu, pruina – frost

accipiter – hawk

ruber – red

malum, pomum – apple

ager – field

perigrinatio – migration

mane – morning

meridies – south

dorsum –back
sol – sun

2007-10-27T11:31:00.000-04:00

October

2007-10-24T19:56:00.000-04:00

I have been working on posting again for quite a while. I have several drafts that I have started and not finished. I guess I am out of shape and need to build up my posting muscles again. The fall has been lovely and rainy this weekend and I think that makes the colors more intense and bright. I just downloaded all of the photos that I have taken since spring and decided to update my profile. The new profile photo of me was taken in July on a trip to see Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright house in western PA. It is a beautiful structure. I don't think we realize what art and architecture can be until we see it and stand in it. Speaking of which, how about this place?This is Kinzua Bridge, in northern PA. The old railroad bridge that you see here was built in 1900, and was a state park and open to the public to walk across until 2003 when a tornado took out the center of the bridge. It was dizzying to see how high it stood and the see the fallen trusses laid out on the ground. It is a beautiful sight, if you can, go and see it.

It is a quiet weekend which is welcome. Last night Kelly and I made an amazing dinner of Kale and Eggplant, and all other vegetables that we could use up from our organic vegetable box from Spiral Path Farm. I am really so thankful that the era of tomatoes and peppers is coming to an end. They are wonderful things, of course, but one can only eat so much. Still, last night I made a tomato salad for myself with fresh basil, feta cheese and a little bit of Italian dressing and yum, that is hard to top.

We made the executive decision last night that we are finished mowing for the year. Not that it couldn't use it yet one more time, but the ground is soggy and muddy, and it is just not going to happen on a weekday anymore. Kelly will be graduating over the winter, and is looking around for jobs, and the comment was even made that there is a chance we will not be at Wood Road for mowing next summer. I think it is a fairly slim chance, but surprising and somewhat sobering, though life moving on is a good thing as well.

One new and exciting development for me is that I got a call from my old boss, Joe, from my job at the shop in Hershey, and am rehired for some design projects. It is design for some packaging and retail display for a new product that they are going to wholesale to other retailers. It is so great to work with that crowd again, and it reminds of what I am really good at. I know how to make things look good. I am. I am not really boasting, but I think it is truly one of my gifts. On the other hand, refreshing my Photoshop knowledge is an entirely different story.

So related to that topic, and my masterful aesthetics, here are some more pictures for your enjoyment to usher in the fall on Wood Road. Enjoy your October.

holiday weekend

2007-09-01T20:43:00.000-04:00

I just returned home from a Labor Day weekend cookout at Dad's. My brother is moving into his new apartment in Millersville and was not able to come, so it was just Dad and the girls. Dad gets out his simple charcoal grill a couple times a year for special occasions. He mixes his beef with salt and pepper and onions, squashes them into patties and lays them out on the grill. I like watching the burgers as they slowly cook, and the sizzle sound of fat hitting the hot coals. We sat on his back porch and ate macaroni salad and baked beans and barbecue chips and talked about my Dad's coming trip to Texas, my work hitting it's sales goals for August and the paint colors of Bekah's boyfriend's new apartment. Dad bought two mums to adorn the porch for our gathering and brought out a straggly pot of petunias that he had kept forgetting to water over the summer. So we had a little party. After dinner we sliced up a watermelon and Bekah and I stuck our faces down into the rind to finish off our slices. Dad laughed at us as he scraped at his with a knife.

There is something very exciting about the beginning of fall. It feels like a new beginning, and the cooler air is full of energy. I have not been in school for the last four years, but from my art school days I still get the urge to go buy gesso and new sketch books.

The fall also means the end of lazy day summer. Late this spring I began seeing my friend John again. John is a teacher at a local college and last fall, in his first year teaching, the busyness and the stress that came with it took a toll, and at that time was a large part of our letting the romantic relationship idea go. But as he finished up this spring, we went for it again, and the time for talking and learning and enjoying was wonderful. So now he is heading back to work, and this time around, armed with knowledge from last year, I hope we will make a better go of it, though the adjustment will be hard.

But one thing that may help immensely is that I have a plan. Earlier this afternoon, Bekah (who is taking art classes herself!) and I, caving into the old art school urges, went to the art store and I bought new drawing pads, a big sheet of Arches Watercolor Paper, and a new size twelve synthetic watercolor brush. Several years ago I took a class at Longwood Gardens in botanical illustration. This is an almost scientific exercise in making watercolor images of plants, leaves, flowers, sometimes roots as well. Think of a Field Guide. The size, color, and as much detail as possible should all be exact in the illustration. I enjoyed learning the skill quite a lot, and since John was so thoughtful as to rearrange his office so that I could sit and work with him, I am ready to get started.

After dinner, Dad and Bekah and I took a walk around E-town. We walked past a little house Dad had noticed was for sale and was of some interest to him, but then we walked past the old brick duplex where we lived when I was four to seven years old. Bekah and Jon were both born there. My Mom chose to give birth at home and as we walk Dad tells us how when Bekah was born he walked her across the street to show her off to the neighbors. Then as we head back toward the square he reminds us what many of the old buildings used to be, and I love the familiarity of walking through my hometown. Dad and I finish the evening after Bekah has departed by silently watching a Phillies game and laughing at Prairie Home Companion.

On my way home tonight I found myself crying buckets as I think about my family and how much God has blessed us. We have had some hard times, and there are a lot of hard things in the world, but I have never more clearly seen what good God can do, what he can regrow and redeem and make more glorious than we could ever imagine. He has done that for us, and tonight for Dad and Bekah and me.

ps. Sorry it has been so long since I have posted!

July

2007-07-02T17:13:00.000-04:00

The summer is flying by isn't it? And the season is beautiful. Our yard is overflowing with life. There is a family of killdeer that are nesting in my driveway, and they squeak and squeal all day long. Or at least whenever anyone close enough to make them nervous. I am not sure where their nest is or how it could have survived so long with all of the coming and going in our driveway, but they have been around for weeks now. A groundhog has taken up residence far back in the yard and runs into the weeds every time we pull into the driveway and a resident squirrel leaves us little presents of walnut shells on the railing of our porch each morning. One time I awoke to the sound of his chewing and spotted him in action. And now there are baby bunnies who have begun to nibble on my garden again, not to mention the host of robins and sparrows, and even a few cardinals that have made this yard their home.

I wrote the above about a week ago. Since then I will describe the great Killdeer adventure, after which, it seems that they have taken up their residence somewhere else. On Monday night I decided to try to find their nest and somehow mark it off and protect it from all of the vans and trucks that come through our driveway. A landscaping company rents the large barn below us and there have been painters working on the outside of our house. I went out after work with binoculars, a towel to sit on, and a book to read while I waited, and saw five birds on the driveway, all at one time. As I walked closer and chose my little outpost from which to watch, all disappeared but one. This one bird stood still and quiet for a long time, stepping here and there, until it finally sat down like it was nesting. Another bird came and stood near it squawking and squawking. I waited for a while longer, and Bekah called saying she was in Hershey, so I invited her to come help. Her arrival stirred up the killdeer, and taking advantage of them being away from the prospective nest sight, Bekah and I lugged a card table down to the driveway and carefully began to look. The Killdeer had disappeared and were quiet, and I should have known then that they threw me off. There was no nest. Nothing. The other thing that was happening that evening is that the wheat field across the road from us was being harvested. I saw them one more time scavenging in the field that night and have seen and heard nothing of them since. It makes me think I may not have been as helpful as I hoped, but the positive side is that maybe they had already had a successful clutch of little Killdeer chicks, hence the five birds, and it was just time to move on.
Tonight I can hear the drums from the Lower Dauphin marching band, and today has been cool and clear, so I can almost imagine that fall will come again. It is one of those wistful, melancholy nights. In a good way.
I have caught myself watching TV more lately, have been trying to decide whether or not to finally get a cell phone (vote on this in the comments!) and at the same time, I have been noticing the outdoors, and have had a lot of things come up that I want to take time to pray for. So before I go in to start another installment of yet another viewing of a certain British period mini-series (Middlemarch. Actually NOT Pride and Prejudice. I know that is what you were thinking) I will finally post this post and spend some more time enjoying the evening, the pinkish sky, the drums, the cool air, and try to concentrate long enough to lift up some people who need God to work in their lives. Because there are a lot of them, and I am one too.

Summertime on Wood Road

2007-06-02T23:44:00.000-04:00

These are pictures from last year, but can't you feel the sticky, warm, fragrant, summer?

pokey grass and palm trees

2007-05-24T23:31:00.000-04:00

I am in Orlando, Florida tonight, and for the rest of the weekend. It is the first time that I have been here and I am not doing any of the normal touristy things. Oh no, I am selling Latin books to homeschoolers. But I am getting around the town a bit. Claire is one of our authors, and she came with me on this trip. She has a son and daughter in law and granddaughter here, so it is nice to know some locals to show us around. Florida feels like another world. On the one hand, the weather is absolutely lovely, so temperate and sunny and breezy. The palm trees and live-oaks are pretty, and there are some lovely gardens. On the other hand, though, this whole place looks like Disneyworld. Everything is big and overdone and has a gigantic parking lot.

I have been thinking a lot about land lately. I would like to own land. I would like to be a landowner, and take care of it. Flying on the plane down here, you can see farms and forests, and sprawling, windy suberbs, deep quarries, and construction sites with red clay soil exposed to the sun. You can see freeways that cut a straight line across the land for as far as you can see, and some places that looked so barren and un-naturally stripped that I don't know what they are doing there.

Here in Orlando, developing is happening everywhere. Around the convention sight there is a strange yellow soiled field, that has been dug up and will be turned into something that I suppose someone thinks is worthwhile. In the meantime, the Florida breeze is blowing it up into a sandstorm, and it looks like the Sahara desert. Other places being developed have been run over and so packed down by truck and bulldozers that it is hard to imagine that anything will grow there again.

I write about mowing my lawn a lot, and I recently have had several interesting discussions about lawns, and their benefits, and their drawbacks. When did we decide that lawns are the way to go? Is this still left over from England where grass actually looks nice and stays green? Here in Florida, the grass is thick and course. Our northern grass could never take the heat, but even this tough species gets sprinkeled every day (Florida has been in a drought for over a year now) along the roads and the on the hotel lawns. Where it isn't being watered, it is already dead and brown. Here at home, I chatted with some of my friends about dandelions in the yard. When did dandelions become the enemy? They only bloom for about two weeks and then are done for the summer. Why is a yard so much more desirable without them then with them? And when you think about it, lawns are an unnatural, very modern construction. They have become an entire industry. If we lived 100 years ago we would have to mow it with a scythe, or buy a sheep. There is no way that we would devote the acres and acres and acres of ground to this one, incredibly high maintenance construction. One of my friends also made the good point that lawns are hospitable to humans, and allow us to enjoy the outdoors in a way that we couldn't if we were always fighting through underbrush. This is true, but there must be a balance. Lawns may be hospitable to us, but they are not to any other creature on the entire planet. God didn't create the variety and complexity and the bounty of all species of flora and fauna for us to just look at grass around our shopping centers.

I have been wrestling with this anyway, but this trip to Orlando confirms and throws these thoughts into sharp relief. Claire's family that lives here think that they are living the American dream, but there is no way that I could live this way, in this place, in a drought, but with sprinkelers watering the grass that does not belong here, and with the ground being dug and cleared, chruned up and packed down to make way for a new organic grocery store. What are we thinking?

I so love my little garden. I am fascinated by it, watching each plant grow, and trying to imagine how it will look by the end of the summer. I hope that my being faithful with little will one day allow a chance to be faithful with more.

My mom has done this better than anyone else I know, and you should read her journey HERE. She works for the Manada Conservancy and her position is to persuade homeowners associations and developers to use native plants for their landscaping. Not only will they provide for our own particular Pennsylvania eco-system, and grow better than plants that are not suited for our climate, they will also remind us that we are home. Just like you don't see palm trees in PA, you don't see Winterberry's or Jack in the Pulpit or Mayapples here in Florida.
Can't wait to come home again...

And in case you have never seen it in person, this is my Mom's yard.

grandma and growing up

2007-05-05T12:02:00.000-04:00

I have posted in the past about my Mom's mother. I love that side of the family and it is glamourous in a "mountains of Kentucky" way. My Dad's side of the family is closer to home. When I think about my cousins and aunts and uncles, I think first of them. My grandmother, my Dad's mother, my last grandparent, passed away last week after several weeks in the hospital. All through the weekend of the funeral I was too busy to really think about it, or even to think much about her. Then there was a flurry of activity with family coming in, some which we haven't seen in many years, and it was good to see them. My cousins and I compared noses, and decided who had the Mease nose or not. Most of us have it. We kept saying how much my Dad and his brothers remind us of our Grandpa. I got to see my oldest friend, my cousin Christy, and not only her, but for the first time her little, four month old daughter! How amazing. A normal life schedule should and does become completely thrown over and irrelevent in times like this. You always here that you don't know when the end will come, and that you can't plan your life, and life happens when we are making other plans and all that, and it sunk in this week.

My Grandma's funeral was on Monday, and my twenty-sixth birthday was on Tuesday. One of my friends pointed out that now I am in my late twenties, to which I gave a big sarcastic "Thanks!" But the combination of the two events is sobering, and thought provoking. I am an adult now. One way I know this is that the thing I want more than anything in the world is an outdoor clothesline. Another way I know this is on Tuesday night, my birthday, after Bible study, the thing that I wanted most of all was to go grocery shopping because I had just gotten paid, and there was no food in my cupboards. Zero. Nothing. Finally, there is the lawn. The big, thick, verdant lawn. Every week until October, I will be mowing it, and there is no managing or controlling it. I have written about mowing the lawn in the past, and not much has changed, except that I think there are more dandelions.

But all these pieces are fitting together in my mind. The lawn, the funeral, four month old Abigail, the clothesline in the sun, my birthday grocery shopping, the quilt that my grandmother's mother made that is now folded in my cedar chest. These feel like the most real things in my life. I want to take care of these things, and tend them like the sprouts in my garden. I want to make sure that what should be important stays important. I have allowed my life to get too busy and too cluttered, mainly with good things, but mainly because I have not wanted to let anyone down. I am not sure what I will be doing about this, as far as how these thoughts will play out in real life, but I will be thinking and praying about it. Maybe I am just coming off of a stressful time, and will be able to bounce back, and will need and want some action soon too. But right now I'd rather just be here at home.

But if there is anyone out there who is into lawn mowing... ;-)

a bad bad blogger

2007-04-18T20:36:00.000-04:00

I am, I know. I can attempt to justify myself by saying that I am one fantastic churchgoer, an dedicated bumper-to-bumper driver, a sometimes late night worker and I think, a good friend, but there is no excuse. Blogging is a priority too!

I have, in this, yet another, blogging intermission, thought of many great ideas for a post. I was going to write a funny story comparing artists and logicians, which has been a point of amusement in this crunch time at work. Rob is an artist. He is an excellent designer, he loves stories, and cartoon characters and is goofy and funny. He is now faced with the daunting task of designing a new textbook on formal logic. He has discovered that formal logic has, inherently, no imagery whatsoever. Rob asked and begged the authors (yes, we have warmly referred to them as egg-heads) for some ideas. He begged for examples. "What," he said, "is the real life purpose, the application, the VERY REASON that ANYONE would EVER want or need to learn formal logic?" The poor egg-heads simply blinked, and we truly believe that the question had never remotely occured to them. One had the nerve, the guts, the imagination, to offer a foundation, a flat, rectangular flat sheet of concrete on the ground, as an idea for imagery. I think Rob almost exploded.

In the end it is working out. The book isn't ready for design yet anyway, and I think we have settled on a structural engineering theme, using blueprint like images of bridges and skyscrapers and, I hope, some gothic cathedrals.

I wanted to write earlier and tell everyone that they must, if they can still find it, go and see the movie Miss Potter. It is the story of Beatrix Potter, but it is about everything that a good story is about. It is about taking the risk to do somthing that is uniquely you, about friendship, about love in a beautifully unpredictable way, about pain and disappointment, about publishing, and about the earth and the beauty of creation.

I am also reading a great great book. I have been hearing the name Wendell Berry absolutely everywhere lately, so upon these glowing recomendations I am reading Jayber Crow. Please read it. Go go buy it now. Maybe it makes life seem simpler than it feels to me these days, but it is about how God leads us, and how that may not be where we thought we were going, but he is leading us to be who he made us, and to serve others as we are, and he is leading us home.

I could also write about our home. Kelly and I pray for this house sometimes, and it seems like people are blessed when they come here. Last night, while she was here alone, Kelly annointed our house. She dipped her finger in oil and drew a cross onto our back door. We had the back door replaced several months ago, and though she had done this when we first moved in, last night she suddenly thought to do it again. And lo and behold, I dragged a bunch of friends home from Bible study last night, and gave them tea, and we sat laughing and talking around the living room. My friend Mike found a poem by Hannah on our fridge, that she wrote for us when we moved here. It is called Blessing for a House, and after reading it, he kept talking about how it made him think of Thanksgiving dinner, and a horn of plenty spilling out onto the table. One guy who came last night, who is a very new aquaintance to most of us, is not a Christian. There was a rather intense discussion at Bible study about why that is, and I think it came down to his belief that if he couldn't forgive his own sins, then God probably couldn't either. So he sat on the gold chair from my grandmother and looked at my paintings and told stories and asked questions. And when he left he said thanks, and walked out the back door. Behind him, my friend Stephanie, who hasn't been to my house in months said, "Is this a new door?" And I only heard the full story this morning, catching up with Kelly and putting the pieces together.

Some other ideas I have been thinking of writing about involve worship, and the various expressions that I have encountered over the last few weeks. This is a big topic, and I think it will be ongoing, so stay tuned. But the other night I met with few others on the worship team ( I didn't want to go, of course. I was too busy, etc...) and we were able to discuss some of our ideas and visions, and then we prayed together, and I haven't had a prayer time like that for years. So what is God up to? I am not sure, but he is working on something and I find that I am full of delight and desire for who He is in the meantime, and worship itself takes on a whole new (not really new) meaning.

Easter Hats

2007-04-09T11:35:00.000-04:00

We had some camera problems, yes, but I think the blur adds to the gauzy, feminine atmosphere. The Easter hat is coming back...

the little things

2007-04-03T09:08:00.000-04:00

Isn't it difficult to manage all of the little things we have to do? Take this morning. My car needed a new clutch and I took it to the shop over the weekend. I called them to see if it is finished yet, which it is not. Today I need to stay late at work, so I thought it would work out perfectly to take this morning to pick up my car and make up my hours after work. But now, I still have to stay late at work, and will have to get my car another time, so I am sitting in my living room in the middle of the rug with my computer on my lap blogging, because I am overdue on this too. The house is messy and I need to pack lunch and pay my car insurance and all these other little irritating things that you just have to do sometime to get through this day to day life.
It has been beautiful outside though. Yesterday felt like heaven and Rob said it made him want to go to Disney World and stand in a long line. I went on a walk over the weekend. A slow long turn around Shank Park, and observed a proud father-to-be bluebird perched over his new house. He was so still and so focused on keeping an eye out, and faithfully guarding his post. I envy his singularity of purpose and the ability to put his body and mind in one place.
There is so much to do at work. I should just go in and not think about taking comp time. There are orders to send, letters to write, hotels to book, questions to anwer, books to edit, calls to make, and it just goes on and on.
And then I start thinking about big things. I think about God and what choices are right or wrong. I think about my friends and all that is going on in their lives and wonder what God is doing. I think about the fact that I am getting more critical and I have lower opinion of the human race than I used to. We are so messed up and make stupid decisions all the time.
But in the meantime there are good little things too, and I have to be careful not to miss them. My tulips are up and are promising to bloom if the rabbits don't eat them. My cousing Christy sent me a picture of her new little daughter dressed in a cow outfit that I sent as a gift and it made me laugh and laugh, and there is nothing like being tickeled by five children at a time with palm branches, and then watching them totally forget to sing...
And in the meantime, it is Holy Week. That is certainly a big thing to fit in among the little ones. The biggest, and the most easy to miss.
Maybe it is good that my car is not done and that I am not running all over central PA to pick it up and then get to work. Maybe it is good to be sitting on the floor in the middle of the rug and be thinking about little things and how, in the end, they come together to form the big ones.

But I should really go pack my lunch.

losing things

2007-03-26T16:29:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-12T20:33:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-07T20:07:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-03-04T18:12:00.000-05:00

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.

Lent

2007-02-22T21:03:00.000-05:00

So it is the season of Lent now. My experience with Lent is limited to only the last three years or so. Before that I am not sure that I knew it existed. I do remember one friend from college who was catholic, and gave up eating meat. In the last couple of years, my church has adopted Lent as a season of preparation, of repentance, of mourning for Jesus's death, and as a time that we take part in his death ourselves, in order to more fully take part in his life. This makes sense to me, in the upsidedown Christian way. The problem I am having suddenly, and it isn't really exactly a problem, is that I am happy.

Several years ago, the first year I began exploring the idea of Lent, I gave up eating desserts. I did this, not for a diet or anything, but because I knew that it would be the hardest thing to do that I could possibly think of. And it was really hard. I remember going on a walk, the last week of Lent and thinking that there was no way I was going to make it for only four more days. But I did and I never looked forward to Easter, or truly celebrated when it arrived like I did that year. Though more importantly, I think, as I look back, that year I added prayer too, as a part of Lent. I bought a new prayer book and used it each morning, and then continued to use it for far far longer.

The next two years have not been even remotely as successful. I couldn't decide on what I would give up, and just felt guilty.

So this year, again, I have renewed motivation, but again, I don't know what to give up. I can give up desserts again, and it would be just as hard as the first time. But it feels a little more rote, and less meaningful, and like my heart is not quite in it. Not eating something just for the purpose of proving something, or allaying my guilt does not sound like the gospel.

So the question is, what does God want to do with me in this season of Lent, and in my life long after that? And I realized that I haven't really asked him. So I think that prayer is the thing that I need most again. I need to keep asking God to lead, and listen to his voice, and to obey him. One thing that might help me do this the new link (yay, I added one!) on the right. It puts together daily prayer and scripture from the Book of Common Prayer. I told my Episcopal friends about this, and they told me that I am cheating, because learning to actually use the Book of Common Prayer is part of the experience. But sadly, I am more internet savvy, than prayer-book savvy, so this will do for me. And maybe I will just need to set aside more time and not hit my snooze button four times before crawling out of bed. I have been thinking about actually fasting also. Maybe for a day once a week during Lent, or maybe just on Good Friday. I will be praying about adding this too. I guess the point, in the end, is obedience.

But chocolate? Yeah, I think I will eat and enjoy it this year. I feel so tremendously blessed in this season in my life. Actually, I think it is truly joy from Jesus, because I cannot explain it any other way. So when I say I am happy, I mean more than that. And I certainly don't want to be pushing Jesus out of the way so that I can have my fun, but thank him for all he has given, and not feel guilty if the party starts a little early this year.

New, must read, can't live without 'em blogs

2007-02-17T10:27:00.000-05:00

I am linking to two brand new blogs at right. I love blogs. I think that I don't read books anymore because I read blogs. I am attempting to remedy that at the moment with Edith Wharton, but I just started it last night, so no promises. In the meantime, here is some great online reading.

The Yarn Harlot

This is new one. Just started reading it last night too, so it only goes to show my immediate enthusiasm to add it as a link within twenty four hours (poor Edith Wharton).
This woman, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a best selling author of books about knitting. Books about knitting you say, with eyebrows slightly raised? If you go to this blog right now and read Represent you will promptly be educated in the vast underground world of knitting. This woman gained over 500 comments from knitters all over the world, on this one post, in less than 24 hours!!! Wow, I am so proud to call myself one of them (a knitter, that is, not a commenter...yet). But she is an excellent writer, went to art school, and still hasn't decided in which direction to focus her creative energy. Sounds so very familiar. Make sure you read An Artist Needs Limits.

Jeneric Jeneralities

Jen Ig, as she is often referred to, is the spunkiest and funniest blogger I know, and she is a homeschooling mother of six children. You can read all kinds of adventures involving kids, animals, barn dances, cupcakes, organic produce, school, and God. And I so want to write like her, as if I can hear her voice from right across the messy book littered living room. There is a very large, underground movement of homeschool bloggers, as well as knitting ones, and this is one of the best. She is actually rather famous in her niche, too, as the senior editor of the homeschooling glossy, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. I end up wandering over to her blog at work now and then, as I click through various homeschooling web sites. A very refreshing read. You'll end up knowing the whole family.

Does anyone know of other great blogs? Which ones do you read? I'd love to hear about them and get sucked in, and have to read them everyday and add more to my list of favorites.

BUT, I still can't decide what links to list... I never read Google News, so that needs to go...

That will be my next project.

Sunset from Wood Road window

2007-02-17T10:08:00.000-05:00

Valentines for one more hour...

2007-02-14T23:00:00.000-05:00

Yes this is late, but it is still good for one more hour... My friend Hannah wrote in response to my February post the very witty quote below,

Yeah, the only things that ever seem to make February bearable are
being fantastically busy or falling in love, and neither is
completely under human control...

I would much prefer falling in love to being fantastically busy, but she continues with this next piece of very "humanly controllable" advice for February...

Kim and Josh had me over for dinner last night, and Kim found this
fantastic cookie mix that comes in a bag. I think it's Duncan Hines
sugar cookies, if I recall rightly (turns out it's really Betty Crocker!).
They taste homemade, at least to me. I'm not an expert on sugar
cookies, but they certainly improve February.

Who is not an expert on sugar cookies? I think that since love is not a controllable option, and extreme busyness is not nearly as desirable, sugar cookies must be the answer. I wanted to make them all day today, but while being bogged down with folding laundry and scraping and scraping ice off my car, I never got to it. So tomorrow, if I can get out of my driveway and make it to work, I am going to stop at the grocery store and purchase this highly recommended sugar cookie mix. I am going to come home and bake them, and I am going to make pink icing to go on top and I have every expectation that the depths of February will be vanquished. It's just too bad that next week is the beginning of Lent...

the deep dark depths of february

2007-02-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

Good grief, I haven't written since February began. I am blaming February. The lack of sunlight and exercise. The terrible cold. It is often the low point of the year for me. I am truly rather thankful for Valentines day because it at least brings talk of roses and flowers and I like seeing the cheery red and pink.
Today I took a day off of work for a sick day. Some stomach problems from the medication for other mildly embarrasing ailments, I think. So that is all I will say about that, but I slept all afternoon yesterday, twelve hours last night, and I finally feel better and am bored stiff, which I think is a very good sign. Going to work sounds great.
Hopefully my inspiration will return with my energy and the growing daylight, and I will have another good post up soon.
Until then...

The Church, Today

2007-01-29T21:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was one of my weepy Sunday's. I walked into church sleepy and kind of down from my late social Saturday night. I hadn't been able to decide what to wear or get my new haircut to cooperate, and I didn't really want to be there. But upon walking late into my Sunday school class, my friend Amy (and I love her forever for this) exclaimed, "Joanna!", and I melted, and smiled and sat down. Then I ate donut holes that Emily and Adam brought, and went and made some tea in the gym, and talked to Karah about her weekend visiting her family, and how great it is to watch a movie with people who laugh out loud, because then everyone laughs. I was already glad I went and wanted to hug them all.

The service yesterday was unusual for several reasons. The first being that Pastor Hall was away. It was the last Sunday that he would be away until he leaves the position in March. This transition time became the theme of the service, using Philippians as something of a template. The second reason that the service was unusual was that there was no long sermon. Pastor Gene, the assistant pastor, led several meditations, using different passages in Philippians. Between each passage we sang a song, or had prayer. Heart of the Lamb is the youth choir, and they led the singing, and there is nothing like them. There is nothing that compares to the freshness and sincerity of the youth of the church leading worship.

And they sang hymns like "I Will Sing of My Redeemer", and then we sang "I Will Enter His Gates", and Karah and I scoured the congregation for our choir kids who just started learning it last week. Then we sang two other hymns that I can't remember (which hymns were they??? The one in the hymnal and the one at the end? Karah? Mom?), and all though the service was the theme of rejoicing. Rejoicing in times of not knowing, and in suffering, and in God's love, and because he made and is making and will keep making us all more like him, and because he is doing it with all of us all there together. And I fought off tears the whole time. This isn't unusual for me. I cry regularly in church, but not ususally the whole time.

So last night I spent some quiet time at my house. I lit a candle and used it as my one light source, and I prayed. Really prayed. And I am not trying to sound proud of myself. I should pray like that a lot more often. But I thought of the verse and used it as a model and a promise,

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phil. 4:4-7

I stayed home from Hershey Free Church last night, where many of my other friends attend to spend this time praying. It sounds ridiculously snobby to stay home and pray rather than go worship with friends. But last night I think it was what I needed. I had out a lot of stuff with God. But it turns out that they looked at the very same passage this week in a series on prayer. How beautiful is that? And maybe I would have gained a lot by going.

But I will be back to both next week. EBIC is my church in all ways that a church can be. The people there know and love me and I them. Hershey Free is very special too, as I have friends closer to my home here to spend late Saturday nights with, and have learned to run Power Point. But both love God so very much, and I am very blessed to be a part of both, as large or as small as each part may be right now. So that is the church for me today...

And yes, faithful readers, I have finally finished my series... I hope to not preach so many sermons in the future, but I am sure that I probably will.

The tub

2007-01-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

As requested...
Yes, it is still big!

Before and After

2007-01-26T20:53:00.000-05:00

Before...

After...

Yes, it is like an Italian villa bathroom in a little old farmhouse...
What do you think?

the open road

2007-01-18T22:32:00.000-05:00

I just got out of the new bathtub. It is still big, which was my main concern, and it feels like staying in a hotel, which is kind of cool. I must have enjoyed my bath a little bit too much though, because I feel overheated and kind of lightheaded now that I am out again. It might be a little bit of melancholy though too, and I thought I would write a poetic post about the dull sort of ache that we all feel sometimes. I had a few great lines in my mind but they kept getting crowded out by song lyrics by poets much better than myself.

My friend Mike made me a fantastic CD of old-time Americana songs, and they do not help a person with melancholy, but they do make you think about who you are, where you come from, and especially where you are going. I have been listening to it almost constantly for a week, and I am about ready to jump in my car and drive south and west until I can't go anymore. Restless, I guess.

I think it is in my blood. The restlessness, and the mountains of Kentucky. My grandmother, Delcie Layne Chafin Ward, what a lovely name, was born in a town called Hode, and the railroad ran right behind the house where she grew up. Her father worked for the railroad, which he preferred to the coal mines. My mom loved to visit her grandparents there every summer, and tells us about pulling water out from the well, and my great grandpa spitting tobacco juice. About purple velvet furniture, always kept covered, and drinking glasses with painted flowers. On one visit as a girl, my Mom ate lunch with a local girl, and my grandma was horrified to learn that lunch was a moonpie and can of Coke. My great grandmother was a midwife, and was known for attending births where the babies lived. Mainly because she knew to be clean. All of these stories have become like legend to me. Even though I saw the house in Hode myself when I was a young teen on a trip with Mom. My great grandparents had passed away and the house was being sold. It was the trip to say goodbye.

But my grandmother, who grew up there hated it. I think of her watching the train cars pass and fade in the distance when I hear lyrics to some of these songs,
"The lonesome sound of the train going by..."
"Come tomorrow, and I'll be satisfied if I can take a fast train and ride..."

When she graduated from high school, she took a bus to Texas and went to college. She studied sociology and married my grandfather and never went back for more than a visit. She hated the music too. My memories of visiting her are in a classy condominium outside of Washington DC. She had a collection of tea cups with gold edges and couch covered with a pattern of pink roses. Her music was classical. She gave me copies of cassette tapes of Mozart and Vivaldi. I so loved her elegance and that she always took what I said seriously, as if it were the most brilliant thing she ever heard.

So now I listen to music from the mountains of Kentucky and think of her. I think of my mom too. Mom loves everything that my grandma left, and would go back in a second. For me, there is a raw and aching truth to these old American songs that there are no words to explain. I want to lean into the harmonies and become like these women who hit the road with their eyes on heaven. I want to be like the matriarchs of my own heritage, who blazed a trail, and knew what they believed in.

I am not always sure that I trust myself, you know? I can be really selfish and impatient. I do not like to wait to know what the right thing is rather than grabbing for what will feel nice at the moment. I can be wishy-washy and change my mind, and watch my emotions ebb and fall with no warning. I can also be bubbly and charming and sometimes I am afraid that I fool myself as much as others, and we'll all find out the the bubble is really just air inside.

Joanna, my namesake, was one of the women at the crucifixion and one of the women who went to the tomb after Jesus had been buried and had risen. My middle name is Layne, after my grandma. Both women loved others, whether in listening to a child or trudging with dirty feet, early in the morning to care for the body of one who was in heaven. Except that he wasn't. He was still here, and he had already hit the road.

Ode to a Bathtub

2007-01-15T21:05:00.000-05:00

We got a call at 7:30 in the morning today. It was from our landlord, wanting to replace our entire bathroom. Tomorrow!

So of course tomorrow is the same morning that some author from Italy is coming in to work and wants to check us out and see if we are professional and not a little dinky family Christian business. And he is arriving promptly at 8:00. And I have to tidy up my office and put away all the stacks of paper that I am collecting, so I should really get to work by 7:45.

At least we will have bagels and coffee...

But I am so afraid that they are going to replace my lovely giant old bathtub with one of those little bitty plastic ones that is are shallow that you can't even get all of yourself under the water at the same time. It makes me want to cry and take pictures of it to remember it by. And there are these beautful aqua tiles lining the wall, and the wonderful wrap around shower curtain rod, and I am afraid it will end up all beige fiberglass.

Sigh.

Here I go to say my farewell...

Return and Review

2007-01-13T16:18:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long absence. I'm afraid that I have simply been uninspired. Not sure why. I think I have simply been very engaged in real life. I have had some great days at work since the new year, and I have felt like the work I am doing actually matters and makes a difference in the life of the company. And I have been enjoying a lot of time with friends, like the trip to NYC last week, which is a story in itself. But even though real life has been good and meaningful, I am being told that I MUST sign up for facebook. Hmmm.... Maybe.... ;-

But I have been reading this fabulous book, Eve's Revenge, Women and a Spirituality of the Body. I first saw it at Ollie's and was intrigued but didn't buy it, but by luck or grace, it was still there when I went back again a month later and I am plowing through it. It is about living in a body, as simple as that. As the title suggests it is mainly for and about women, but the philosophy that our bodies aren't quite up there with our minds or souls is as old as the sun and has affected men and our culture over the century's just as much.

The other, most momentous thing about this book is that it has been the vehicle for me to post my first review on Amazon. In my job, I have learned that a positive review can make all the difference to a book, and I want to chime in for the ones that I think are really worthwhile. Especially new ones. There are so many books being published that a lot of good ones must but be lost in the fray. So when I find them, I want them to know. So here is my review, as it now appears on Amazon.

I am highly impressed by this book's treatment of the current predicament of women in western culture. But even more, I am surprised at the heart of this book, the revelation of how much our bodies truly effect "who we really are". The topic of bodies is not uncommon for women. We hear and see everywhere the newest exercise craze or most promising facial scrub. But Barger reveals the idea that is so common and so subtle, that who we are inside our body, our soul, spirit, etc. is at odds with the physical body that we live in. We believe that in order to be and express who we really are we must thicken our lashes, pierce our lip, maybe even have surgery to change our gender.
Another facet of this book that has surprised me is the sheer number of ways our body affects who we are as women. It controls our gender and beauty certainly, but also our race, strength, emotions, energy, health, sexuality, and reproduction. All in one body.

I stood in the library several months before picking up this title, and read a page from a little book of meditations about the body, whose title and author I sadly cannot recall. It suggested that we love our body as our most faithful helper and friend, always at work for us. A body as something to care for and love. I think Barger would second this, but she has taken the book even a step farther, and reminds us that in the Christian faith, God decided to become a body too. He didn't manipulate it or struggle to be free of it, but freely chose to live in it as we do, even with it's pain, aging, and awkwardness. The very opposite of what many women, and probably men, would choose for themselves. I hope they find this book and read it.

A New Year

2006-12-30T15:37:00.000-05:00

I really like the way holidays fall in our culture. I like that the end of a year is a great big party from Thanksgiving to the end, but that then we pack up all of the ornaments, and pitch the rest of the fruitcake, and buckle down to work on a new year.
I like having a milestone as a fresh start. I have never been a "new year's resolution" person either, but this year I have thought of about 5 already. Like writing thank-you cards. It is just so civilized and kind. I am going to start writing thank-you cards.

But like I mentioned in my last post, I like to review the past year before plunging into a new one. This, like many years has had ups and downs, and I think I have grown. Instead of just listing events, though, I am going to list the things that I have gained, and the things that are coming with me into this new year. There were plenty of things that were tried and amounted to little, or flat out failed, and I don't want to be dishonest by not sharing them, but it seems better to me, in this crazy blogging-world context, to focus on the bright side, and there is plenty there as well...
Here it goes...

1. A job at CAP! Big one! Last year at this time I was jobless with no idea what was going to happen. This job is one of the most inexplicable provisions from God that I have ever known.

2. Started this blog... Speaks for itself. :-)

3. Had immense success with my very first garden last summer.

4. In July passed the one year "living on my own" mark. I love this little house.

5. Kelly has grown much closer as a wonderful friend. Last year, at this time, I don't think we were even sharing who we might be harboring a crush on. Now there is not very much that remains a secret. At least that I know of... She is an amazing woman and is truly gifted in the skill of friendship. She cultivates and cares for her friendships like I did my snapdragons.

6. In the fall I began leading Primary choir at church. Yes, you have heard it a million times. I love it. There is nothing like getting little smiles and waves, or sometimes big hugs around my hips, randomly walking through the church hallways.

7. In May I went on a weekend trip to NYC with other young adults from the BIC Atlantic conference. It was a fascinating trip... Don't even know where to begin to describe it. The thing that I remember the most and hope I continue to take with me, at least in prayer, was a woman named Stephanie, sitting on some random steps in the Bronx, thin as a rail. Her husband had left her and she was going to be moving somewhere else in the city. She didn't know where. Wherever the welfare system would put her. I'm sure I won't see her again on this earth, but I try to remember to keep praying.

8. I began attending a new Bible study in the fall. It has been good getting to know new people who love Jesus, and who happily enjoy smoking a hookah. It makes me feel very comfortable and assured that I won't hear any lectures.

Those are the big ones. I may be missing some but my brain is kind of mushy because of staying up until 2am last night.
But for the new year ahead... who knows? I am praying for God's leading, and that he will keep me on the path he is planning.

PS.

On a very different note, and I am not sure what to make of it, last night I had a dream about Saddam Hussein. I didn't even know that he was going to be executed today until hearing it on the radio this morning. I have seen his picture on the news more lately, so maybe that is why. But in my dream I was at some kind of military camp, and I sat down to watch a movie, and looked over to discover that he was sitting beside me, lauging and enjoying the movie. He did creep me out so I tried to get up, and he sort of held me down, wanting me to stay and keep watching with him. I shoved him, got up, walked away and didn't look back... and that was it. But it is strange that by the time I dreamed this, he was probably already dead. So strange...

misc...

2006-12-27T15:54:00.000-05:00

Today is one of those slow vacation days that stretches on and on. I am going back to work tomorrow, but until then I will be alternately knitting and reading and eating and sleeping. Eating is specifically mentioned, because I have been reminded again this holiday season how much I love it. I try to be one of those self controlled people who say no to more cookies and chocolate, but I usually, utterly, yet quite happily fail. As a very wise woman once said, I can either be thin or happy.

But enough of that. Today I spent my Christmas money buying the largest quantity of yarn that I have ever carried in one shopping bag. I am going to make an afghan, and it may take until New Years, '08 to finish it, but it will be a lovely celery color and the Egyptian cotton yarn has a soft and elegant sheen.

For the last five years or so at New Years, I have recorded the events of the previous year in my journal, just for my own reflection and record. I think I will post some of it here this year, but I need to get all my thoughts together, and I have a few days until the new year, so stay tuned.

Tomorrow is my big film-making debut. We are re-shooting one of our DVDs at work, and while Rob gets the handheld camera and will be bobbing in and out, doing close-ups, I will be sitting behind the other camera on a tripod, doing a very slow zoom in and out. Maybe a very gentle pan back and forth. Rob had me watch some training videos, so I learned about the rule of thirds, and that you never EVER crop someones chin. Top of head? Yes. Chin? No.

I am also in the middle of reading Peace Like A River by Leif Enger. It has been too long since I have soaked in a novel like this. It is gritty and marvelous and wonderful. The writing makes me want to quit everything, move to Minnesota where the characters are from and be an English major.

But before then, I am going to go upstairs and continue knitting.

I know this has been such a miscellaneous post. No theme. No allusions. No purpose, really. I have been thinking about things. Contemplating life. Like this odd time between Christmas and New Years, where I feel we are just hanging, waiting for our feet to hit the ground running next tuesday. Thinking about how the excess of Christmas ends up making me want to just get rid of things and have open space. Yesterday it made me clean like a madwoman and the bathroom has never looked better. I have been thinking about family, and love and going to NYC. They just haven't all come together yet in to one coherent whole. So here is an appetizer in the meantime. (They may not ever come together in a coherent whole though, which is really ok considering that appetizers are always so much larger than you expect them to be. Who needs dinner anyway? Desert on the otherhand...)

Christmas Eve

2006-12-24T00:32:00.000-05:00

It is officially December 24th now, exactly 12:33. I am at my Moms house, sitting in what was once my bedroom, and is now my stepfathers study, complete with fifty five volumes of Luther's Works. It has been too long since I have posted. Time seems to go so quickly in the Christmas season. We complain about stores putting up Christmas decorations as soon as halloween is over, but we get so busy and time still seems to fly by.

I think I touched on it in my Advent post, but it has been sinking into my brain more and more how crazy Christmas is. And I don't mean the hassle and the long lines. I mean that we believe that God was born here and lived with us, and that angels sang about it, and that it changes everything. I am really not sure that I can get my head around it. Lines like, "veiled in flesh the Godhead see." or "Fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices." or "He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glory of his righteousness." What would that even look like? But though I have trouble getting it all into my head, I can see the incredible reason to celebrate. I'm beginning to feel sorry for non-believers who attempt to celebrate chestnuts and snowmen and magical family-togetherness. It is seems that those things are the myth. The things that we place hope in that don't come through and don't satisfy. And it is the thing that sounds initially most bizarre, a baby born to a virgin, 2000 years ago, who was God, who was "pleased, as man, with men to dwell." that means more than we can imagine, and gives us reason to celebrate, to party, to give a gift, to feast, to hang lights all over the shrubbery.

I discovered this week that you can subscribe to an email version of Garrison Keillor's, The Writers Almanac. There is something indescribably wonderful about Garrison's voice, as any fan knows, so I recommend listening to this poem as well as reading it. And I hope it is ok to post it, since it is used by permission, but I have included the link to purchase the book for anyone who would like to read more. The last line is really the kicker of the poem, and is what I mean when I think about Jesus's birth changing everything.

Poem: "Advent 1955" by John Betjeman, from Collected Poems. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Listen to this episode of Writer's Almanac (Highly recommended)

Advent 1955

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver-pale.
The world seems traveling into space,
And traveling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound —
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out 'Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.'
And how, in fact, do we prepare
For the great day that waits us there —
The twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards. And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know —
They'd sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much.
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.
We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well.
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defense is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax.
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
"The time draws near the birth of Christ',
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago.
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

long awaited newsletter

2006-12-11T18:08:00.000-05:00

Today we sent it... BY ACCIDENT! Who knew that "Finished" in bulk email sending lingo really means "Send". It was not supposed to go out until tomorrow. Not for any very good reason other than that Monday's are busy after the weekend, and by tuesday, homeschooling moms or teachers are already settled into their weekly routine.

This e-newsletter has been weeks in the making and is the first one we have ever done. Writing this, designing that, editing ten times, overcoming technological hurdles, and just today doing our first recording. Yes, today we finally "laid down the vocals". All of that and by pushing one button it could have gone down the e-toilet. It didn't. That must be grace at work because by the time I pushed (yes it was me) the "finished" button, the final drafts, all of the links, the edited recording, had gone live. And before leaving work, after it was out for about an hour, we'd already heard (nice things) from three happy customers. And no, three out of 1,400, is not that many, but I have high hopes for my inbox tomorrow.

Soooooo, the moral of the story is,

Do not push the "Finished" button until you are really finished.

And, everything just might turn out ok.

And for your visual, intellectual and auditory pleasure,

Here it is,

Classica from CAP

advent

2006-12-08T22:15:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow morning I will running around my church with about twenty five bouncy choir children. We have rehearsal for our Christmas performance, and they have actually learned the verses to How Great Our Joy, and will be performing it a week from Sunday evening. If anyone wants to come see the spectacle, come! What could be better than kids dressed as shepherds and angels?

It is Advent now. Christmas time. Tonight I saw the Nativity Story, and it brought home the stark difference between what we celebrate, and how we celebrate it. The rocky desert of Isreal looks vastly different than any other Christmas image that I can think of. Snowmen. Christmas trees. Egg nog. None of that. And somehow we celebrate because of a mother giving birth to God as a child, in the most dirty, dark corner of a tiny ramshackle town, two thousand years ago. I sat watching the movie thinking that either we are all crazy or that this was the most profound, unpredictable, complete and powerful plan that a God could have made.

At work I have been feverishly and excitedly creating our first e-newsletter. Does not sound exciting, I know, but it has become my baby. It is possibly the one thing that I am most proud of producing since I began this job, and it is going to have flipping pages and animation and a contest for logic students to enter, and it is also supposed to have a Latin Christmas Carol. I am supposed to be helping to sing said carol and it was supposed to be done already, several times, and today was the day that I was hoping to send out the newsletter. But instead I am waiting, and I have become very familiar with the Latin words to O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

Veni, Veni Emmanuel
captivum salve Isreal,
qui gemit in exsilio.
privatus Dei Filio.
Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
nascetur pro te Israel.

The Nativity Story opened with these words and this song. Deep voices, fortelling the future of a Savior coming. And heaven knows, after seeing this movie, Israel needed a savior. I also find it interesting that these words, in Latin, are in the language of their greatest oppressors.

Now though, the carol, O Come O Come Emmanuel is one of the most important anchor points of Advent for me. I always knew we sang it during Advent at church, and knew it is about Emmanuel coming, but it is based on very specific prayers, called Antiphons, each focusing on a different attribute of the Messiah. Each verse gives Emmanuel a new name...

Key of David, Dayspring or Morning Star, Rod of Jesse, Wisdom from on high.

And I don't know all of the details, but each of these verses are prayed separately through Advent. Each name considered and desired.

I love that Advent is about waiting. I don't like waiting, but I love the reminder that I am not alone. We are all waiting for something. Our culture looks down it's nose at waiting. It says to get what you want right now. But the striving doesn't seem to work, or never for very long.

Last sunday, in the sermon, our pastor gave the best example of waiting on God that I have ever heard. It was a quote from Henri Nowen, and I will only paraphrase it here as I remember it. He used the example of a trapeze team. The person on the team who lets go of their bar and flys up in an arc high in the air, must simply hold very still. They must not ever try to catch the catcher. It is the catcher's job to find their arms and grasp them, and the one in the air must simply trust that their catcher will be there.

I'm not sure why this resonates so well. Perhaps because I can feel it in my muscles and bones and can imagine the suspended stillness. Suspended stillness. That is where God calls us to be during Advent. That is where he meets us. In dry, barren, places. That is where he comes to live.

There will however, be no stillness tomorrow morning, and there will be no floating little cherubs, so no suspension either. But I must admit, I can hardly wait. And I really can't wait to send the newsletter!

one restless, anxious, grumpy, extremely cold, very bad day

2006-12-03T00:15:00.000-05:00

The subject gives it away, but that is how the day was. I changed my mind about what to do in it about thirthy-seven times, mostly wanted to lay on the couch. But I didn't want to feel like I was wasting my weekend by being a bum laying on the couch. And the most interesting thing, and the real reason I am posting this, is that it was not only me. A good chunk of my family had the same sort of day. My brother is sick anyway, so maybe he doesn't count, but he sure sounded miserable sniffling and hacking all over the place. Mom was on the grumpy side, for no good reason, and freely admitted it herself. Poor Bekah has been furiously knitting a scarf for the last several days, and it will do nothing but curl into a skinny cylinder. She tried ironing it, stretching it, scolding it, all to no avail, so she will now be unraveling it. She stopped by her boyfriend John's house this morning after her choir practice, and woke him up, and you can guess it, he was grumpy. Bekah got annoyed, stayed for literally one minute, and then went home to spend the rest of the day bored and restless and didn't know what to do with herself either. I am pretty sure that even Maggie, one of the Daschunds, was more anxious and high-strung than usual, and she went potty on my jeans when I gave her her usual hello sqeeze.

So we are baffled.

Did anyone else have such a rotten day? And it is Saturday too!

Perhaps it is because of this extreme, super-duper temperature switch from seventy-two degrees yesteday, to thirty one today. Kurts (stepdads) theory is that we are approaching approaching the last full moon autumn (Dec. 5). "Sounds like you are being affected by the stronger than usual effects of this years autumnal bigmoonox."

So please tell me if you had a bad day too. We will pretend that this is a scientific study and compile statistics and debate bad-day hypotheses, and see if there is some external factor at work...

Or else it's just in my genes. And what's on my jeans doesn't help either.

family thanksgiving

2006-11-25T17:25:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-19T22:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-12T20:48:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-09T17:31:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-06T22:46:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-06T17:30:00.000-05:00

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.

socializing

2006-10-31T22:44:00.000-05:00

Today was an odd day. One of those days that I had to stay in a perpetually socially "on" state, (except for the pilates break after work), and I got sort of moody, and tried to hide it and still be "on", but I never succeed, the moodiness still comes through. So good grief, I am glad the day is over and it is time to go to bed. We did FINALLY get the internet at work, but are STILL waiting for furniture. Our stress level is definitely running higher than usual. It's like we have been hanging in mid-air for the last three weeks waiting to settle in and get back to normal. Then I had dinner with some friends from church... It was good to see Amy, a friend who was a part of our church and young adult class for several years before moving back to her home in western PA. This woman is amazing. She is running and managing her father's dairy farm by herself since he passed away last summer.
And then I went to a new Bible study at a little tea shop in Hummelstown. I got a decaf Chai from the frenchman who owns the cafe, with a huge mustache, and we sat down to discuss Philemon. I am liking this group. It is exciting to be meeting new people, but it is also stressful. It feels like it takes a long time for me to settle in and be comfortable and act like myself... and to learn about the other people too, and who they are and to see them act like themselves with me. I have finally gotten there at church with my Sunday school class. We just know and like each other. But more about that later!
So tomorrow will be pretty much the same. I am heading to work, will have a meeting with my boss Chris from 4:00-5:00, will rush to my car and fight through traffic to get to church E-town, almost an hour away! There is dinner at church, which is such a blessing and then Primary choir, the highlight of my week, and then I am going to hit the bar. Yeah, really. I am meeting with an old co-worker, Stephanie, who called me out of the blue last night (the other huge highlight of my week :-) and we are getting together to chat at a little pub in e-town, and then there is some sort of trivia game, and other people, ironically from this new Bible study come, so I am excited and nervous and trying to decide whether to order a gin and tonic and how to act like I do this kind of thing all the time.
Thank goodness nothing is going on Thursday night. Unless someone gives me a call.
Because really, lately I am so happy to spend time with people. I'm generally an introvert and I like time to myself to do things like write super long blog posts, and I do get stressed and feel awkward being a social butterfly. But sometimes, and rather often, I'll admit it, Me Myself and I are not good company.
So there is the rundown on life these days. It is good. And thank you all for your friendship. Much love, Joanna

the church: introduction

2006-10-29T17:50:00.000-05:00

The church is a hot topic in blogging and discussion. Both Troy and Susan, my two favorite bloggers, have been writing about the emerging church. I attend a Bretheren in Christ church, which has strong anabaptist roots, but my local congregation has been transitioning slowly to a more liturgical style. My Dad and sister attend evangelical churches, my Dad's small and familiar, my sister's very large and professional. My brother and all of my co-workers are Reformed, and my stepfather, Kurt, is Lutheran. My mom attends church with Kurt, and sometimes they will hop over to a service with me, but she will calmly tell you that she dosen't feel that she fits anywhere, and is just a believer. So the lines smudge and blur quite a lot and I am not simply assigning labels, but as you can see, church comes up...
I have been thinking about this post for the last week, and the subject has just grown and expanded, so I am going to post in "chapters", sharing my history over several periods of time. I have it broken down into three sections, childhood through highschool, then college, and post-college, so stay tuned. This will be an interesting exercise for me as well, simply to think about the path that I have taken... Please feel free to comment along the way.
I hope, though, that what comes through as I write is a clear picture of my love for the church, in all it's frailty, in all it's mundane sunday to sunday repitition. Something huge is going on there, something that blesses when we least expect it. I think it is Jesus's love for his people. And every once in a while, usually a lot more often than we think, it comes through his people too.

The Church by Don Cohen

primary choir

2006-10-18T20:50:00.000-04:00

I am co-leading one of the kid's choirs at church this year and I am having a blast. Hopefully the kids are too, but our song selection is getting a bit repetitive... I am not sure the kid's mind, but I don't know I can sing Deep and Wide many more times... Does anyone have any ideas? I am talking about 25 K-2 graders. They also love Lord I Lift Your Name on High... Something fun and contemperary would be good. Or a simple hymn? We have done O How I Love Jesus and Amazing Grace. Anything that has motions, clapping, yelling... Here are the rest of our favorites...

-Give Me Oil in my Lamp (and we already made up our own verse...)
-I am a C... I am a CH... I am a CHRISTIAN...
-Kwake Jesu (Swahili)
-King of Kings
-I've got the Joy (rockin' version)
-Go Tell it on the Mountail (getting ready for Christmas already)
-Little by Little (I remember liking this one as a kid, and have forgotten a whole chunk of the song, but they like it...)

So, any ideas, leave a comment...and if you get a chance, come see us sometime! We are quite a show.

Rain on the windows

2006-10-17T19:17:00.000-04:00

It has been a rainy soggy day. Rob commented that the big windows might be a problem in this kind of weather. It felt cold and the clouds heavy. I said that I like it this way. We just moved to a new office and the place is a mess. Our furniture won't be delivered until Friday, so boxes are strewn on the floor. The contents of our files are stacked into huge piles. Our pens, paper clips, stapler, scotch tape and thumbtacks are in a little rubbermaid box on the floor behind my chair. We are also operating without the internet, at least until today when I brought in my laptop and ripped off someone's wireless network.
But the best part of our move, of our new location, are huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking over the Conodiguinit creek, with the trees climbing up from it's banks to our window, and the rusty colored mountains miles away. They are rusty now... They were soft green only last month when we came to see the office for the first time. I got out the windex today and began to clean the windows. There was a strange dusty haze over them, that I didn't even notice until I began spraying and wiping. Wipe and wipe and wipe until the windex is dry and the smudges are gone. I watched the raindrops drip off the branches of the trees as I worked. Dripping like a tear off a childs nose and chin. I almost feel it in my own eyes. I think about the marketing budget that I should be working on and the piles of papers and notes in my office, waiting... But the dirty haze had to go. Almost imperceptable, but entirely unacceptable. There will be no haze on these windows. I need to see the view. I have seen an egret flying down the creek each day, a small downy woodpecker in the closest tree. Rob and I are trying to decide which way the creek flows but haven't yet decided.
On my way home I watched the raindrops hit the windshield. I recently treated my car to a make over, a vacume, a wash and wax, and to finish it off, a friend let me cover the windsheild with Rain Ex. I am mezmorized by the drops gathering and sliding and even after I pull into my driveway I sit and watch for another twenty minutes. Gathering and sliding and sometimes splashing as the big drops hit the resting wipers. I watch and wonder and guess which drop will fill up first and plunge down the glass, leaving an empty trail. Again, I could have gone in and picked up my shoes from the living room and wash last night's dishes. But instead I just sat staring.
And then I went inside and cried. Letting the water gather and slide and drip, warm and wet. There is something about the heaviness rain...about standing in it, about feeling it pour over and into our eyes and mouth. Something that washes us off and makes us clean.

family restaurant

2006-10-07T17:40:00.000-04:00

I joined my Dad today on a trip to Boyertown, taking my Grandma to lunch with her brother and sisters. They have gotten together for lunch every couple months for years now. They are spread around from my Grandma in Lancaster Co., the farthest west, to my Great Uncle Dick and aunt Bertie, in New Jersey. Then there is great Uncle Donald with deep smile lines around his eyes, and his wife, Anna, and the oldest sibling Aunt Rachel. The last time I went with them, her husband, Uncle Bud was still living, slowly pushing his walker in front of him. Rachel has a walker now too, and will be ninety on her next birthday. My Grandma, Harvella, is the second oldest. She recently moved into an apartment in a retirement home. She had a mild stroke a week or so later, and is not seeing out of her left eye.
Boyertown is chosen as a convenient halfway point. It is an interesting town, very different from the Lancaster/ Dauphin County area. It appears to have once been a wealthy town, there is a lot of stained glass and wrought iron, and some side streets are still cobblestone. Grandma is very worried on the way that we will be lost or late. This is par for the course riding with Grandma, and Dad continues to attempt to assure her that he knows where we are going. I lay down in the backseat and drift off to sleep. The restaurant of choice for my Grandma and company, is a family restaurant, serving old fashioned, very Pa Dutch fare. It is paneled in dark wood inside, with large bowed beams along the walls like the inside of a covered bridge, and decorated to the nines in jack-o-lanterns and scarecrows. When we all sit down at the table, Aunt Bertie quietly suggests to Grandma that she might like to sit toward the end of the table on the left side, so that she can see down the length of the table with her good eye. Grandma laughs and says good thinking.
I have learned that there are different tastes in food by generation, and perhaps that there are even different passing styles. When I go out I gravitate toward sandwiches and wraps with lots of lettuce and vinaigrette dressings. Think Panera or Isaacs. This crowd prefers lamb and mint jelly, oyster pie, lettuce and hot bacon dressing, corn fritters, pickled beets, coleslaw and jello salad. I listen as they chat about replacing appliances, new washers and sweepers as early Christmas presents. Uncle Donald is in the market for an exercise bike. I enjoy watching the couples. Aunt Bertie elbows and smiles at Uncle Dick when he makes a joke. Aunt Anna interrupts Uncle Donald's stories to finish his sentence. He still finishes it after her, repeating her words to reinforce them. Anna watches him with her eyes, clearly happy to sit beside him, and join in his conversation. Aunt Bertie asks everyone if they remember a place, a home where you could get fresh apple cider, where they made it in the barn behind the house. Aunt Rachel decides that she is not hungry and doesn't finish her lamb, which they try to hand off to me and Dad. It isn't so bad with the mint jelly, though I consumed as little as I could get away with. But Aunt Rachel finishes her entire piece of peanut butter pie, and who could blame her, peanut butter pie beats lamb anyday.
Dad purchases a half dozen of the house special on the way out. Pumpkin donuts, and we split one in the car, though we are both very full. I fall asleep again in the backseat, considering my own life and the choices that I have made myself, and wondering what I will be like in another sixty years, and who I will be sitting down at family restaurants with, ordering a chicken ceasar salad. But tonight I am hanging out with my Dad, listening to Prairie Home Companion, eating pumpkin donuts and popcorn, and baking cinnamon rolls to take to Sunday School in the morning, and life feels sort of painfully and surprisingly rich. It must be melancholy. It must be October.

The Great Oil Change Mystery

2006-09-21T17:01:00.000-04:00

I got my oil changed on Tuesday... Aren't you proud of your daughter Dad? Just keep reading...
Getting my car's oil changed is always an intimidating experience. Always. I'm pretty sure it is because of being a girl, and I hope other girls know what I am talking about. Whether it is because we just don't have that inbred intuitive understanding of what the heck to do with a car, or because we never wanted to climb under with our Dads and look at a car from the bottom up, like our brothers did, we are just not on equal footing. It is one of the most marked times that I know I have no idea what I am doing and there is nothing I can do about it.
So I pulled into the garage, aiming myself over the hole in the ground, the guy in the garage leading me forward and pointing this way and that so that my wheels are straight. He motions me to turn off the car, and I obey. Then to pop the hood... I reach down beside my seat...no that is the tunk, I reach forward and pull on the fuses...I panic and duck down and look and pull on the fuses again. I am the only car there at the time so about four employees with oily hands watched me until a an arm comes out of nowhere, calmly reaches in and pulls the lever high above the fuses, and pops the trunk.
"Now turn the key two clicks so that we can see the milage?" Once click. "Turn it again" Two clicks. The odometer lights up in amber orange. 70485. My car is getting up there, and they recommend a higher grade of oil. I search my memory for my Dad or my brother speaking of such a necessity and come up with nothing. I ponder for a moment, in the netherland of having no idea what to do, being afraid of being taken advantage of, and wanting to be a good steward of my car. It has been a great car. I will do everything in my power to keep it happy with me. "Ok, I'll take it..."
My air filter is still brand new they say, which increases my trust... I know that was just replaced last time. But then...the radiator flush...
The antifreeze is supposed to be a fresh orange color, pretty much like Tang. They show me a sample of mine. It is washed out and whitish. It is still a little bit orange, a bit peachy, but they recommend changing it soon.
"How much does it cost?"
"$69.00"
"I think I will wait... Well how soon should it be changed?"
"You'll want to get it changed before winter. It'll only take 10 minutes, and it probably has never been done before" It is the end of September. My car is 4 years old. Do I really want to come back and do this again if I can possibly avoid it. I look down at the 15% off coupon in my hand. Good for "Extra Services". Radiator Flush is first on the list.
"Ok, go ahead and do it." My consience is somewhat relieved seeing the brown sludgyness of the old fluid gurgling up out of my car, and the light sparkly cool-aid streaming in. I have done a good thing for my car. I have given it a refreshing beverage. I can imagine how it feels, cool and sweet going down the thoat. Yum.
I sign the dotted line for my credit card and pull out of the garage. I think there is a little more power in the engine as I pull out onto the road. I shift into second and third gears seamlessly and feel the smoothness of the road beneath the tires. "Very nice, money well spent" I think to myself and I turn the car for home. My car is happy? I think so, at least as far as I know.

Maybe someday...

Anybody want an organ?

2006-09-18T21:34:00.000-04:00

Time has been chugging along here lately... It has been so long since I posted. Some new things are going on, like I am helping to lead the K-2nd grade choir at church. Work has slowed down quite a bit in the last week or two. School has started and most everyone who will be learning Latin this year have already purchased their books. I really like working in publishing. It sounds sort of glamorous, though that usually dissapates a bit when I say that it is a Latin curriculum... confusion begins to set in a little bit. But nothing compared to when I worked at Hersheypark. Then you could see the confusion and the slight disdain fall over a listener's face. Now in this job, people don't have many pre-conceived notions of what it is like to work for a publisher of a nitch curriculum. Still the nitch exists, and I think classical education is one of the most interesting and potentailly influential movements going on in education right now. Amazing people are involved, and are bringing all kinds of talent with them. Interestingly, the main bulk of the revival of classical education is being spearheaded by Christians. A lot of Christins are begining to care and insist that we know and understand our culture, and the culture that we have come from as a Western civilization. I can see how Christians, as edcators, are acting as salt in this culture, as the preservative, in a time where much education is as thin and nourishing as Cool-aid. It is a very exciting movement to be working in. And non-Christians are taking note as well. Today we had a not-necessarily-Christian-but-very-ritzy prep school call and ask for evaluation copies of our texts...they are going to start teaching Latin to their elementary students... But anyway the job is good. Gets better everyday.
I am also trying to decide if I would like my Grandmothers organ. It is big and heavy and I don't know how to play it. I have been wanting to play a mandolin for years and that would be so much lighter and easier to carry around... but it is my Gramma's, and no one else wants it, so it is currently sitting in Goodwill. At least it was as of last friday. If it is not there anymore then this paragraph is irrelevant, but I am trying to weigh the value against the inconvenience. Stuff can be very inconvenient. I am close to the stage of going through a lot of my stuff again and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of. I still have three copies of Mere Christianity, left from a Bible study in college, and I hoped to pass them along to others who might want it... and I think I gave away one, but do I still need three copies of Mere Christianity?
Well I am starting to fall asleep, so that is my update for now... Time to go to bed... Maybe someone who really wants an organ, and plays it, and can't afford one will find it and buy it before I can get over there... Then I will be able to sleep in peace. Anybody want an organ?

monday and money

2006-08-28T17:17:00.000-04:00

Money is one of those things that rears it's ugly head in life and just comes up a lot. There are all different opinions on how to manage it, spend it, save it, enjoy it, avoid it, attempt to ignore it. I am currently using a cash envelope budget for a lot of my expenses. I take out a predetermined amount of money from my checking account every month after getting paid, and carefully divide it up into different envelopes, labeled with food, clothing, gifts, discretionary. This system has been helpful in keeping me from spending more money than I want to each month. The problem with the system is that it dosen't stop me from spending some of the cash in one envelope for things that should come out of another envelope, hence the problem this month. This month was the Art show in Mt Gretna. It was also the birthday of both Mom and Kelly. It was also the Elizabethtown fair where I bought milkshakes and a pumpkin funnel cake and paid my church for parking in the dusty back field. I also went out to eat about ten times. None of those things should come out of my food budget. Eating out comes from discretionary, but discretionary died quickly this month, hence Food literally paid the price. So I am getting creative for food this week. One more week until payday. I am digging out the food in the corners of the cupboards and cooking and combining so that I have leftovers to take to work for lunch. Tonight, a can of baked beans and tater tots and some little frozen veggie corndogs purchased sometime in January probably. So glamorous I know.
But I am intrigued by the challenge. Thankfully, I also have brownie mixes :-)

Robert Patierno

2006-08-24T16:03:00.000-04:00

Here is my assignment. I am not even sure the title of this print, but I know who it is by. This is a woodcut print from one of my professors in college, Robert Patierno, or much more commonly known as Bob. I just saw him this week, exhibiting at the Mt. Gretna art show. He left his position at my school the year after I graduated, so we both left at the same time, and we both agreed that it feels like a lifetime ago. Four years in reality. Bob was the kind of professor that was more than a teacher, he was a mentor and a model. He taught us how to paint, how to make woodcuts and etchings, how to draw, how to live artists, how to think and judge and work like one. He was not easily impressed, especially not by fancy artist statements or complicated explanations of some sort of emotion that we were trying to express. So when he praised work that we did it meant a lot. It meant it was good work. We had dug in our elbows and made a beautiful, real image.
Bob Patierno has one of the most melancholic personas I have ever known. Not many comments were made without a sad sort of cynicism, but he said amazing things that have stayed with me. He once said artists are just like little kids. We make something we are proud of and we want to go hang it on the refrigerator and have some one say, "Good job, honey, that is so pretty." And there were his Christmas cards. He would carve a woodcut self portrait, facing dead-head on, unshaven and staring with dark bags under his eyes. What did the card say? JOY
He was intimidating at first, but underneath the words he said, he betrayed a gentleness, and we knew that he cared about us. And he loves making art. It is in his blood. Maybe it is the kerosene and oils and pigments that sank into his blood over years and years of work, but I don't think he could stop if he tried.
It is not hard to see how my work is a direct descendent of his either. Check out this one. I only wish I would have painted it first.

Blogging Assignment

2006-08-23T18:32:00.000-04:00

So I was given a blogging assignment last night. Troy emailed asking me about easles and he ended the email with this freindly jab in the ribs...

"Finally, you should blog more. I mean, I know you can't force this kinda
stuff, but let me kinda put in a request (and please feel totally free to
disregard or delete this entire email). Pick one of your favorite paintings
by another artist, find a good pic on google, post it and describe what it
is that makes it one of your favorites (or something along those lines)."

I am flattered that I have a faithful readership, and I am aware that I have been dissappointing lately. The things about blogging is that it makes me be very honest. Or at least I want to be very honest. I don't see any point otherwise. The problem comes when there are things that I am not quite sure I am ready to post online for the whole world to see (not that the whole world is reading this), not quite sure I want to share, so then instead of making up something to be small talk blogging, I just don't blog at all.

So as Troy has pointed out, that is no excuse. There are plenty of ways that I can blog, things that I can share. Things about myself, not just what is going on, that are real, and that I would like very much for the whole world to know.

So stay tuned...

Saturday Afternoon

2006-08-12T14:51:00.000-04:00

Today is a blissfully typical Saturday. The weather here is cool, with the first hints of fall. There are butterflies all over my garden and the thistles down near the barn. I counted 15 small brown butterflies on one thistle plant, each sitting on it's own purple pincussion.
The big news around here is that Kelly is staying. I am so glad and thankful. I went to look at the small apartment that I mentioned in the last post, and it was ok. It was better than I had expected. It was small, and a little bit dark, but it had a cool bathtub and some shelves built into the walls, so it would have been ok. But I drove back to this house and as I pulled into the driveway, I decided that I was not leaving. I love this house. I love the deep windowsills and the white walls. I love the doorknobs that fall off and the hardwood floors, and I decided that I would do whatever it would take to stay. I studied my budget. I cut corners and eliminated my savings. I pondered who else I could invite to live here with me. But it was all blissfully un-needed. Kelly is going to stay.
So today we cleaned and scrubbed and swept. We threw the old food out of the refrigerator and laundered the curtains. I took the rug from my bedroom outside and shook and shook it watching the dust fly past the butterflies.
And now I am resting, and enjoying the feel of the breeze through the wide open window.

Nothing Fancy

2006-08-03T18:55:00.000-04:00

Today I am writing from my Mom's house. I am here after work to take out the dogs, Maggie and Mollie. Two long haired minature dachsunds, with a lot of energy and fuzzy burrs behind their ears. They are the most perfect mixture of beautiful, elegant canine femininity and downright dirty scoundrels. So after letting them jump all over me, and taking them out, and giving them supper, I laid down with a book and ended up taking a nap. Maggie did not forget that I was here though, and that she would rather be outside, so she cried out those pathetic intermitant barks from down the hallway, until I drug myself up and put them back out again. It is incredibly hot here right now. Humid and heavy, and I have used the air conditioner in my car as if the world will end without it.
So today I made a call from work about a new apartment. Kelly is going to be moving to South Carolina. It has been something that has been hanging over as a possibility for quite a while, but it is rather sudden that it is really happening. It has been a year and nineteen days since we moved to our farmhouse on Wood Road, and it has been such an identity shaping time. We have shared our milk, our electric bill, our friends and our faiths.
So now I must think about what is next too. Kelly will be starting fresh and brand-new, with all kinds of possibilties ready to roll and lounge at her feet. I envy this a little bit, but also find such a warm feeling in being in the place that I know. So this new apartment is in the same town. Perfectly situated between work and church and family, and with good friends close by. All I know about it is that it has one bedroom and that I can afford it, and with any luck, will involve no mowing of any lawn, no matter how large or small. There is something very intriguing to me as well about having a place of my own. It sounds so romantic and idyllic, much more than it really is I expect. I am sure that many times it is just lonely. But it would be my own, and a place where I could nourish myself, I hope. Both peaceful and strength building and me. Sort of like Maggie and Mollie, elegant and lovely without any effort, but certainly nothing fancy.
Speaking of the rescals themselves, I need to go make sure they are not running themselves to exaustion in this incredble, heavy heat.

divorce and redemption

2006-07-24T22:19:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow one of my good friend's parents are getting a divorce. He came over tonight and Kelly and him and I ate ice cream and sat in the midst of our half folded laundry and talked about it. I can't believe that it has been seven years since my parents divorced, and talking to him I felt like some kind of old, wizened pro at the issue. He, at least is talking about it to friends and has a strong community. I didn't talk about it for about a year, and the people at my college were shocked, and hurt, I think, that I held it in so long. But now that time is long gone, and life has become normal as it is. There are still awkward issues and sad things, but good things are growing now too. I hope I can be an encouragement, to tell him that it will be ok. Not perfect, by any means, but God will grant his grace and redeem what we cannot believe possible, and he will make it ok. That is his business. That is his gift. He is mighty to save.

MCN

2006-07-23T14:44:00.000-04:00

Finally, here is the finished post. It took forever to upload all these pictures! Enjoy.

MCN is becoming a legendary event amongst a small group of my friends. I don't even know how it started, but last monday night was the third occasion, each becoming more elaborate than the one before.

What is MCN?

Men's Cooking Night

Here are John and Nate, the cooks hard at work.

The ladies all dressed up for this evening too, and even though it was about the hottest day of the summer so far, I must say I think we looked lovely.

Here is a picure of our dinner. The main course was lasagna. Six cheese lasagna with marinara sauce and green beans with almonds. Wow.

And here is the type of service you can expect to receive at an MCN event. Kelly and I have commented that there may not be many young women who have been given such a gift from the male friends in their life, and there may not be many young men who have given it. We totally adore them for this, and they know it, so a toast to the chefs!

This evening was also a celebration for our friend Rachel, who is moving to California this week. Blessings to you as you go. We will all be praying that God opens up amazing doors and leads all of your steps.
You look beautiful!

But by the end of the night, after our chocolate silk pie is eaten, and compliments are given all around, the pretensions thankfully dissappear and we fall into the normal relaxed chaos. Whew!

Thanks everyone! Until next time...

Hostas

2006-07-17T12:05:00.000-04:00

Small is beautiful

2006-07-17T10:52:00.000-04:00

I am off work today, which means I get to spend some time blogging again. I was working over the weekend at homeschool convention in the DC area, so this is my comp time. The convention went well. It had a warm atmosphere and we met a lot of people and even made some money, but the highlight was my drive home. I drove alone, my two co-workers rode together in the other car. Before leaving they decided to stop at Burger King, but I was ready for some quiet time to myself after all of the noise and bustle, so I left them in the drive-through and hit the road, my Mapquest directions lying on the passenger seat to be followed backwards.
Rt 15 is the main road on the trip, and it is a beautiful road. John and I were recently talking about how fun it would be to do a vacation road trip across the country and see America up close. Rt. 15 is a great place to start. You cross the Mason-Dixon line and several Civil War battlefields. You pass orchards and farm fields with rolled up hay bales. In Virginia you see large plantation houses built of red brick with round windows like Monticello. So part of me was ready to get home, but as I drove I also began to think that I should just take my time. No need to hurry. I thought about looking for an exit and parking along a field and just walking, but I just kept driving along. Until...
Just before reaching Gettysburg, I saw a small hand-painted sign along the higway. Black writing on a white sign. "Local Honey". And another one right beside it, "Sweet Peaches." There had been many little farmer's markets along the way, most of them closed because it was saturday night. But I was intrigued with the honey sign. I bought honey from a little table with a jar to put your money in, in front of a house here in Hershey last summer and it was delicious. But I never seen any since then. I considered stopping, but the sign gave no directions. My marketing brain scoffed a bit. Little did I know...
About half a mile further was another sign, the same writing, the same black paint. "Small is Beautiful" it said. My mind repeated the phrase over and over. Small is Beautiful. Small is beautiful. Another two signs in another half mile. "Small farmers love their work" and "Hand made pottery" Another half mile. "Juicy Plums", and "Come Meet the Potters".

So I did.

I followed the signs off of the exit and into a gravel driveway lined with shelves and shelves of green and blue mugs, bowls, and plates. The little table of honey sat right in from of me. Right behind that table was a backyard and the residents of the house grilling their dinner with friends. A little boy, probably five years old, with a perfect ringlet of hair hanging from his dark pony tail greeted me happily, and told me that they were going to eat supper. I looked around and picked out my jar of honey. The boys father came over welcomed me. He is a black man with a wild mane of white hair springing in all directions from his head, but his eyes are kind and his words open. He says his wife is Japanese and could I tell by looking at his son. I mumble something about that I didn't really notice, and he answers by placing a plum in my hand. "For you" He says. He asks me where I am from. I tell him about the convention and he says he would like to homeschool his children. I tell him about classical education and that our program teaches Latin to elementary students.
"Latin" he says, "That's very interesting... Are you a Christian?"
"Yes, I am"
"Praise the Lord"
I smile. I pay for my honey and a cantalope, and he tells me about an intern he has this summer, who he is training in pottery. She is a pastor's daughter and an art major, but cannot draw, he tells me. She worried too much about what people thought of her, so he told her to stop shaving her legs and to learn about herself. How can you know who you are if you don't even know what you smell like? He said she has opened up like a flower and is drawing like a third year art student and singing out loud by herself with her guitar. I listen and nod, like I am not the clean, white, often inhibited woman that I am. I think he notices this, and when his wife comes out and says that supper is ready, he says goodbye and turns toward the house with no further thought of me. I feel somehow dismissed. I want to say, "But I was an art student, and I was homeschooled, and I had the guts to actually pull off the highway and meet you!" But I get into my car and back out onto the road. As I head back to the highway I take a bite of the plum and juice pours into my mouth and down my arm and onto my pantlegs. My tastebuds reel at the strength of the flavor, and I marvel at each bite. The pit of the plum I toss out the window just as I pull onto the enrance ramp, feeling that it is more fitting that it stay there, near it's home. The stickiness of my hands on the steering wheel reminds me of the stop all the way home.

Here is the link to their website. It appears to be under construction, but even so, next time you drive through Gettysburg, try to stop and look them up. It will be worth it.
The Lion Potter

a good days work

2006-07-10T20:59:00.000-04:00

Tonight is the first night that I brought work home with me. I often bring the worry home, but not the work itself. We are having a big meeting on wednesday to discuss the many different facets of the company and a five year plan and all of our different roles. We rented a conference room at a hotel with wireless internet and a coffee-maker, so this is big. I think it will be a great time, but I am going to be making my first presentation and since at the office, you never know when the phone will ring, I decided to work on it here in the peace and quiet of my own home. I wrote almost four pages of the various marketing efforts that we have tried and what has been succesful and what hasn't. I wrote about how I enjoy doing customer service and how that can be just as important as any fourcolor ad in a magazine. I wrote some recommendations and some new ideas that I would like to try, like a postcard mailing to announce new products or texts becoming available. Marketing is tricky and interesting because the results are not always easy to measure, and some of the stuff that we have tried has appeared to totally fail, but even from that, you pick up a new customer and may not even realize why. The options for marketing are unending. We could advertise in a hundred magazines, mail our catalog to a hundred different lists, and attend a million homeschooling conventions. But it takes so much money too, so we are learning. We are trying things and failing sometimes and succeeding sometimes, and are learning why. So think of me on wednesday as I present this crazy, unwieldy marketing effort, amd then as I attempt to carry it out.

sunday afternoon

2006-07-09T13:52:00.000-04:00

I think this is one of the first spare moments that I have had since posting last saturday. I have been trying to cut down on busyness too! But it has been a great week with a lot of good times with friends and family, and I wouldn't trade any of it. So now I am sitting with my laptop on my bed, my legs crossed in front of me, often staring out the window over my computer screen. And I feel grumpy. Now that I have nowhere to be or people to talk to for the first time in a week, I am grumpy. Maybe I am not as much of an introvert as I think I am. There is something about sunday afternoons that makes me very tired though too. Maybe it is church. There is nothing else that I do on Sunday mornings. Perhaps God made sunday a day of rest because church makes us so tired. Or perhaps it is that we come to a time of quietness, and it surprises us, and it takes some effort to stop the inertia of the business of our lives, the stimulation of constant movement, and remember what to do with ourselves. And in that grinding halt, we end up grumpy.
It is hard to not work though too, or to not feel guilty if I don't. There are plently of other things I could be doing. Like washing the dishes or cleaning up my room. But I am not. I am laying on my bed and just thinking.
The sermon and the theme of church today was grace. All of the songs were about grace. Grace Flows Down, Marvellous Grace, Grace Alone. God is reminding me of his grace again. For the last couple of months, in a great effort to honor and become more like Jesus, I forgot it. I saw so much of his holiness and goodness, and wanted to be right with him, and be sure that I was following him first. I examined many different parts of my life to try to comb out all that might be distracting me from being who God would want me to be. But slowly and gently, he has brought it all back, and given me such good gifts in them. Grace is certainly his answer and reward now, just as it has always been. There is no other. And it has been with me in church, in my friends and family who keep caring about me more than I understand why, and in a grumpy sunday afternoon alone with my computer. He has given me, in his grace, time to rest in Him alone.

my garden

2006-07-06T18:06:00.000-04:00

I am like a proud parent, especially of the snapdragons and salvia which I started from seed. And I love my camera.

mowing the lawn...

2006-07-01T11:02:00.000-04:00

Last night after getting home from work I decided that I had to mow the lawn. It was bad, the weeds were growing up past my knees. It had rained for almost a solid week, which is bad for mowing in two ways,
1. the grass grows faster because of the water
2. it is impossible to mow because it is wet
So I change out of my work clothes, put on shorts, a white tank top, and my sturdy hiking sandals, and set out to mow. I start where I always do, plowing along in a straight line next to the road, but keeping a careful watch out for the large sticks and stones that run off the road into our yard during hard rain. The mower stalls a bit in the thick weeds, and I pulled it back to the cement path to restart it. This time I cut through the center of the yard where the grass is dryer and thinner and the mower cranks along beautifully. I come back through the yard and head back up to the road again, and proceed along nearing the busy corner, the luxury cars of Hershey flying by. I go over another thick and high patch of weeds, and hear a dreaded loud thump, and the mower stops. Dead stops. I have killed my mower I say inside my head, and pull it back away from the road. There is something protruding from beneath it and I turn it over on it's side like a horse lying down in pain. There is something twisted around the blade, and it is brown and long and strange. I nudge it with my foot, and dislodge it. I nudge it again as it lies on the grass and then stoop to pick it up and only when I smell it do I realize what it is. It is a dead thing, a carcass of something entirely unidentifiable. I hold it away from me by the tips of my fingers and walk down the hill grumbling and indignant and throw it in the bushes thinking that I must find a man who will do this for me. I must, it is no longer an option. This is unacceptable. But I come in to the kitchen and wash my hands and glance out the window. The lawn is unmowed, the mower is still lying on it's side out in the grass, and I know what I must do.
I walk out again into the sunlight, picturing my shoulders being bronzed by the sun and thighs flexed as I push though the weeds. I am like Joan of Arc going into battle or the goddess Hera glorious in her rage, or the Proverbs matriarch whose arms are strong for her tasks. I tilt the mower up and again walk back to the path. I hold the pull cord in my hand and pull with all my might. There is a small puff of blue smoke and the handle begins to vibrate and the blade begins to turn. We set out once again, now a team working in perfectly in unison. We know all of the nuances of this lawn, we know where the thick juicy grass is, where we must go slowly. We know where the dips are and where there is an old, broken headlight laying by the road, from some long past accident on the corner. We know where the mint grows, because ground under the blade it smells like all of the sweetness of summer. On and on we go, back and forth, the tips of my toes turning green, and sweat collecting on my back. The lawn if finished again for this week. Kelly finished this morning what I left, and I turned to washing the dishes. And that is another story, but I used to think a wild unmowed lawn, soft and feathery, was lovely, but now, just like seeing a pile of newly washed dishes stacked high in a drying rack, the sun shining and rippling through clear, wet glass, I am amazed at how strikingly beautiful straight rows of short cropped lawn can be.

Italian night

2006-06-29T19:35:00.000-04:00

Tonight Kelly and I made a big spaghetti dinner and ate the most powerful garlic bread that I have ever had! Wow. She has gone off to rent Under the Tuscan Sun for us to watch, so it will be an official Italian night. We even have the last of a bottle of red wine left to share.
I have been feeling less sociable lately than I had been. Even more of an introvert, which is a little bit scary. Maybe it is from staring at a computer screen for most of the day and then coming home and doing this! I think it is also because I am still getting used to a lot of changes in my life in the last year. I moved out from home last July and then lost my job in Hershey in December. I started this new job at CAP in February and I am only finally feeling like I am competent at it. It is a great job, with great people, but I think even that was pretty intimidating. I felt like I had so much to prove. So I am getting there slowly, but it has taken a lot of energy. And then there have been a lot of changes in friendships and relationships, so all in all, I think I need to take a lot of time to myself to let things sit and sink in, and make sure this is really how I want my life to be. Rob is one of my co-workers and he told me that he and his wife often stop and ask each other, "are you really living today?". I think that is an amazing thing that a couple could do for each other, but for now I am just asking myself. And the answer is not always yes, but if I am running aroud so much that I don't even have time to ask the question, then I know I am not living as I want to be. So if I seem a little more distant or noncommital these days it is probably true. That is partly, again, why I hope that people stop by here, so that we can stay in touch and you can know what is going on that I probably haven't said. Writing is a lot easier for me than verbal communication, for whatever reason. Also, I changed the status of comment posting, so you don't need to be a member, anyone can freely leave their comments and can be as anonomous as they want as well.

singing in the choir...

2006-06-28T22:42:00.000-04:00

Last night was worship practice at church and I am singing with a small version of the choir for the service on Sunday. We are doing a lot of stately hymns to go with the powerful new organ (the floor definitely rumbles) and I am standing next to Shawneen, who is an amazing soprano. I found out that she used to sing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She says she likes singing with me because we are both strong singers, which is an amazing compliment, but I still feel like I sound like a faint little buzz beside her. Her husband is the worship leader at my church and I don't think anyone loves music and worship more than him. His face just beams with delight while we worship in church. But I totally love the church choir, because we just laugh and laugh together. That was never how I pictured a curch choir to be. I always would have thought it would be serious and stuffy. The best part is when we are giggling and whispering right before our entrance, and the second before our cue we immediately stop, take a deep breath, focus, and sing at the top of our lungs. So this sunday is going to be one rockin' service with the belting out singing and the roaring organ and the smiles on our faces.

The wallpaper on my desktop

2006-06-28T22:38:00.000-04:00

Here is the most wonderful photo that I got from YahooNews. It never fails to make me smile when I open up my laptop. Isn't it perfect for being so tiny?

what a blog should be about...

2006-06-28T22:15:00.000-04:00

Thanks, all for your comments and warm reception.
I am thinking about what I would like this blog to be...Some blogs are personal, like a diary, and some are totally cryptic and you have no idea what is going on in the person's life. Some are issue related, like politics or music or soccer. I am not that much of an "issues" person, and I am not sure what my issue would be. Like with current events, I want to be informed, but I never feel like I really know enough to write out my own opinions. Though that might also be a cop-out and I should just say right out front what I think. More on this later...
A personal diary of the everyday things could be nice, but it might also just be mind-numbingly boring. A typical day has become go to work and look at a computer, come home and water my plants, check my email, work on our jigsaw puzzle, eat ice cream, read something, and go to bed...
No, I want this to be about me, and authentically me. So the personal parts of my life, and the things that I really care about, blended together and intergated is the goal to which I will be working. And I hope it will be entertaining and encouraging as well, but that will be for you to decide...

New self portait

2006-06-27T20:42:00.000-04:00

I just bought a digital camera this weekend. Wow, it is so much fun. I should have tried to help this poor photo out in photoshop first, but I just couldn't wait, so here it is, the real and unpolished me.

my first post

2006-06-27T20:03:00.000-04:00

Here it is, I have certainly put it off a long time. It is a strange thought that anybody in the world can read what I write here (if they find me anyway), but that is also the point, so that I can share who I am. Please come and join me on my journey... and blessings on your own.