Savior, Teach us so to Rise!

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

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...

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

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...

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

October

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

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

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

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

pokey grass and palm trees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cincinnati

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

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

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

Good night!

Worship conference

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

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

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


Highlight #1.

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

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

Highlight #3

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

Looking forward to hearing more thoughts!"

miscellaneous catch up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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