family thanksgiving

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

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

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

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

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

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

the last supper

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

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

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

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

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

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

the church: yesterday, today, tomorrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a little christmas, a little early

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

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

the church: adolescence

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



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

blue heron, white egret

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

socializing

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...