Category Archives: Uncategorized

Two Good Things

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A day of delighting in Gavin:
planting, laughing, reading, feeding.

I’ve been hoarding Anthony Trollope and Wendell Berry
 for special reading treats.
They are my secret stash of Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream.

I’ve been waiting for Hannah Coulter to become available to me at .
I checked it out from our library, but took it back unread, because reading
it without being able to interact by marking it up wouldn’t be a pleasure.

Then I read my friend‘s blog.
The time for holding back had past.
I used a B & N gift card and ordered  the book.
(ordering a new book is still a thrill!)

Now, this is a small thing.
But, when I ordered it, I expected it to look like this.
And it came, looking like this:

I adore, I exult, I am gladdened by matching sets of books.
They make me very happy.
Isn’t this stack just one of the purtiest things you’ve seen?

If you are new to Wendell Berry, I suggest you start at That Distant Land,
a collection of Berry’s “Port William” short stories.
It is one of my favorite books to give away.

Like a newly engaged girl, I am, ahem,  practicing restraint.
I want to read it all in one large gulp.
Instead, I’m reading one chapter at a time.
Soaking.
Enjoying.
Playing footsie.

Life, my friend, is good.

Small Talk

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I’m tired of making calls.  I’ve run out of small talk and I’m overflowing with coffee and cakes.  My stop today was with an extravagant hypochondriac, who took me on a tour of her liver, her pancreas and her upper intestinal tract.  I was spared her bowels, thanks be to God, but we left her bladder reluctantly as time was running out, and we still had to cover her allergies.  At least I wasn’t forced to contribute to the conversation.

        ~ Elizabeth Shannon in Up In the Park,
            The Diary of the Wife of the American Ambassador to Ireland

Keep my mind free from the recital of enless details; give me wings to get to the point.  Seal my lips on my aches and pains.  They are increasing, and the love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by.  I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others’ pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

       ~ 17th Century Nun’s Prayer, unknown source

Full, Full, Full

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…full of thanksgiving for answers to prayer: baby girl born, Myanmar orphanage saved, prisoner safe, new family with four adorable girls moved here
…full of magnificent teaching on the furniture of the tabernacle
…full of resounding singing, robust words, glorious music
…full of a sermon on the apostles and Judas–the leaks in his life
…full of communion, a nourishing meal
…full of Apostles’ Creed, Thanks Be to God, Doxology
…full of a scrumptious feast shared by the entire congregation
…full of multi-layered, multi-textured conversations throughout the day
…full of the ride home with 100 Cupboards

Now let my soul arise
And tread the tempter down;
My Captain leads me forth
To conquest and a crown:
A feeble saint shall win the day,
Tho death and hell obstruct the way.

Je suis content.

It Will Be All Right, Lu

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We’re back from watching Prince Caspian.  Lucy (Georgie Henley), as always, steals the show.  When I see Lucy, I am reminded of Donna’s Katie.  Lucy’s transparent faith, her playful grin, her devoted love, her tender heart, are all too wonderful.  Lucy holds nothing back. Casting Georgie Henley as Lucy was the most brilliant decision in the making of the Narnia movies.  I just couldn’t have born it if they had gotten Lucy wrong.

Peter Dinklage plays a might fine Trumpkin. His sad-looking face works perfectly for both the skeptical dwarf and the believing dwarf.  And we all loved Reepicheep.  Who can resist the chivalrous charm of a brave mouse?  Caspian isn’t at all how I pictured him, but we all see things differently, eh?

The movie isn’t flawless; there are many add-ons and annoying nods to egalitarian nonsense which never existed in the book.  Classics students: have you ever heard of female centaurs?  Isn’t that a contradiction to the essential character of centaurs? 

Lucy, Trumpkin and Reepicheep are all positives which overruled the negatives. Not to mention Aslan!

In the end, I left the theater thankful.

I Am David

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Not since Sweet Land have I been so captured by a movie.  I Am David,  based on the book North to Freedom, tells the story of a twelve year old boy who escapes from a Communist labor camp in Bulgaria with instructions to deliver a mysterious sealed envelope to Denmark.

After leaving a gray, grim and grimy life of picking up rocks, David is introduced to brilliant colors, freshly baked bread, rich music, family, prayer, fields of sunflowers…a beautiful life.  He hardly has the capability of understanding truth, beauty and goodness.  He has to learn how to smile.  Read that sentence again.  He doesn’t know how to smile.

The slow transformation of David follows a series of cleansings.  Washing up plays an important role in this film.  I saw in David what I’ve seen in the lives of several friends who have come out of toxic and abusive marriages.  It has taken a series of cleansings to wash the grime and grit and dirt and lies out of their souls. 

It is a process to learn to trust again.  A series of encounters help David trust someone enough to open himself and tell his story. The women who does the most to convince David to trust her is aptly named Sophie (Sophia is Greek for wisdom).

Ben Tibber plays this role to perfection.  His serious face will stay with me for weeks.  Stewart Copeland’s soundtrack captures both the bleakness of life behind wires with ethereal vocals and the movement of the open road with some dynamic harp and orchestra.  You can hear soundtrack snippets and see the trailer here.

I highly recommend this film.

   

Filling In the Cracks

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8:15 a.m.

My son, a junior in high school, just left the house for his part-time job.  He started work on Monday, doing odd jobs, yard work, and maintenance for a small farmer who is starting a microbrewery in our town.  This is his second year with his employer. So the challenge is to fit his remaining schoolwork, paper route, and our yard work into the second half of his day.  Two things encouraged me this morning.

Part of Collin’s morning routine is to check his emails and read the news headlines.  Walking into the kitchen, I saw him on the computer and asked what he was reading. 

“I’m reading about epi, Mom.”

“Epi?” is she a contestant on American Idol? Perhaps a missionary who started an orphanage?

“Epi-, Mom: epigram, epigraph, episode, epitaph.” 

“Ah.  Yes, I know epi-.  Around, right?”

“On or over.”

What Collin was reading was Daily Writing Tips.  I started receiving the daily email to help my writing.  When I realized how word-oriented it was, I instructed Collin to sign up for it.  While he wouldn’t like admitting that he enjoys the email, he reads it faithfully.

Daily Writing Tips gives a clean daily dose of grammar, punctuation, spelling, words misused, and writing basics. I recommend it for you and yours.

~     ~     ~     ~

Our favorite and most time-consuming subject is history/literature/theology via Omnibus III published by Veritas Press.  For one year there are twenty primary books (including Of Plymouth Plantation, Tale of Two Cities, Rousseau, Mein Kampf and 1984) and sixteen secondary books (including The Old Man and The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Tom Sawyer, The Killer Angels).  We manage to get through all the primary books, but have never made it through all the secondary books.  [That will be a delicious chunk of my “retirement” – reading through the stuff we missed.]

Last night Collin was dinkin’ on the computer and I asked him, optimistically, what he was working on.  He was downloading all the books he hadn’t read in the Omnibus Secondary section that were on Librivox. Collin’s employer asked him if he had an ipod or mp3-player yesterday and gave permission, nay, encouraged him to listen to it while he worked.  Little does he suspect that Collin is listening to The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Pride and Prejudice, and Gulliver’s Travels this summer.  

You know The Best Part, the whipped créme on top of the hot fudge sundae?  It was his idea.

Two-Word Meme

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I’ve been gone to a Ladies’ Retreat, and just realized that I was tagged by the very funny Ruthie, aka Jersey Chick.  Consider yourself tagged, if you’d like to do it.  If you’d like to see better, more clever answers go here
and here and here.  **Addendum** My new friend, Sonja in South Africa, also new to blogging, answered here.  Go leave a comment and encourage her!

1. Where is your cell phone?  Call me a Luddite, I don’t own one. (oops! – it’s called Two Words for a reason. Wait a minute and I’ll start over…)

1.  Where is your cell phone? doesn’t exist
2.  Where is your significant other? working, naturally
3.  Your hair? a lot
4.  Your mother? miss her
5.  Your father? him, too
6.  Your favorite thing? husband, reading  or husband reading or reading husband!
7.  Your dream last night? … came true
8.  Your favorite drink? tea, with
9.  Your dream/goal? jazz pianist
10. The room you’re in? fragrant kitchen
11.  Your hobby? reading, blogging
12.  Your fear? nobody cares
13.  Where you want to be in 6 years? size 12s
14.  Where were you last night? can’t say
15.  What you’re not? naturally tidy
16.  Muffins? not particularly
17.  One of your wish list items? laptop tote
18.  Where you grew up? Chicago suburbs
19.  The last thing you did? butchered Chopin
20.  What are you wearing? reading glasses
21.  Your TV? plays DVDs
22.  Your pets? Singular: labrador
23.  Your computer? it works
24.  Your life? goodness/mercy
25.  Your mood? satiated, tired
26.  Missing someone? someones: siblings
27.  Your car? aging Subaru
28.  Something you’re not wearing? damaged weddingring
29.  Favorite store?  Scottish deli
30.  Your summer?  more books
31.  Like someone? piano tuner
32.  Your favorite color? the gloaming
33.  When is the last time you laughed? (my) Pilates Pastor
34.  Last time you cried? reading poem

Leave a comment if you do this in your blog.  If you don’t blog, put your answers in the comments (wink).  Or not.

Hospitality 101

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1.  Accept offers from guests to contribute to the meal or to help in preparation or cleanup.

I learned this lesson from my dear, now far-removed friend Lisa, to whom God has given many extra dollops of wisdom.  As she raised her four daughters, she always honored their request to help.  You can hear a toddler’s voice, can’t you, saying, “Me help you Mommy!”  Honestly, the best help Mommy needs is the removal of the sweet toddler into another room.  But Lisa knew that she was training her daughters as well as putting on a fabulous meal for guests.  She started them on folding napkins, carrying small salt and pepper shakers, and made a job for them to do if there honestly wasn’t anything left to do, i.e. straighten the forks.

My philosophy of hospitality is wanting our guests to feel more like a member of our family than a Distinguished Guest.  When a guest offers to bring something I give her a choice: perhaps a salad, a bottle of wine, a vegetable, or a dessert.   If I am aware of tight schedules or special circumstances, I might invite them just to bring themselves, but that is not my default response anymore.  And, cough cough, sometimes when I invite a bachelor, I suggest (in a lighthearted manner) he bring an item to contribute, “Hey, Mike, would you bring two bottles of sparkling cider?”  Some guys haven’t yet realized that they can be contributers as well as eaters.

Food prep and cleanup are so much more fun when done as a team.  When guests arrive and we’ve taken their coats, there are usually final touches to the meal.  If a guest offers to help, I put them to work: stirring a sauce, cutting bread, fetch a tomato from the garden, cutting crudités, pour water into glasses.  I have had many occasions to learn from my guests (do you know how many ways one can cut up a bell pepper?) and a few opportunities to teach.  One fifty-something guest asked to help; I had her set the table.  Her setting was quite unorthodox (the knife and fork on the plate and the spoon to the left and the napkin who knows where) which I intended to politely leave as is. She, however, asked if her setting was correct and admitted that she had never set a table before.  I showed her the Elizabeth Post way, and she was truly glad to know. 

Hospitality is, at its core, opening your door.  When a guest offers to help and you refuse, you are, in essence, shutting a door.  The guest may not do things to your standard, and that’s just fine.  Relax and enjoy your time together

Support of All Just Measures

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Most Fridays I receive an email from a friend in Zimbabwe, sharing her news and musings.  Whenever I see her email in my inbox I rejoice.   When we don’t hear from her we intensely pray for her safety and security. This morning the email began,

“I haven’t written in a few weeks largely because I didn’t know what to write. What’s to be said? That we have suspended democracy?” 

Sandy of Maple Grove and I are exchanging news we receive from our brothers and sisters in Zim. Our church is also praying for a congregation and orphanage in a section badly hit in Myanmar.  Lord, have mercy.

Prayer In a National Crisis

King of kings and Lord of lords,
Thou Lord of life and death,
protect [Zimbabwe][Myanmar] in its great need.

Let men use this great trial to turn to Thee for strength
and to find in Jesus their peace with Thee.

Let wise counsel, calm thinking, unselfish aims prevail.
Grant unity to the land and support of all just measures.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.

(from the Lutheran Book of Prayer)