Taken Away Ones

We sang in church this morning: "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt Redman ... which brought about thoughts on current happenings with their emotions ... and too, memories ...

Blessed be Your name Lord: in the land that is plentiful ... When I'm found in the desert place ... When the sun's shining down on me/ When the world's all as it should be ... On the road marked with suffering ... Every blessing you pour out/ I'll turn back to praise/ When the darkness closes in Lord/ Still I will say/ Blessed be Your name ...

The part that brings me to tears is "You give and take away/ You give and take away/ My heart will choose to say/ Lord, blessed be your name." The memory?

Years ago, I had a friend die of cancer. Her son Eric and my Dawson were friends and they'd done a lot together - Ruth taking them hiking, rollerblading, hunting insects, and creating together. Randy is a great father to Eric and Rachel and eventually started dating, but said he couldn't find a sweet woman. When Monte had ripped his hamstring and found out his massage therapist was a single mom and a sweet woman, he had them arrange a date ... and they're now happily married. At their wedding they had this song sung. I was near the front and saw young Rachel singing along and crying, and of course I cried, and I still cry, thinking of that moment's emotions.

Thoughts? This week Michael Jackson and Farrah Faucet died. I didn't didn't think I new much of Michael's music, but as the news is continually playing his songs I'm realizing the history I DO know. And I used to love Farrah Faucet's hair, wishing mine could be like hers.

Current happenings? At the same time as their deaths, Bill's brother died suddenly in the night. Heather was called, and Bill notified thru the Red Cross. So Bill flew into Denver yesterday morning and will be in the States several weeks. Heather, Will, and him are leaving tomorrow morning, driving to California to help Bill's dad settle all the details of death/funeral arrangements. And too, Bill will need to see how his dad, whom his brother was living with, is handling life. Then they drive back here and Bill back to Iraq till January. And Heather and Will resume their staying here the rest of the summer before returning to Texas.

Hail! etc

OK ... we just had the hail - like I've never seen! I was sitting in my wing-back chair pulled close to the east window so to better see the beauty, drinking my tea, when the rain began, and then the hail. Watching the hail balls bounce out of the green grass was unreal - like a cartoon. And the hail got harder and harder to where it looked like a fast-speed movie of falling snow - unreal again. 'Twill be interesting to see what survived and resurrects ... like I'm seeing sparse flower petals drooped and hanging on for dear life, but most of them gone. Lots of bowed over stuff.

I'm also posting a picture Monte had taken of Will on his iPhone and I emailed it to myself as we were driving home from church.

I'm smelling wet pine and cedar ... there is wet wood in the greenhouse and it was leaking a bit ago. The gutters have finally cleared themselves of the abundant hail and are draining properly and not overflowing everywhere, probably ruining flower beds.

I'm thinking of farmers, feeling just a tad of what they must feel after such storms ... and their livelihood depends on what's growing and might be destroyed in one fell swoop!

Memorial Day Taps

This morning Monte and me went to a Memorial Day service at Evergreen Memorial Park. Our friends Ron and Carol Lewis live next door. They own the land and have had buffalo for years, now also elk and European deer, and people started asking to be buried there - thus the cemetery, for people and pets. Ron marries people and buries people - a man of many hats. He wore a long black coat and a tall top hat for the service. Geese from the lake were 'honking'. It was overcast and chilly, but the sun was peeking through the clouds by the end of the service.

Taps were played by one of the soldiers with a bugle. "Taps" became "lights out" music with the added words-

"Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky,
All is well, safety rest, God is nigh."

I remembered hearing Taps at night at Ft Hood when I was staying with Heather. It's a beautiful, haunting melody that touches tenderly deep in my soul. If you click on the above line of music you can hear "Taps".

Taps history has its tales, but it did originate during the civil war. The story told this morning was of a son from the North at school in the South, so recruited by the South. The father, in the Union Army, came upon his son's body on the battlefield. Ron told the story, saying the boy was not yet dead, but died in his Father's arms. The single bugle Taps notes were sounded at his funeral.

The Poem "In Flanders Field" was read, with the lines-

We cherish too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies,
That blood of heroes never dies.

We sang the "Star spangled Banner" with it's little known other verse-
"On the shore dimly seen throughout the mists of the deep/ Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes/ What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep/ As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?/ Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam/ In full glory reflected now shines on the stream/ 'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner, Oh long may it wave/ O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

I like seeing large flags wave in the breeze, as did this morning's flag, catching the gleam of the peeking sun beams. I'm thankful for this Republic for which it stands. I'm grateful to all who have given their lives for freedoms we enjoy. I'm glad for calendar days like this that help us remember and not take these things for granted.

I was thinking of our son-in-law Bill in Baghdad. Hoping all is well. Knowing God is nigh and that safety rests in Him.

What If ...

What if you knew you had but one year left to live, what would you be doing today ... and tomorrow ... and the next day ...? My emotions of the past few days have brought me back to this thought, asked of me years ago by a very dear older lady.

As I sat next to my friend Sunday morning, very recently diagnosed with breast cancer, she was praising and trusting God. As I tried to sing the worship songs, I wasn't very worshipful. I was trying to absorb her positive attitude ... I was feeling her husband's pain ... but the songs words had me going thru the wringer of emotions, including sadness and madness ... but maybe that's exactly where God wanted me, maybe that is worship.

I know lots of people who have, and are, living many years beyond that diagnosis. But maybe we all need to live each day from the outlook of what that diagnosis would bring. It wouldn't mean, shouldn't bring, ditching our jobs and sailing around the world - but living each individual extraordinary day intentionally. Not running away from our life, but fully embody the life we're leading.

I've been thinking thru what to do for a devotional at tomorrow's last MOPS meeting. I had an idea ... but now I've been pondering this returned thought. We tend to live as if we have all the time in the world.

I ordered a bunch of books from the library a while back under the theme of "Creative Journalling" and a book that must be popular just came and I started reading it last night. Where did it begin? What if you only had 37 days left to live ... OKaaaaayy God ... I think this is where you want me to begin tomorrow's devotional. The book is Life Is A Verb. I think I ordered it because the title intrigued me. I had posted earlier the thought to ponder: "God is a Verb".

So ponder.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
- Steve Jobs

"Time only seems to matter when it's running out."
- Peter Strup

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it."
- James M Barrie (author of Peter Pan)

"What you do, [when you find out you have a year to live] if you have little kids, is lead as normal a life as possible, only with more pancakes."
- Marjorie Williams

In Memoriam

I've mentioned every year about the Holocaust Remembrance Day (my post) and how commemorating still has no ritual. This morning in the news I looked at the slideshow of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. I'd like to walk through it and experience it. There are things the world should never forget. Scriptures so often tell us to remember, to retell the stories.


I grew up next door to a Jewish family. The parents had these 'tattoos' on their arms, a forever reminder of a time when persons were unnamed, and instead numbered. There are plenty of surviving pictures telling the story of this horrific time when one's identity as a Jew was attempted to be wiped out.

I used to have a timeline on a wall. As I learned events in history I'd add them to the timeline. Unfortunately these catastrophes, ethnic cleansings, the destruction of domination - one group over another ... crucifixions ... have gone on throughout time.

As my friend Ellen has said, "I believe it is an act of faith to remember and tell the stories and to recount how beauty and life have been called forth from chaos once again. And, to dare to reflect on the mystery that the gospel is far, far bigger and better than we can dare to dream."

Yom HaShoah & Columbine

Today is Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, beginning yesterday eve. Yesterday, the 20th, was the ten year remembrance of the Columbine High School Massacre, killing thirteen people, wounding more.

Since Columbine is in Denver, our local news was full of remembrances. My main remembrance is the fact that the carpenter who put up crosses at Clement Park next to the high school put up 15 crosses, which included the two for the killers who killed themselves. When I drive by, tho no crosses now ... I will never forget.

There was a lot of anger over those two crosses, which were soon taken away. There was a lot of talk and arguing over it all - like talk about Christ dying for all, including those who kill.  

How to commemorate is still discussed for these horrific happenings. As yesterday progressed I wondered why we/I write things on our calendars for past rememberings. I thought of so many times in scripture God asks us to remember, to retell the stories. Is there redemption in all stories, in these stories?

  

Susan Boyle - Singer

Monte showed me this (click) , since the above won't work. Amazing! Beautiful! Great message!

It's now Friday, almost noon, snowing hard (2ft?) and when I saw the above youTube link was disabled I did the above click link that does work. So now I've probably watched this 5 times and I tear up with joy. I had heard about it on the radio and so glad Monte found it so we could actually see and hear.

I'm remembering my friend Ellen saying, "We don't dream big enough!" It'll be fun hearing about where this ladies dreams will now fly!

Art's Eternal Value

Beth, an Artist friend of mine, who had to move to Wyoming, sent me this speech. I read it yesterday morning and it's message has so touched me ... I was thinking I'd quote parts of it, but it's so good in it's entirety. I read it to Monte yesterday as we ate lunch (he ate, while my leftover spaghetti got cold :) and he so liked it he asked me to email it to him, and he's passed it on, like to our son Travis.

There's so many favorite thoughts, like ... art having a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us ... in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities ... Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning”... And then the day after 9/11 - The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on ... art is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds...If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists ... who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.
______________________________
Welcome address to freshman parents at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory.

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “You’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the “Quartet for the End of Time” written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art. It wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

On September 12, 2001, I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome.” Lots of people sang “America, the Beautiful.” The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece “Adagio for Strings.” If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie “Platoon,” a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings —people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching “Indiana Jones” or “Superman” or “Star Wars” with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in “ET” so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important: music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago. I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland Sonata was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterward, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?” Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”
__________________________
When we watched movies as a family, I used to always make comments about the music's importance in making the scene. "And think of the persons who KNOW music so, to pick the fitting pieces!

And the nursing home story almost undid me, I've seen similar scenes. Heather worked in nursing homes and did some in-home eldercare before she nannied and married. And I'd gone to nursing homes with Monte's mom, watching the people as she played the piano and hymns were sung.

The "why write and enjoy music in a prison camp" reminded me of the movie Shawshank Redemption. The music scene, where one man dares to share the hope in his soul with all the inmates, is the heart of the movie - a great movie.
_________________________
The art piece is "1st Cello" by my friend Melinda Morrison. I'd post art from my friend Beth too if I had access to a picture. I love her work as well.

"Beauty will save the world"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

White Chili Soup

Heather called me asking for the chicken soup recipe I'd made for her and froze when I was with her in Texas that month. I decided to post it here and tell you that Heather is sick. I think she got that same flu bug that's everywhere. Hers started with a sore throat and fever and now she's really coughing and can hardly talk with me. Maybe she'll go to a doctor if it stays the same or worsens this week, but all's I could suggest was sleeping whenever baby Will sleeps - daytime too, since she's not getting much sleep. Will is doing well. So pray for Heather please.

White Chili Soup

3 16oz cans northern white beans

4 c cooked chicken

1 Tb olive oil

2 medium chopped onions

2 cloves minced garlic

2 4oz cans chopped green chilies

2 Tb ground cumin

6 c chicken broth

3 c  grated jack cheese

That's how my good friend Jeanie, who's moved away, gave it to me. Now I'll tell you what I do:

I do usually use the canned beans, but might at times cook the beans from scratch, which would probably be about 2 cups of dry beans. I prefer the smaller white beans. I usually cook up a whole chicken, both for the meat and the broth. Otherwise I use organic chicken broth. I usually have cooked chicken and turkey in the freezer from past meals, but in a bind, I've used canned chicken. I can't tell you the sizes, but I think I used three cans.

Saute the chopped onion and garlic in the olive oil. I always add more garlic than recipes call for. Then add the chopped green chilies. We always have frozen roasted anaheim chilies in our freezer from the farmer's market. I get a bushel and usually 3 chilies equals 4 ounces. I don't remove the blackened skin when freezing, but remove it when thawed and I'm readying to chop them (and don't like washing it off, as I think I'm washing away good flavor, but just run my fingers down the chili to remove the skin, stem end, and seeds, then I do have to wash my hands to remove it all from them!). And the cumin, I grind fresh. I rarely buy pre-ground spices, preferring their fresh ground flavor. My cute little wood mortar & pestle sit on my kitchen windowsill.

If I'm taking the soup somewhere, then I put the cheese in it too. At home, we grate cheese and put some in our soup bowls and ladle in the soup. From another chicken soup recipe, I fell in love with fresh avacado cut in chunks and added to the soup bowls. When we have guests (some guests having had it more than once - and they love it!) we typically set up meals buffet style on our island in the middle of the kitchen that the stove is a part of. So the soup pot stays on the stove and there'll be a wooden bowl with wooden tongs of grated cheese and a bowl of cut up avacados (with fresh squeezed lime juice to keep them from browning). Homemade bread and salad top off the meal.

Elk and Fencing

I know this isn't the greatest picture, but I'm in a hurry - off to do my MOPS Mentor Mom thing. But see the elk? They're meandering out of the woods across the way. This is why we have an electric fence. I now enjoy seeing them without worrying about my gardens.

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

I love watching and listening to Clara. If only all Grandmas could be captured for all generations like this.

1sts of Spring

I mentioned last year about our Firsts of Spring charts I used to always recreate every year. It's so ingrained that we all have eyes to see, without a chart. Sitting here, I just heard a flicker bird drumming his beak on our stove pipe. That's always a 'first' I look for - it's a mating thing.

I just walked around outside with my cup of breakfast tea looking for garden firsts. I'm seeing an inch of bulb greenery starting to poke through. No Glory of Snow, chionodoxa, in the grass yet. Yes, in the grass. I posted last fall about aerating my grass - I did it with a hand drill!! dropping the little bulbs in the holes (I had posted it on Facebook and my son Travis responded, "I hope you're not going to start cutting your grass with scissors!")

I had read about putting those flower bulbs in the grass, then there'd be a carpet of purple-blue first thing in the spring, and die back by the time to mow. I can't wait!

I need to walk around in the meadow and see if any wild crocus, pasque flowers, are up yet. That's another first. What else do we look for? The first robin and bluebird. In May the hummingbirds come and I love hearing them all summer, looking for the fiesty Rufous to show up early July. Hummingbirds leave Laborday weekend. We look for Aspen tree catkins, coming before the leaves. The kids would often run to me saying, "I smelled the first stink bug!"

Have you cleaned out your birdhouses? I told you to last month. Little bugs in old nests can kill this year's babies. We look for cow birds each spring, and the boys had permission to shoot them. I know that's not politically correct, but they are parasites (Audubon says, "promiscuous" - no pairing). They lay eggs in other bird nests and because their babies are bigger, growing faster, they starve out the other babies. Luckily we only have a couple that come around, my hope is, if the birdhouse hole size is specific to the bird, they usually can't get in. I do like their gurgling notes. Travis and me, and then Dawson and me, made lots of our birdhouses over the years.

Spring? I know it's not spring yet. I heard that Denver usually gets around 45" of snow each year, but only 18" this year. We are so dry, but we're probably not done yet. Unfortunately we often get dumped on in March - April (like 3 feet! Spring dumps melt fast, but not that one Christmas dump!). As the garden wise-guys I listen to on the radio have been saying, "don't let this beautiful spring-like weather we've been having fool you!" But with the warm weather predicted this week, I will go out and water again.

Monte and me already got a load of manure, the rancher filling both our trailer and the back of the pickup. That's the earliest we've ever gotten it. But with the nice weather ... and when I start needing it, we usually have snow and the ground around the manure pile is so mucky. So now we're prepared!

Dawson took the picture of my statue with snow on the back table in January when I was in Texas.

Paul Harvey

This is going to be a day of hearing about Paul Harvey. I read about him dying at 90 this weekend and it hit me this morning. For probably over 30 years (tho he's been doing radio since he was 17) I've listened to Paul Harvey. In fact, since we've lived in Colorado since early 1983, every morning I wake and turn on the radio in the kitchen to 850 KOA and hear what's in the current news and every 7:30am, 11:45, and 3:15 is Paul Harvey, with his news perspective, icon voice, and his "rest of the story".

Lots of 'icons' have passed on. Can they be replaced? Not exactly. It seems it's been at least five years or so that people have been filling in for Paul Harvey occasionally, as he wrestled with this throat/voice problems ... It's his voice, besides his choices of news, and style in presentation that has made him iconic.

So for quite awhile 7:30's are going to feel a void.

The Gift of Winter Solace

I am so anxious for Spring! We've had Spring-like days this week. Having read some garden books, I decided to water my seemingly dead perennials. Dawson, eating his breakfast before taking off for school, came out asking, "Watering in February? in Winter?"

"Be not anxious." In my anxiety mighten I miss some of Winter's gift? Thomas Merton wrote, "Love winter when the plant says nothing." Have plants lost their voice just because they aren't green or flowering?

"Take off your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy ground." What in life prevents me from seeing burning bushes? What might I need to shed, like taking off my shoes?

The leaves of summer turned their burning colors and fell, leaving bare branches. Do I read between the branches? What would life be like without the spaces? Do I see and read the spaces? Spaces are still there when the leaves are there but we don't notice them. What might my life be full of so there's no spaces, no room for God?

One by one the leaves let go, a precious emptiness appears in the trees and bushes. The naked beauty can be seen, bird's abandoned nests become visible, night stars now peer thru the branches.

Autumn falls into the womb of Winter. Life waits, snuggled into home, hibernating, gestating, and gaining nourishment. Winter is a time to pause and have spent energy renewed.

The bleak, barren trees preach wordless sermons about emptiness and solitude and the need to wait with hope and trust for new life, rebirth. Winter's inconsistent moods often challenge Spring's arrival. In storms, non-bendable branches might break. Winter is an inner season calling me to be more than I am now.

But Winter does cramp my style. It's my least favorite season. Though it invites contemplation and reflection, I dislike going out into the cold. Bundling up from head to toe to mittens is imprisoning. I feel locked in. "Let me out!"

But I shouldn't lock out all the cold unpleasant parts of winter, or life. I would lock out the beauty it has to show me. Winter may seem voiceless like a frozen mask, but it's hiding the vibrancy of life. Like the seed, who must surrender to the darkness, the holy space, I need to risk non-doing, waiting in the creative darkness, just being.

But the dawns are coming earlier and the evenings extending themselves. Let me not hurry the solace of the empty spaces, winter's gift. Let me see with the eye of my soul and listen with the ear of my heart. Winter is a good teacher, a season I should embrace.

Art and Body Gifting

I've readied some of my needlefelting to take to church today for hanging. I mentioned before that our church is set up with a professional hanging system for art. We have artists within our community and we change out the art periodically.

One of my pieces I'm taking I call either "Community" or "Jesus' Body". Scripture refers to those of us who love God and believe in Jesus, as family, parts of His body. I value that our church values the differing gifts within our body and desires to let these differing gifts be used within our community. So often in churches we only see the giftings of teaching and music, and then of course the helping, serving, administration, encouraging ... are ongoing.

I have a grapevine in my greenhouse. I've posted pictures of it. This last year was the most productive year of all, with clusters hanging at our head level all over. All it takes is basically doing nothing! Yes, I still nurture it with fertilizing and watering, and I do need to cut it back as it tries to take up more of the space than I desire. But I used to prune it back very severely, because I had a book ... I found out that table grapes are not to be pruned like wine grapes.

In fact, the severity of pruning wine grapes looks familiar ... It is the center frame of my picture. All around are the three-dimensional vine, grape clusters, and leaves. In a small group, we had drawn grape vines. Ellen had lots of hidden grape clusters saying that she needed community to help her see her fruit. I have gone through very barren times where I've felt my fruit gobbled up, and if I'm not regularly nourished from the source I will remain fruitless. This piece is a Spring, Easter, seasonal hanging.

My other art piece is made up of three. Because they were inspired from the same time frame of reading and journalling, I just hung them on the same backing. The top I call "Starburst". God said, "Let there be light". Walking in His Truth, His light, I don't fear walking out into the world with it's varying culture. I walk, bringing gleanings back to the light before venturing out again on another ray of light.

The middle piece I call "Crucible". I looked the word up and it's origin means "lamp on a crucifix". To me this means, that in all life brings my way, that in all my choices, if I filter them thru the truth of the cross ... It's a God-consciousness in all I do in my every ordinary days (Extra- ordinary!).

The bottom piece I call "Longings". Henri Nouwen had written, "Longings are doorways thru which we come to God and thru which God comes to us". I've pictured my heart with layers like an onion, restricting and fighting the real me, the God-created-me, in being revealed. If my desire is to live out of my center, I don't have to focus on removing the layers, but focus on having more desires/longings, which would mean more doorways of God and me connecting!

Does this make sense?

Anniversary and Spouse Prayers

I've been awake since 4:30. I could say it's menopause, or it could be having drunk a second pot of tea (I often reuse my tea leaves for a second pot - more robust than the sawdust dregs in most tea bags), or it's just the fact that sleep has often eluded me all my life. My body can be very tired but my brain never wants to shut off. Monte always makes fun of my "dichotomy", of talking of my brain and body as two separate beings - but they are! Anyway ... it's become a time the Creator gives me creative clarity.

Yesterday was Travis and Sarah's anniversary. Theirs is one week after Valentine Day, and Heather and Bill's anniversary is one week before Christmas (I guess I could say ours is almost one week before Thanksgiving). As a MOPS Mentor Mom, I've shared this story, and I see I posted it a year ago, so maybe I won't do it as a devotional again this year. Dawson took the pictures and photoshopped the one. It's a family story with "the rest of the story" aspect to it.

When our kids were little we used to have fun with them, telling them the future person they'd marry could be alive right then living somewhere in the world - like Australia, or down the street, or so-and-so. "Naw!" Monte and me are almost eight years apart, so it's fun to tell young kids that that person might not be born yet, or even worse (to them, when they're say 5) that that person might be 12 years old! "Naw!" But we talked about praying for that unknown person. And as teens - that whoever was dating your future mate, your hopes are that they'd protect and honor them, and the same goes for you with who you're spending time with.

When planning Travis and Sarah's wedding with Sarah's parents we were sitting around sharing stories. For some reason we talked about the time when Travis was three and he got very sick. After me sleeping at one hospital with him for a week (I couldn't leave such a little one alone!) and him undergoing lots of tests, they sent us to the National Jewish Hospital. They did more tests and were about to diagnose him with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis ...

Travis was unable to walk. Every four hours when the aspirin wore off, he was in pain. I had to do everything for him. His joints hurt too much to crawl. Monte was imagining his little boy not able to run and play and ride a bike, climb trees ... But then after a month, there was a turning point ...

Sarah's mom, Kerry, asked his age again. She was quiet a bit, then said that at about that time she got an urging to pray for the person Sarah would marry. (I always start tearing up at this point.) We never know what praying may be doing, but we have to believe and trust that it is powerful!

For the devotional, I then went on to play a recording of a song Monte wrote about praying for our kids future mates and the hope "that they love Jesus just like I do". We had sung it as a family and captured Dawson's voice at 5 and Travis singing as a teen.

Hardly a dry eye in the room.

Colorado Mountains

I've returned home to mountainous Colorado. Did you know Colorado has almost 60 peaks over fourteen thousand feet? They are called 14ers and people climb them, checking them off their list. Colorado is also the source for four of North America's major rivers. Monte and me have often spoken about watershed life decisions and nearby here we can straddle the Continental Divide and raindrops or snow melt can end up in either the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans - quite the watershed!

I returned home to other mountains too: mountains of laundry and mountains of mail! Since yesterday was Valentines Day, as I attacked the mountain of mail, I thought of Monte and ripped out words and pictures that reminded me of him.

Remember the Velveteen House III post I did the night before I left for Texas? All the bedding of the four couples who slept here were piled in the laundry room this month I've been gone. So I tackled that mountain, washing the sheets first, before moving to the piles of clothes.

Monte cooked me salmon for our Valentine supper and had bought roses and goodies. He loved the collage I made for him.

Self Improvement?

With every New Year there's a focus on self-improvement. I was reminded of what sits in my pantry as I read an article ...

There's this visual used in many varieties of settings. I've used it myself when I've spoken around the country. I used a large plastic gallon jar and had put very large rocks in it. The example I read this morning had golf balls in a mayonnaise jar. Then we ask, "Is it full?" and the response is, "Yes". I then filled it with gravel, the article- marbles, and "Yes, it's full" is the response again. Then we fill the jar with sand. The response is not quite so sure any more. I poured in water, the article poured in beer - then the jar is full.

Most of us have seen this illustration and know the right answers, but in the reality of daily living our lives answer this visual with, "In all the busyness of life we can always squeeze in more."

I had my old plastic jar with rocks visual sitting around ... I like visual reminders for reminding my heart. One look at the jar and I remember what's most important in my life that I need to make sure I squeeze in first, for my sanity or to be a better person.

One day, looking at that all grey jar, I thought, "That's ugly! That doesn't represent me! I'm made in the image of God who created gorgeous birds, butterflies and animals ... created exotic fruits and vegetables, beautiful sunrises ... all for our enjoyment. I'm a child of God!" I wanted a beautiful jar to look at, full of color!

I can't just end the illustration here. People want to know what I named my stuff in the jar. The sand is all the small stuff in life, like the squeaky wheels demanding attention, and this is what we tend to most. But if the jar is full of sand, we can't then put in the marbles or golf balls.

I share a piece of my life's story with this illustration: for the first third of our marriage I/we (when the kids came along) traveled with Monte as he did his geology, traveling primarily all over the western US, back roads, staying in cabins or kitchenettes. We'd be gone a week, home a couple weeks, then gone again. 

This is the time in one's life when they are establishing patterns, like organizing a home for best functioning and establishing a maintenance program. This traveling lifestyle forced the large important pieces into my life's jar. I had to say no to many things people fill (maybe clutter) their lives with. "No" to long term commitments, committees, sports, music/dance/etc lessons ...

When we stopped traveling ... I was overwhelmed and lost. I knew what life felt like, what I called "beyond maintenance", so I knew what I was missing. But I had never evaluated or named the important things to me in life. I didn't want to just maintain or just survive (tho there's times for that).

Most important in life? Family, health, passions and friends. If everything else is lost and only they remain, our life will still be full. The marbles/gravel represent other big things in life like jobs, house and vehicles ...

We do have a choice (usually). We should be able to control our reactions to outside forces and how we spend our time. There will always be time to clean the house or fix the disposal. We can choose to nurture relationships, take walks, control media. Talk, think, ponder, laugh, and love. It's our choice.

Years ago when I was pondering this message, Monte's dad and I were sitting in his living room and I was looking out the window at the woods. They had recently clear-cut, how they log in Wisconsin, and I couldn't get over how quickly the woods re-grew. Emery made a profound statement: "There are so many seeds laying dormant in the ground just waiting for the right conditions to spring to life."

Cleared for the sun to shine through and not be crowded, and then moisture, allows the seeds to grow. I thought about lives. How many seeds lay dormant in our lives, seeds of creativity ... All they need, to burst forth with life, is a little clearing.

I'm again re-evaluating what I need to remember and do for improvement in 2009.

Velveteen House II

When there's a holiday, school break time, I am reminded of my original Velveteen House post, click here. Why? Though Dawson is still living at home while going to college, it's during these break times that our home gets more worn with wear. Like with the dialogue in the Velveteen Rabbit classic book, "by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby."

Dawson, Splarah and Conner, are currently eating jalepeno grilled cheese panini sandwiches and tomato soup they just made for themselves for lunch. They are sanding Dawson's new desk he's making in his bedroom. (He just painted his floor red, "to coordinate with the red in my ceiling!", which is red sponged over black, which him and Gary did probably a year ago, needing to re-drywall it.

Yesterday morning, walking into the kitchen, Dawson was making pancakes. Since I go into a nutrition talk when they bring home Bisquick, he was being witty, saying he was making them from scratch ... "I've already been out this morning gathering whole grains to grind, and squeezing chickens for eggs" ... Cute! ... I have to smile.

I never know who's sleeping here. Splarah and Lizzy have often been in the guest room and it's been a mix from Conner, Aaron, Caleb to Nick lately, sleeping scattered about (since Dawson's room is disastrously torn apart, with most everything in Heather's old room or the storage room next to Monte's office).

Young people were at the kitchen table drinking sparkling apple cider from goblets, and playing card games, when Monte and me got home from a party. We didn't know they'd be there since they were ice skating for New Year's Eve at Evergreen Lake. But since they were going skiing for the next two days, they decided to sleep here and leave from here.

And now that Dawson is learning to weld and forge metal, people want to participate and experience it too. So young people are wanting to hang out and play. 

House guests come and go. Like yesterday, a young couple we'd not seen for awhile were here for a bit. Everyone loves the well worn wood floor in our great room and don't think we should refinish it. Some people don't come out of the guest bathroom for awhile, cuz they're either reading or writing more graffiti on our chalkboard paint wall.

Ministering seems to come our way. This season of Monte's and my life is full of visiting young people and scientists wanting to hang out here. More memories for the walls of this Velveteen House to bounce off - memories full of stories. Like a plaque in our house says, "Home is where your story begins."

January and a New Year!

Monte and I went to celebrate the roll-over into a new year with friends last night. We (getting old!) weren't going to stay to midnight, but did. Following confetti, horn blowing and champaigne, we prayed for this new year.

Dawson and friends had come home earlier from "Skate the Lake" (Evergreen Lake) and were playing games at the kitchen table. They spent the night. Dawson's skiing, actually telemark skiing, for two days.

January comes from Janus (in the Julian calendar) which was a Roman two-faced god - one looking to the past, the other to the future. I've seen some pictures with an old man and a beard on one side, and the opposite face, a baby. This god guarded entrances or gates.

In the Middle Ages they made New Year March 25, which is the Annunciation on the church calendar. They were probably thinking the Christian year should begin at Conception. Then too, the Jewish religious calendar began with Nisan, which is in the spring (their civil calendar has their New Year celebration with the 7th month, in the fall). If you look at the Latin roots for Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec, you have 7, 8, 9, and 10, if you begin the year in March. Once the Gregorian calendar was adopted (not by England or the USA until the late 1700's) New Year went back to January.

I'm looking forward to this new year with hope. I'm resolving to exercise more consistently this year.

Fish Tacos

I think I've perfected a recipe for Fish Tacos - that we like! Monte's had them in both California and Canada; I've had them at the fast food Wahoo's Fish Taco. I crave them. I've posted before about every time I'm out by the airport I'm wanting a wahoo taco! And I'm starting to see more restaurants around Denver open up (they originated in California).

Though some recipes batter and fry the fish. Traditional Mexican fish tacos are charbroiled. So broil or grill a firm white fish (mahi-mahi, wahoo, swordfish, tilapia ...). I put some hickory sawdust in the grill to provide a smoky flavor, and oil the fish while grilling. Allow about 1/2 lb of fish per person.

Then they are traditionally served with thinly sliced cabbage and a fresh salsa.
Fresh Salsa -
3-4 tomatoes, diced fine
1-2 red onions, diced fine
(I quarter these, leaving the root intact, and grill while the grill is preheating and cooking the fish)
1-2 jalepenos, finely diced (I'm preferring the canned pickled ones now)
1 bunch cilantro, the leaves finely chopped
1 lime juiced
1 tsp freshly grd sea salt and pepper

The corn tortillas are freshly made - 3-4 per person. So refrigerated ones need to be warmed: wrap in foil and keep turning on grill while grilling. (Sometimes I quick fry them soft, in heated oil.)

Monte's going to read this and say, "Why didn't you say what I like to do?!" So I'll write it. He sits at our kitchen table by the toaster. Whether the tortillas are just warmed to soften or quick fried, he likes to fold them and put them in the toaster, watching them (baby-ing them!) till barely browning. Then too, he's going to say, "Why didn't you tell them what I made?" Okay. He was served tacos in Canada in taco holders. So he pounded nails in a little strip of wood to hold two tacos for filling ease.

A recipe suggested sour cream mixed with a chopped chipotle chili in adobo, another suggested Ranch Dressing. Since we love avacado, i mash one, and since the fresh salsa creates juices, I pour some of them into the avacado. I just use plain sour cream, but think the chipotle flavoring sounds good and will try it sometime.

I'm getting hungry writing this. I think I'll eat the leftover's for lunch!

The Longest Night of the Year!

Winter solstice is very hopeful to me - cuz from here on out ... THE DAYS ARE LENGTHENING!!!!!

It's going to be a very long night for Monte. Don't know if he slept on his 10 hour flight from Copenhagen. But the plane was late getting into O'Hare. He'd have missed his flight if it weren't for his flight to Denver being delayed too. Why? no bad weather here, but Chicago is such a bottleneck ... and then Denver flights were messed up today too, due to a plane going off the runway last night and catching fire. No one was killed, but they all had to slide out the emergency exit doors and people were injured.

Dawson is picking him up and they probably won't get home till after midnight. Let's see ... midnight here would be 8 in the morning in Norway, which Monte's time-clock has been on for more than a week. We'll see ...

Monte just called ... from the plane ... that's just sitting there in Chicago ...

Las Posadas

Today, December 16, begins Mexico's Las Posadas, which means "the inns". It's nine evenings of peregrinos (pilgrims) wandering. Statues of Mary and Joseph are carried from house to house, seeking shelter, where they are told there is "no room". There's usually a planned destination each night for Mary and Joseph to stay overnight and people party. Then to be done again the next night.

Lots of pinatas to be broken with their goodies inside. Lots of tamales, churros (cinnamon fritters), hot chocolate and margaritas (or spiked "ponche"). Carols are sung as people carry candles. And it's usually a neighborhood thing.

Growing up in Tucson, tamales could be bought everywhere this time of year, the freshly made being sold in store parking lots. I've made paper mache pinatas. And I've made tamales. I LOVE tamales!

On Noche Buena (the beautiful night, Holy Night, of Christmas Eve) the festivities culminate with Mary and Joseph brought to rest with baby Jesus in the manger. The Nativity scene is the focal point for Mexican homes. Christmas trees are a newer decor that some people might have. Santa does not figure in the Navidad festivities.

The Flor de Noche Buena, the Poinsettia, has it's story. In Tucson we could plant poinsettias in a south facing planter and it would grow year round, it's leaf bracts changing color. The story is of a poor girl wanting to bring a gift to the Christ child and she picks weeds that turn red when she presents her gift from her heart.

World Vision

Watch This

Anniversary and Appliances

Today is Monte's and mine anniversary. We've been married for 33 years. When I tell the young gals I mentor that we're more in love than ever, it's so hopeful to them! We really enjoy each other's company and are best friends. We're done raising our kids (even though 19 year old Dawson still sleeps at home) and lived through building two homes ourselves (people will tell you that can be hard on marriages) and lived through all the bad and good times, rich and poor, still in good health.

What are we doing as special? Well, eating out is not so special, since we've been doing that a lot lately, as well as staying in hotels and nice settings. Going to a movie? We do that a lot too, from the comfort of a great couch at home, and Netflix movies coming and going in the mail (I knit while watching movies and Monte needs the relaxation after the day's work).

We did buy ourselves something this week: new washer and dryer (my washer busted 2 weeks ago and the dryer was taking forever to dry). In 33 years we've gone through only 2 washers and dryers. Will these ones last us till we die (Monte's parents are close to 90, that's longer than 15 years from now - interesting perspective on life - in relation to how many washers we'll have had)?! We've been in this home now for 24 years and have just in the past 2 years been replacing all the appliances (and toilets, and roofing ...)(I researched toilets - with our low water pressure - we still get a joy watching them flush!)(We get off on simple things, cuz this week I've sat watching/enjoying the front loader washer do it's thing!) And my new appliances 'sing' when they're done!

We're getting our first snow of the season today. Since I've been traveling with Monte a lot lately I feel out of touch with my home, so we're getting reacquainted. And the holidays are right around the corner with lots of company here for Thanksgiving. In fact my daughter just told us her and Bill are coming for Thanksgiving, flying in next Friday. So I'm cleaning and reorganizing rooms.

Broccoli Soup...and bugs

I made a simple supper of broccoli soup with toasted bread last night. With the unusually warm weather for the Rocky Mountains, knowing winter is right around the corner, Monte and me have been working outside till dark. Once you harvest the main broccoli heads (I froze 26 lbs last month) the plants produce side shoots we tend to eat as they come. Since we were out of town, I harvested a bunch this week. Some had aphids so I kept soaking them in new basins of water. That's what I made the soup with.

I combined two recipes: one from our farm share newsletter and the other from the FoodNetwork.com. It was really good.

Saute in 3 Tb butter:

1-2 sliced onions

1-1 1/2 lb broccoli

1 tsp fresh thyme

(tsp fresh tarragon - I didn't taste this)

2-3 garlic cloves, minced

salt and pepper

3 Tb flour

Add 3 C chicken broth.

When the broccoli is soft enough puree with a hand-held blender in the pan.

Add 1/2-1 C cream to thin enough while pureeing.

Put in soup bowls and sprinkle a handful of grated cheese over the tops of the soup bowls and broil till melted and browning.

When almost done with our soup I said to Monte, "since we're also eating aphids, I'm reminded of the India study".

Actually I'll mention 2 studies. The first was done years ago on farm raised kids vs city kids and the growing amount of allergies. It's thought that because of such a focus on sterility and anti-bacterial everything, kids immune systems were not developing very strong, thus more allergies. 

Another more recent study has concluded that when people from India move to the western civilization, like going to school and living in England, and yet remaining vegetarian, they are developing poor health because the produce in the western countries is 'cleaner' - no bacteria and bugs!

Food for thought ...

Liturgy?

What does the word liturgy mean?

What has it, or can it look like?

Stuff

I've been wanting to write, but haven't. Like I've often said, I wish there could be a way to just transfer the brain's thoughts into print! - the laying in bed time could accomplish a lot!! And yesterday our internet went out and Dawson spent several hours with our DSL provider getting it solved.

Last night was another Show & Tell us artists at church and any body valuing creativity (wouldn't that be everyone, if they realize that creativity is one of the traits we share, being made in God's image?!) have had once a month. I didn't bring anything to share other than bringing my son Dawson (and a couple of his friends), who brought his metal cello he's creating (and I've posted pics of).

I've gone to second-hand stores and have my stuff for making scarecrows. When they're done, I'll post pics. I was remembering I wanted to mention how before Halloween is a great time to look at second-hand stores for fun stuff. We still have a barrel that's labeled "Dress Up", and it's got wigs, shiny material that's been used for all sorts of creations from royalty to ... gloves, hats, bags, bolas, and varieties of clothes ... Also over the years I've made Big Bad Wolf, Lion, Dragon, Dwarf, and Elephant head-covering masks.

We've got some nice days to finish cleaning up the out-of-doors stuff, getting ready for winter. My last things to plant are tulip bulbs. We've been harvesting last stuff from garden and cooking up or storing in garage, reshuffling compost ... An electrician friend is coming this afternoon to finish up some stuff too (like I'm afraid to show him what I've got rigged up with several heavy duty extension cords going through windows into the room we call our 'Parlor', but is now the piano, weaving loom, treadmill room).

Yesterday I had read a news article about Jews sneaking into Palestine to visit what's believed to be Joseph's burial site, and I asked myself "Why?" and did some research. Israel/Palestine are having to figure out how to deal with this place, with so many pilgrims wanting to come. There's been lots of desecrating and deaths. 

Apparently especially during the High Holy Days through Sukkot, Jews do what's called Selichot which has to do with penitential poems and prayers. Between midnight and dawn the oral speaking, singing and dancing, is done communally (never done individually). People take turns voicing the 13 Attributes of God (of Mercy) they get from Exodus 34:6-7 - all methods of God's activities; His divine governance as seen by us; ways of God which Moses prayed to know.

They pray "We have sinned, our Rock, our Creator ..." 

Classic?

What makes a book a classic? When was the term first used?

On this day in 1904 a Joseph Malaby Dent began to flesh out an ambitious vision of reprinting classic books in what would be called the Everyman's Library.

Are books of old dry, uninspiring, and hardly suited for the fast-paced world the Industrial Revolution brought to the twentieth century - and what do we call today?

I've read, read aloud to my kids, and listened to audio classics for years. I have to put myself into the shoes of the characters and author, desiring to see from their perspective what was going on in their culture. What of their culture drove the events, the inventions - what were the era's questions?

What if all we read are current era/popular books?

CS Lewis said, "A good rule, after reading a new book, is never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between ... A new book is still on trial and has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down through the ages."

How many of today's books will transcend beyond our culture?

This is what defines Classics: an ability to adapt themselves to various times and places and thus provide a sense of the shared life of humanity over the course of space and time. They stretch, shape, and confront us - and are ever new.

Could books help us rise to another level? Do we sometimes habituate ourselves to companions of small statures? I like to visualize it as standing on the shoulders of others, a great cloud of witnesses, for a better view. Reading can take us away from ourselves to where we can step back and see the whole, instead of just 'me, myself, and I', and self-success thinking.

Maybe the more books we can live in, we could be more rehearsed in life: knowing the stage, recognizing the plots and props - having tried out many characters and scenarios. With my kids I thought of the unencumbered time they had to invent their own images, explore thier own fantasies, to create their own possibilities - with both books and movies. They seemed able to get on with meaningful living when they left the nest of home.

Someone said, "In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read ... It is not true that we can have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."

"A good book is not problem-centered; it is people-centered. It reveals how to be a human being and what the possibilities of life are; it offers hope," wrote Gladys Hunt in her Honey for a Child's Heart, speaking about how many books are agenda driven, with many children's books being moralizing and sermonette style stories. These do not touch the heart.

"The importance of poetry and novels is that the Christian life involves the use of the imagination - after all, we are dealing with the invisible [like God]. And imagination is our training in dealing with the invisible - making connections, looking for plot and character."

- Eugene Peterson