still waters

Last weekend was full and good. I went to the Spokane Symphony with Jessie at the opera house downtown on Friday night, which was beautiful. Saturday morning, I went to Green Bluff with Chelsea. Green Bluff is a farming community just north of campus, and they are hosting the Apple Festival right now... some farms just have U-Pick fruit, and some have shops, live bands, food, and booths. Chels and I went from farm to farm, with the goal of finding this caramel applesauce that I had had three years ago. We finally found out which farm it was at (Hansen's!) and ended our morning by sitting at a table under a weeping willow and eating warm applesauce with twangy Christmas music playing in the background. It was simple and good. Saturday afternoon, I headed downtown with Jessie and a bunch of her friends from camp and played laser tag. We got owned by a bunch of 8-year-old boys with code names like "phantom" and "what now", but it was really fun.

Sunday morning, Mary and I made breakfast for some Whitworth Choir folks, and then we sang at Whitworth Presbyterian Church. It was wonderful... it seems like no matter what is going on in my life, I can't help but be joyful after we sing. It was my first performance with the Whitworth Choir, but it felt like home. We hung out as a choir afterwards for about an hour (still dressed up in our formalwear) and had our picture taken professionally, and just had a good time doing it. It was, as Mary said today, an honest performance, and I feel like it has set the stage for my week so far.

After I got home on Sunday, I was still running on high from singing. It was a melancholy high, if that's possible... I felt like I was calm and happy, with a subtle undercurrent of joy. So I made myself some tomato soup, curled up with a blanket on the floor in the middle of our living room, and sat. I didn't pray; I didn't read my Bible; I just sat, for what seemed like about an hour, with God. It was beautiful. I finally read some... my passage in Ecclesiastes was 3:1-15, the "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven..." passage. Part of it really stuck out to me, and I kept thinking of the choir as I read it: "I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time." I copied it over onto a notecard, and that was that. I proceeded to go and clean my fishtank.

And then there was today.

Frost.

7am. I rolled out of bed, changed into my jogging clothes, and when I stepped outside there was frost. My breath came out of my mouth in little puffs of cloud. I can't really describe how I felt. I felt like my oatmeal must have felt this morning when it got so excited in the microwave that it just started glopping out over the sides of the bowl. I get the feeling sometimes in choir when we hit a chord just right: it's like a tight knot of joy, somewhere in between my diaphragm and my throat, that's just waiting to bubble over. And nothing else really matters: I'm just content to be in that very moment. So, I went for my run. The frost melted away, and the day turned into one of those crisp, sunny, red-and-golden autumn days. Beautiful.

When I got to choir, Marc had us sit in a big circle and told us that today was going to be a debrief day. He mentioned that one of his favorite passages in the Bible is in Ecclesiastes, when it says there is a time for everything (coincidence? no...) and, moving in a circle, he had everyone share where they were at in life, and then something about yesterday's performance. It was incredible. We only got through about a third of the choir, but I was blown away at how everyone was so open and honest with where they were at in life. Some people cried; some people were joyful. But really hearing from these people, beyond the passer-by dialogue of "howareya?" "fine", was really moving. I was teared up for most of the hour. And I kept thinking: God has made everything beautiful in its time.

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately - what comes after graduation; what a healthy balance is between classes, relationships, and activities; what will motivate me to practice piano about 3x as much as I'm doing now. I've been thinking about confidence, trust, and openness. I've been wondering what my place is.

Today all those issues are still at the back of my mind, but I'm at peace. And at least one of those questions has been answered. My place is here. Now. Today. Living and learning and serving with the people God has put me with, doing the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

Nancy Drew and Winnie-the-Pooh

I babysat for my three little cousins last night. Mary is at that stage where she is talking constantly, but you only occasionally can understand what she's trying to say. And she's so earnest while she's talking to you... it's really sweet. It reminds me of Boo in Monster's, Inc.

Anyway... after dinner, we watched Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin. Maybe it's a sign that I've been in school for too long, or maybe it is just a sign that the Core program at Whitworth is doing its job... but the whole time we were watching it, I kept thinking things like "Mmm, this scene really illustrates the faith vs. reason debate" or "Wow. You can tell from this song that Pooh is an empiricist, but Rabbit is an authoritarian." Yeah, I know. Nerdy.

Then, later, one of the things the kids wanted me to read to them before bed was a chapter out of a Nancy Drew book. So I read them chapter one of Nancy Drew and the Bungalow Mystery. As I was reading, I came across this sentence: "Just then, Nancy saw a giant wave bearing down on them. She met it head on, hoping to ride the crest, but a deluge of water almost inundated the girls..." I had to stop reading because I was laughing. Deluge!? Inundated!? I'm sure I didn't know what 'deluge' meant until SAT prep tests, and I wasn't sure what inundated meant until now. And the kids probably think that Nancy was hoping to ride a tube of toothpaste. All I have to say is this: people just don't write like this for kids anymore, and it's a sad thing. No wonder they're struggling to bring WASL scores up.

Just so you know...
deluge- a great flood of water; inundation; flood
inundated- to cover with water, especially floodwaters
crest- the foamy top of a wave

clothespins

I bought a package of wooden clothespins at Target the other day. This was written on the package:

there's something rather magical about ironing. you take your rumpled-up life. spritz a little water on it. run an iron over it. and presto. everything's new again. the wrinkles of yesterday have vanished right before your very eyes. and there you are. looking fresh. feeling sharp. ready to take on the world.

Nevermind the bad grammar, lack of capitalization, and the fact that this little ditty would have been more appropriate on the packaging for, say, an iron than on packing for clothespins. What really snagged my attention as I was reading this was the fact that I was reading, in essence, the salvation story (with a few key changes, of course). Jesus takes our rumpled-up life, atones for it with his blood and gives us the Holy Spirit, and presto. Everything's new again. The sin of yesterday has vanished, and there we are. A clean start, feeling sharp, ready to take on the world.

I just think it's kind of ironic (no pun intended)... people are looking for salvation on clothespins, but they're not going to find it there.

it's the little things...

Blessings come in all shapes and sizes.

I've had a crazy last couple of weeks, and I haven't gotten around to getting quarters so I can do laundry. This morning as I was getting dressed, I was a little worried because I thought I had used my last clean pair of undies yesterday. But, lo and behold, as I was rooting around trying to unearth something to wear, I found clean pair hiding in my sock drawer.

Ain't life grand?