Yays

T surprised K by flying home 2 days earlier than expected on her b-day! He sat on her bed and woke her up singing Happy Birthday at midnight. She looked very confused and then hugged hard and long.  In the morning, she considered that it was a dream, but then there was a large hairy thing sleeping on the couch.

The Steelers did cool things tonight like a fake punt. And they dominated the Rams!

D and I got to help deliver Angel Tree gifts tonight.

My sister might come to my end of the state soon, and I adore her. My father-in-law is coming for New Year’s, and I adore him.

I’m done with most of my Write@Home students for a few weeks.

iTunes has cool holiday music for free download, including dramatic readings of Luke 1 and 2.

D bought another couple strings of blue LED lights and they are bluing my world, especially my front lawn. K wrapped lights up railings, hung stockings, and set up the creche inside. The Douglas Fir is in the garage.

Most of my seasonal consumerism has been finished for a while.

Boos

We have not truly, actually, really, in actuality, mailed most of our Xmas gifts.

Willie Parker got hurt! Drat.

*Somebody* failed his driver’s test when he parallel-parked with a back-butt jolt over the curb.

My house is messy.

||||||  lynard

I ran across this poem, which apparently has been used for lyrics by Phil Keaggy, in my work today. The images touched me. Some say the author is anonymous; some attribute Canadian-born Harry Ironside but this seems an odd fit since he was dispensational. Either way, I am grateful for the thoughtful penner. (May he or she forgive me for replacing the King’s English.)

Beneath the blood-stained lintel I with my children stand;
A messenger of evil is passing through the land.
There is no other refuge from the destroyer’s face;
Beneath the blood-stained lintel shall be our hiding place.

The Lamb of God has suffered, our sins and griefs He bore;
By faith the blood is sprinkled above our dwelling’s door.
The foe who seeks to enter does fear that sacred sign;
Tonight the blood-stained lintel shall shelter me and mine.

My Savior, for my dear ones I claim Thy promise true.
The Lamb is “for the household” – the children’s Savior too.
On earth the little children once felt Your touch divine;
Beneath the blood-stained lintel Your blessing give to mine.

O You who gave them, guard them, those wayward little feet,
The wilderness before them, the ills of life to meet.
My mother love is helpless, I trust them to Your care!
Beneath the blood-stained lintel, oh, keep me ever there!

The faith I rest upon You, You will not disappoint;
With wisdom, Lord, to train them, my shrinking heart anoint.
Without my children, Father, I cannot see Your face;
I plead the blood-stained lintel, Your covenant of grace.

Oh, wonderful Redeemer, Who suffered for our sake,
When o’er the guilty nations the judgment storm shall break,
With joy from that safe shelter may we then meet Your eye,
Beneath the blood-stained lintel, my children, Lord, and I.

||||||  lynard

1…..Savoring my first outdoor Thanksgiving meal.

2…..Enjoying three personal, culinary firsts: deep fried turkey (injected with Cajun spices), cranberry-pear pie, and Southern cornbread dressing with giblets. Yums.

3…..Whooshing three laps on Lowe’s Motor Speedway in our rental Passatt. Really! (Pix on tomsgrill)

4…..Wrapping my arms around my firstborn.

5…..Worshiping with Selma Reformed Presbyterian Church.

6…..Learning more about the voting rights struggle in Selma and the RP partcipation in the education and health care of the black community and ministry to the marchers and prisoners.

7…..Eating turnip greens, black-eyed peas, squash and fried chicken in Selma.

8…..Laughing at the Waffle House sign that had its “W” burned out. (There are more Waffle Houses than McDonalds in the South.)

9…..Spying lots of Apple computers on the campus of Belmont University, especially the ones hooked up to various musical instruments.

10…..Hearing the Swedish-Chef-sounding disc jockey on some public radio station near Cincinnati. He mispronounced so many things, including ~~Here is some mucus from a Turkish composer…~~

The one pic is of the beating of marchers in Selma on Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965. The other is the third and successful attempt to march peacefully to Montgomery, Alabama, to demonstrate the need for equity in voting rights. It took five days to reach Montgomery and about 25,000 were in the final count.

The third pic is the Edmund Pettis bridge last week, with the town of Selma in the background. 

Our stop at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Selma.

||||||  lynard

We were missing Marcia, Elizabeth, Bill, David, Lori, Kaela, Meredith, and Ashton, but here is the rest of us G’s…even the long-lost Mr. T from Erskine. It was Mom’s birthday. Wish we could have shared it all with her beside us.

|||||| lynard

Austruck1 asked me about my pop fiction reading. I’m most commonly a historical fiction girl, but my book club shipped me a couple boxes that I didn’t order and I felt bad sending them back—again. 
Reading pop authors was eye-opening.

***The first was Sisters by Danielle Steel, in which four sisters who have various glamorous careers all over the world move to the same city into the same house when one of them undergoes a ground-shaking event. The plot is interesting, but predictable. Steel has become a well-known name but I am under-impressed with her descriptive abilities. She tells me things that I would rather be shown. I want to “see” that Candy (yes, sister of Sabrina, Annie, and Tammy—can you say the short “a” sound?) was anxious and yet committed to her boyfriend. I don’t want to read a sentence that tells me that “Candy was anxious and yet committed to her boyfriend.” Most readers want to think they figure out Candy’s state of mind by how she bites on the end of her pen or tilts her head at her boyfriend.
***Family Tree by Barbara Delinsky is a clever idea: a white couple gives birth to a black baby. Delinsky’s writing is a little better to me. Her character development is more textured and subtle. I don’t always believe her characters’ motivation for behavior, though. I find myself thinking, “He wouldn’t really do that. She wouldn’t say that without realizing the repercussions.” The story takes the reader on some interesting paths about race.
***Innocent in Death by Nora Roberts (writing as J. D. Robb) is a wild ride. I might even read one of her earlier ones in this series. The main character, Eve, is a rough-around-the-edges cop who is investigating the death of a beloved, newly married, male schoolteacher. Because Roberts sets her series in 2060, she doesn’t need to be accurate with all the CSI technology of 2007. She can just make up junk about forenzics! This is genius. She doesn’t spend a lot of time getting lost in futuristic imaginings; she just enjoys the freedom of not having to be realistic by today’s standards. Her characters are believable and well-constructed, though. I didn’t appreciate all the gore and wordliness, but at least more is left to one’s imagination than on television.
***When I began Mother by Linda Ann Rentschler, I thought I had found a book that I could embrace with gusto. I love Rentschler’s subtle humor and dramatic irony. The main character, Mary, is a rather wifty mother of teens who hits a wall in her long-term grief over her mother’s death. Rentschler makes Mary’s erratic and bizarre decisions seem plausible, and I love her for that. But halfway through the book, the reader is asked to swallow a plotline about psychic happenings that is just ridiculous. In a few chapters, Rentschler takes my suspension of disbelief and pretzels it into major doubt. What a disappointment. This could have been such a great story.

Well, I am back to historical fiction, sort of. Diane Ackerman has recently written a novel based on the true life diaries of Antonina Zabinski. She and her husband, Ian, were Christian zookeepers in Warsaw during the Nazi persecution of the Jews. The  Zabinskis were able to save about 300 human lives, because of the Nazi’s own obsession with rare animals. The Zookeeper’s Wife promises to be well written: some challenging vocabulary and little-known cultural facts. I just hope that the presentation of all the intensive research doesn’t dampen the passion of the plot. I want to be swept into the story. We will see.

||||||  lynard

PS—Do you know what Ruth Graham wanted on her tombstone? According to my latest Billy Graham newsletter, she and Billy were traveling down the highway when she saw a sign that she wanted for her epitaph. Billy remembered these words and put them on her grave: “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.”

Therefore, since we are
surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses [the guys in the previous chapter],
let us throw off
–everything that hinders and
–the sin that so easily entangles,
and let
us RUN with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Let
us fix our eyes on Jesus,
the author and perfecter of our faith,
who
for the joy set before him endured the cross,
            scorning its shame,
and
sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men,
           so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

This was the focus of Pastor Bruce’s Lord’s Supper homily yesterday…a message well spoken. I am terrible at running. I am lousy at persevering. I am trying to meditate on this through the coming week. But fixing my eyes on Jesus: I can start there everytime. Reminds me of the refrain:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

OK, one foot in front of the other.

||||||  lynard

L has done a few videos for Student Council, to be shown at Assembly. I thought this recent one about the school’s food drive was a lot of fun. The teacher at the end is a serious-type woman. I’m not sure how L got her to do this. So funny. If you want to see his other videos, search “TCSfalcons” on www.youtube.com.The other one that I enjoy was an advertisement for the High School retreat that features a cameo by ex-teacher Mr. Cowley. He has achieved a legend-like reputation at TCS. Remember him, onRway3?L reminds me of my mom and his Uncle L. He can conceive and visualize an idea, and then make it happen on stage or film. Not my genes.||||||  lynard

Right now HERE, you can name your price for a Paste magazine subscription. As long as you offer them more than a dollar, they will send you a subscription!

The reason I LOVE Paste is that I get a CD of indie music with every issue! At 11 issues, that is a lot of music. They cover a lot of Christian artists without guile, and for the most part the magazine is family friendly (unlike some music rags).

The offer only lasts another week, so if you are interested, get a move on it.

|||||| lynard

L has been doing some solo work, in addition to his We Are Not Rebels jamming. The Skeleton at the Feast is more hip hop sounding and features some beat work by Ben Comin. He classifies it as Industrial/Hip Hop/Rock. The myspace where you can listen to his new stuff is:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=268364098

Another little known fact is that he has been writing for a while for indievisionmusic.com. More recently, he has become a staff writer for:
http://indiemusicstop.com/

You can read one of his current reviews at a sister site:
http://christianrockersonline.blogspot.com/2007/10/cd-review-spoken-spoken.html

D and I caught Steve Vesolich with Martha Jane (the warm-up) at Club Cafe last Saturday on the South Side of Pittsburgh. Both are Geneva College graduates who are gifted folk rock artists. Their lyrics are thoughtful and satisfying, and both have close relationships with their guitars.    The house was packed. They had never shared a stage before, but their performances were strong complements. If you get a chance to look up either one of these musicians, you won’t be disappointed. Steve’s site is:
http://www.myspace.com/stevevesolich
Martha”s site is:
http://www.myspace.com/mjanemusic

||||||  lynard

Our church, instead of its annual Harvest Fest for the neighborhood, had a smaller game night for the kids who come regularly to KidZone on Tuesdays. My parents provided major pizza, and some adults got to spend time with the particular kid for which they regularly pray. Here are some pics:

I had to leave early, as part two of my root canal was today. It would appear that there needs to be a part three, since I have a difficult root and small mouth. The day when I can chew on the left side of my mouth again will be a celebrated event. Pain is a pain.

Happy birthday, Autumn! That is a bright cake…

||||||  lynard

P.S.  I have no idea why some pics turned sideways during the upload. Sorry, but I really don’t care because my tooth hurts and I am grumpy. Turn your monitor on its side, why dontcha?