Thursday Thirteen #3: Concert DOs and DON'Ts

In the spring of 2004, a number of things just went right that allowed me to actually leave home overnight to attend a concert by 2/3 of my favorite band that a friend of mine put on about seven hours down the road at his church. The 2 of 3 of the current 77s lineup that made it are known as 7&7 Is, or just Mike Roe and Mark Harmon. It was ostensibly a youth event, but the middle-aged fan base had all the serious fun after the kids filed out at their regularly scheduled time.

1. DO make your desires known to God about attending the show after it's announced as you experience a particularly tender moment in prayer about the rather difficult way your life has gone. It won't kill you if He says no, and He just might say, "YES"!

2. DO ask all your friends to pray with you about whether you should go. You'll be amazed how stuff can come together when something is supposed to happen!

3. DO have the biggest bonus you've ever gotten from the company show up two weeks before the show as you're trying to decide if you have enough money to go.

4. DON'T get so wound up in the departure details that you forget to take the bonus check to the bank. It will cost you a bit in overdraft fees later.

5. DO enjoy the trip down in the sweetest ride you've ever owned.


(This isn't the actual item, but is also a very nice black 1989 Buick Skylark.)

6. DO get excited about seeing your cyberfriends in person for the first time. Take them some good teaching materials to help them with the concerns about which you've been posting and praying.

7. DON'T insist on carrying all five of your bags full of books and tapes and your great outfit to your motel room at once because you get there later than you'd planned and are missing part of the pre-show get-together. You may get to see the show with a screaming headache!

8. DO make sure that you get a picture of the fork by the road before you leave, or nobody will believe that it was there.


(Notice that I did say, "The fork BY the road").

9. DO agree to run your buddy's very nice digital camera so that he can battle with the temperamental soundboard, and get as many pictures of the show as possible. Get brave and go right up to the edge of the stage, like you own the place!

10. DO stop shooting long enough to whip out your keys for the traditional multiple-sets-of-keys audience participation sound effects during the intro to "Snake", and to watch some amazing guitar work on the bridges without distraction.

11. DON'T walk in front of the video camera because you're no longer looking where you're going, and have the back of your head needlessly immortalized for posterity.

12. DON'T try to catch another one of your buddies with a camera as he trips and falls in your general direction. The difference in proportions say that you couldn't do anything to help the situation, and he's tough enough to take it.

13. DO somehow manage to sit on the same end of the table with the lead singer at the after-show dinner for the band and serious fans. It will allow you to catch up on prayer request updates, have a good single parent conversation, give him the wind-up dinosaur you brought along for his daughter's dashboard dinosaur collection, and generally serve as another reason to believe that God put you with this cool bunch of people for a purpose.

God sets the lonely in families,
he leads forth the prisoners with singing....(Ps. 68:6a)




Below is a clip from a video taken that night. The song is their version of "Denomination Blues", a song originally released by Washington Phillips in the late 1920s.

Wordless Wednesday: God's Art #2

Torch

From dancing to free-falling
With strength already spent,
The signal fire of victory
Becomes a torch for the descent.

When do the depths take over?
When does darkness eat the light?
What is left but sleeping
When surrounded by the night?

Sundance throught the lattice
Opens forward-looking eyes.
Sundance on the water
Calls me to rise and come outside.

Strong, like Sun above,
Soft, like mother's love.



Ps. 139:8
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

Is. 50:10
Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.

John 1:4, 5.9a, 14
In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness....The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world....
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Rom. 8:37-39
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.


What a thought: God carries a torch for us when we've fallen out of love with our own existence, from which we can reignite!

Six (ONLY six?) Quirky Things About Me

I've been tagged by mom huebert of Chocolate After Supper to produce a list of six quirky things about me. Of course, my first reaction was--ONLY six?!

I took my cue on where to start from mom huebert's list (see #1, #4, and #6). Some of those things certainly sounded familiar to me.

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1. I love school, too. I not only loved it as a child, but have loved it as an adult. It looks to me like a big gateway to hope and endless possibilities. I'm presently working with some folks to see if we can put together some funding that will allow me to return for yet more school for a career that will better suit the present circumstances.

2. I do have an Associates Degree, but usually have to explain what it is when I mention that my major was Nondestructive Testing. For those who've never seen friends or family setting up a radiation perimeter around their isotope camera, it involves using non-invasive test methods to determine the integrity of production parts. The methods include ultrasound, X-ray or gamma source film exposure, and some cool electromagnetic things that don't have hospital equivalents, since not many people are made of steel.

3. My left eye doesn't dilate much because of scarring from some inflammations. If I walk too quickly though a change in lighting, I'll not have enough time to adjust and will run into things ahead and to my left. I've never seen it, obviously, but I'd bet it's pretty funny to watch!

4. I also am heartbroken by mismatches between words and actions,particularly when the failure to reconcile them is mine. I just got an e-mail from a friend who's currently involved in prison ministry that commented on her can't-take-it-anymore frustration with churches that form action committees for poverty and isolation issues, but never actually do much of anything for people. A board meeting in three weeks that may or may not yield assistance won't help someone who'll have their utilities shut off the day after tomorrow. God, grow us all up beyond the stage of being clouds without water.

5. My Myers-Briggs personality type is the INTJ (Introverted-Intuitive-Thinking-Judging). A counselor that I spoke with yesterday agreed that it's a rare type in itself, and probably particularly so for women. The women cited as being INTJs were people like nuclear physicist Dr. Lise Meitner and philosopher Ayn Rand, who made a career out of blowing off social convention. Reading some of the descriptions of the type have helped me understand some of the painful communication breakdowns that have taken place in my life. I still can't figure out why girls travel to bathrooms in herds, for example. It's a little easier for me to appeal to the State Director of Health and Human Services to get my mother health benefits that had been denied than it is to hug her, partly because I can better understand the functional imperative of the former to her well-being. I love people and spend a lot of my time working in their behalf, but in behind-the-scene ways like prayer and networking, and with the one-on-one listening and reflecting sessions. I seem to have resources that match needs show up in ways that make me feel like I was steered toward them. I feel like a divine bureaucrat sometimes. I probably wouldn't qualify for social director.

6. Like mom huebert, I spend quite a bit of time composing stories or poems in my head when I'm doing things that don't require a lot of concentration. Most don't make it into print because I don't write them down soon enough, but the flight of fancy in itself is an entertaining way to keep the dust off of the unused brain cells.

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Next, I post the rules, to be repeated by the next wonderfully quirky person on their blog:

~Link to the person that tagged you
~Post the rules on your blog
~Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself
~Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs
~Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website


Then, I name some people whose uniqueness I would like to celebrate (although I might not make it to six):

Maria at Jubilee on Earth
Cindy at Notes in the Key of Life
MiKael at MiKael's Mania - Arabian Horses
and My Clouds, My Storms....
Pastor Parato at Minister's Musings

Thursday Thirteen #2: We are Siamese, if You Please

I used to own two cats that lived up to the reputation that Siamese have for being unusual personalities. Between Ilse and Hannelore (or Hani, as she was known to her fan club) and their people, I came up with thirteen unique quirks.

1. Ilse loved cantaloupe. I didn't know that cats ate fruit.

2. Ilse DID NOT love yogurt. She tried it once, and sat there licking her top lip for at least ten minutes to try to get rid of it.

3. Hani was traumatized by the sound of silverware being put away. She would scream and run for cover when the clanking started.

4. The first endearing thing that Hani did the week that she came home as a six-week-old kitten, besides making Ilse hiss and circle her, was to run up the drapes and watch us from the top of the rod.

5. When she finally got too heavy to climb the drapes, she took to sitting in that big picture window and chewing out the blue jays that would swoop by to irritate her with an un-catlike MAT-MAT-MAT-MAT ratcheting sound.

6. Ilse got irritated by people behavior at times. When she did, she'd run at the offender, pivot on her front legs, mule-kick them in the shin with surprising force, and then regather herself and run for said cover.

7. They had a set bedtime routine. Ilse would lay between my (or Mom's) knees, and Hani curled up right under whomever's chin. She'd roll over onto your face, if you'd let her.

8. Hani had herself well-positioned to do the 5 a. m. wake up call, which usually consisted of licking an eyelid and MROWWWWRing cat breath directly into our noses.

9. Ilse, who detested Hani for the first two weeks or so after she came, one day changed her mind and decided to adopt her. One day, we found Ilse tucking Hani into her side, and maybe letting her fake-nurse a little since she was Mom-cat size and probably reminded her of Mom-cat. They spent the next 13 years napping that way, minus the pseudo-nursing.

10. We thought that qualified Ilse to be a Mom-cat. We took her to her appointment to become a mother, and she decided to practice abstinence instead. Actually, she practiced abstinence, slicing, and dicing. We were very grateful that the tom still had both eyes when we got her out of there, and had them both spayed after that.

11. Ilse was the bright one. I think she had a slide rule in her head. She didn't chase mice--she calculated their trajectory and triangulated onto their projected path.

12. Hani was a bit more....cerebrally challenged. She would sometimes get this wide-eyed look when you tossed her the string, as though she needed to have the game explained first, again. She would also walk through the house letting the world know that something wasn't quite right with her distinctive, somewhat nasal MWAAAOOOOWWWWRRRRRRR. It was generally tough to get to the bottom of the problem, leading us to believe that she wasn't sure what it was either.

13. This is actually behavior on the part of Ilse and Hani's people, and is somewhat poignant as well as a little amusing now that we've gotten some distance from it.

My Mom became their caretaker when I moved to a place that wouldn't allow me to keep them. They were her companions as I slogged through my weird marriage, and she had such guilt when the time came to put them down because of the ravages of old age that it aggravated some preexisting health conditions and she spent a few days in the hospital. My aunt, trying to be careful not to put her through any more heartache, picked them up from the vet and put them in her freezer until Mom could tell her where to bury them. In the meantime, Thanksgiving rolled around, and one of her daughters that had come home for the holiday went to the freezer for some pre-Thanksgiving supper, and....

Don't worry--they're lying safely under her willow tree.

Wordless Wednesday--God's Art #1

A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Isaiah 11:6
"The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them."


I have had a sort of a prayer and exhortation relationship, mostly via the Internet, with a number of people over the years. Taking a cue from Jesus, I like to use images and stories that can communicate a point in a way that's easy to grasp. Two stories that I like to reference to illustrate a point are the fable "Stone Soup" and the fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes". Before putting together this blog entry, I went to look up both stories to make sure that I was quoting them correctly, and found to my amazement that the description of the first story cited the other as an opposite theme! It reminded me of the following description of the seemingly upside-down kingdom of God found in Matt. 19:30: "But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first."

"The Emperor's New Clothes" is perhaps better-known. It tells about an emperor who hired two itinerant taylors to make him a new set of clothes. Due to his insecurity and dependence on the approval of others, he believed their claim that the cloth was so fine that it couldn't be detected by anyone who was stupid or unfit for their position, and pretended to be able to see the cloth lest he be exposed as a fraud. He went so far as to carry his bluff that he could see the clothes to the extent of participating in a parade down the village's main street in his birthday suit. Everyone else also played the game, except for a little child who declared the obvious--the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes!

"Stone Soup" is also about travellers who also tell creative stories. They drag into a village hungry and looking for help. Unfortunately, they've happened onto a place that's fallen on hard times, and no one wants to share what little they have horded away with each other, much less with strangers. The travellers start a pot in the center of the square, and toss a "magic" stone into it that somehow promises a fantastic pot of soup. It could, however, use a little something to dress it up a bit. First one, and then another, of the villagers extract their hidden soup ingredients until the whole village has a pot of soup greater than the sum of its parts.

There is a third story that also comes to mind that's supposed to illustrate the difference between heaven and hell. For all practical purposes, it sounds more like the intended difference between the kingdom of God and the world:

A man dreamed that he was taken by an angel to view both heaven and hell. His eyes were opened to them both, and he was astounded to find that they looked identical at first glance! He was very troubled and asked the angel to explain. In both places, a large number of people were seated at a huge banquet table filled with food--but their hands were bound behind them so that no one could eat.

The angel urged him to look more closely, where he saw the difference: the people in hell stared sadly at their food without eating, while those in heaven clumsily but effectively were able to feed the people next to them and be fed in turns by lifting their forks with their mouths to feed the one next to them.

All of us are limited by circumstance, challenge, or some other hindrance. We can either close in our ourselves in desperation to hold onto what little we have until our lives are perfect and we feel completely secure, or choose to be taught to participate in the compassion of God by allowing Him to show us someone to whom we can offer help or comfort, however imperfectly. They may offer some back then, or later, or not be able to do so, but our reward from God will be seen in some other way. Participating in His nature is reward in itself, but scripture shows us how compassion was intended to be expressed between us in practical ways. As the earth groans more as His day approaches, we may need to find greater depths of sharing His character and sharing what's in our spiritually and naturally in our hand. I can attest to the fact that even clumsy attempts by His body to reach toward each other bring a strong sense of His presence. "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:20). He can't be looking for something so complicated that it's beyond us, because He said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mk. 10:14b)


Luke 10:21
"At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure."