First Snow

It has been a dreary week and a half. A virus had invaded my life, robbing me of a healthy birthday, attendance at a baby shower, and shopping at a craft fair with Gretchen. All my creative energies had vanished as I hibernated day after dreary day waiting for the coughing and sneezing and aching to loose its grip on me. Bah. Then it started snowing last evening. And I ventured out in it with Julia and Dog. And Julia, Derek, and Shawn ventured out for appetizers and ice cream at Friendly's. And I read in the stillness of the greatroom in the midst of the falling snow. And I began to feel human again.

The coughing woke me early again today. My usual ritual. Today I didn't mind. Today I had intended to wake early, to not miss the magic of early morning snow. First snow. Awake before dawn, I peered out the bedroom window hopefully. Yes, the wind had remained calm. The blanket of snow rested sleepily on the trees, undisturbed. I donned my thick, insulating, L.L. Bean bathrobe and slipped my feet into winter boots waiting hopefully by the door since last evening's venture outside. Camera in hand I met the sunrise, thankful for a private back yard in my odd attire.

The sun is now bright in the sky and chunks of snow like white apples fall from every tree. The jays are hurrying to and from the suet cage, recharging their spent energy. The beauty may be melted away by this afternoon, but the magic of the morning has recharged my energy. I suspect today will be the turning point. I already feel a wellspring of creativity flooding my virus taxed brain. I am on the mend. Finally. And the world is bright and new and waiting.

From the snug greatroom the wonderland of snow beckons

Sunrise begins over the shrouded back yard

A brightening wintry sky

A snowbound bird haven

All snug in their beds

Veteran's Day

We would all be remiss to fail in remembering our veterans today and the valorous service they have given to all of us and to the causes of freedom worldwide. May God hold each of them in His hand and may He bless them for their service on this day of remembrance.

This photo of Earle's father was take when he was barely seventeen. He served his country during World War II in the Pacific aboard the aircraft carriers USS Sangamon and USS Midway. We salute you today for your service, Gus, and hope the year ahead is filled with all the wonderful freedoms you and your generation procured for all of us!

Updates of All Sorts

I have been sick the last couple of days with a sore throat and slight fever which has now turned into a nasty cold. Having been couch/bed bound a good deal of the time I have managed to do a little reading but that is about all. I had to miss our neighbor's baby shower on Saturday, but I was able to drag myself out last night for a few hours to hear Julia's boyfriend Derek preach a sermon at the evening service at his church. He did a great job. I was glad I was able to go, but by the end of the evening I was "done in".

I've finished That hideous Strength, the third book of Lewis's space trilogy. While distinct from the other two in the series, it ties everything together in the end. A good read. I am also finishing a book on church history that I started years ago. Since I've pulled it back out Earle has shown an interest in reading it too. We're sharing the book. We are also reading Shepherds Abiding aloud to each other. We've read pretty much Jan Karon's whole Mitford series of Father Tim aloud to each other over the years. They are like old friends and although it has been a few years since we read the last one, now that we are into the story it seems like just yesterday. The characters have become fresh again in our minds and the warm feelings of becoming a part of that sleepy North Carolina town have begun to transform our little world once again. I've also ordered some Christmas books from Amazon and have some others requested at the library. On those lists are: Christmas at Fairacre, Letters from Father Christmas, Starlight in Tourrone, and Two from Galilee; a Love Story. Then, when the holiday books have been read I will finally make my way through Sophie's World.

Earle's domestic side has been showing lately and it has been refreshing! After coming back from Maine with a recipe from his brother-in-law he whipped us up a fabulous batch of Paula Deen's Chipotle Chicken Chowder. I may have to request this again soon. Then, on Saturday he filled our big, orange Tupperware bowl to the rim with homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They have been disappearing fast. Hey, oatmeal is a breakfast food. I think i need to get sick and stay out of the kitchen more often!

On Sunday afternoon Shawn participated in a fencing demonstration at a local high school. Guess what's on his Christmas list this year? Yeah, fencing equipment. I think his instructor looks a tad like Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise in The Next Generation, don't you? Picard was also a fencing aficionado as well as an avid consumer of Earle Gray tea. A Renaissance captain indeed.

I feel an art update is needed soon. Look for Shawn's continuing progress with Artistic Pursuits, some examples of his walking sticks, and a drawing lesson using pastel that I have been meaning to share for some time now. My next project will be a painting. The canvas is ready and the photo I am using for reference has been selected. Also, each year I have made it a tradition to give each of my relatives a handmade Christmas ornament. That project will have to be underway soon as well. I just have to decide what medium to make them with this year. Past ornaments have been either painted wood or polymer clay. Maybe felt will be playing a role this season.

Silver Maples

Sixteen. I counted them yesterday and yet I can hardly believe it. Sixteen medium to large silver maples on one plot of land less than an acre in size.

Silver maples are one of those "messy" trees, the kind that shed branches with each passing gust of summer wind and shed large leaves all fall, but they are also beautiful trees, covered in lichens, dotting our front lawn and lining our back yard on both sides with their golden leafed brilliance and delicate, swaying branches.

They are a haven for the birds. The mourning doves frolic in them trying to catch the eye of their mate during courting season. The chickadees take off and land from the low branches on their way back and forth from the feeders. The orioles hang nests like ornaments and sing sweet lullabies from the branches. The jays and cardinals hold noisy meetings high in the treetops. The catbirds tease our felines with their mocking calls heard always just around the next corner of the house.

Yesterday was a day for enjoying the autumn warmth and cleaning up the falling leaves our maple friends have left us on the front lawn. Earle and Shawn take turns raking up piles of golden treasure and carrying their bundles to the truck. Our silver maples' leaves now mingle with their cousins from other yards at the green dump. Other years they have been allowed to nestle into our brushy area in back of the house, but the carpet there is growing a bit thick, so off they went this year.

Soon the maples with be bare, they will don their winter snow coats and wait for spring when their energies can once again be put into making leaves, new leaves for another year's annual father-son raking in the golden sunlight of a perfect fall day.

Our lone Japanese maple glowing scarlet against the graying horizon of the late fall landscape

Percy, one of the blog's namesakes, just wanted to sit among the fallen leaves by the back deck and pose for his autumn photo shoot

Away She Goes

Around lunch time today the truck came to gather up our van we donated to the National Kidney foundation. Kidney cars, as they are called, are taken to an auto auction house. The Kidney Foundation uses the money from the sale and the person donating the vehicle takes a tax write-off in the amount the car sells for. It is a good deal all around. Any progress the foundation can make towards helping people with kidney disease is wonderful.

My brother Tom is a kidney dialysis patient. The treatment saves his life, yet burdens him with a tremendous time commitment hooked up to the machine as well as a cycle of feeling some better after a treatment, then lousy the day before another one. I pray, and hope you will join me, that new treatments will be found and new ways will be discovered to both protect our kidneys and help them to heal when they are damaged. I'm sure Tom would appreciate your prayers as well.

Winching the van onto the truck

The donated vehicle that was on the flatbed when he pulled in becomes a tow-behind to make room for the van

Why Church?

Someone asked me the other day why I go to church, in essence, what's in it for me, how does it help me to have a better life.

There is certainly companionship, a traveller through life can always use the support of others. We were not meant to be an island unto ourselves.

Also, we were created by God, made in his image, for a purpose. We are to have a relationship with him. Imagine, the Creator of everything there is wants to get to know me and me Him. I am but a speck of dust on an insignificant planet in a nondescript spiral galaxy among millions of other galaxies, yet He wants me to know Him. Who could refuse an invitation like that?

But He isn't out there, He is everywhere, He is inside me. You know that voice, the one that keeps nudging you on to find something new to fill that longing within your soul. You can try to fill it with many things in this world: friends, activities, work, things, but the shape is all wrong. After a while the newness that seemed just right begins to rub the wrong way like a pair of shoes that seemed comfortable in the store but give you blisters on the backs of your heels when you've walked in them all day. Nothing of this world can fill that longing. That hole is God-shaped.

Church isn't a building, it is a relationship and a community. What's in it for me? A chance to experience being surrounded by other Christians, to support them and be supported in return. The opportunity to join together with those other Christians to worship the Creator of the universe, jointly. To give Him the honor He deserves and to give it publicly and with a loving heart. Sometimes it isn't enough to pray, to think about praise and honor in your own head. Sometimes it is necessary to come together with others, to become one voice just as the millions of galaxies of the universe He created sing His praises together. One of them doesn't step out of its orbit and say, "Look at me, I'm special, more special than the others."No. When we do that we bring the focus of worship to ourselves. In the corporate body of the church the focus remains on the one being praised.

I told my friend church can be a wonderful place, but be sure you will not find perfection there. There is not perfection on the Earth. We are all fallen creatures, imperfect is so many ways. Church isn't about celebrating our perfection, but His perfection. If we were not broken we would have no need for Jesus as our savior. If we could get it all right by ourselves we would be gods- perfect, whole, all powerful. I am certainly no god.

Sometimes church is a frustrating place to go to. There are people we don't especially like and truths we don't especially want to hear. Maybe we'd rather have different music or a different color carpet. Perhaps our preference is for guitars, but this Sunday we sing His praises accompanied by the piano or organ. As C.S. Lewis said, "We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with."

People often criticize Christians as being hypocrites. How can we claim we are Christians and "saved" when we are still so imperfect? What's so good about that? There is the expectation that churches are full of people that are somehow "better" than the rest or at least think they are. Really, churches are filled with people that know and freely admit they are no better than anyone else, they freely admit their need for Jesus to have died to pay for their sins so they can have the relationship with God that He always intended.

That's what's in it for me, a place to come together with others who are imperfect like myself and let go of the burdens this world puts on us to be perfect and to lay those burdens in the hands of a loving God who gave up everything in order that we, in our brokenness, could know his love and forgiveness. It is not a place to worship myself and my success and a human being. When we are free of the burden of trying to perfect ourselves by our own power then we can really live. Everything we do takes on new meaning. We no longer do them for ourselves alone, but for Him and for others out of gratefulness and thanksgiving and love.

God beckons us to worship because he knows we need it and we need Him. Church is not the building, it is the people and the experience. It is the chance to fulfill the words of the Bible:

28One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: "Which is most important of all the commandments?"
29-31Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these."
32-33The religion scholar said, "A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that's better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!" Mark 12:28-33

The Creator of the whole universe doesn't need our worship on Sunday mornings, he knows we need it. How wonderful to know He cares for this tiny speck of dust as if it was the most precious jewel in the whole universe. How can I not be grateful and praise Him in return?

Happy Halloween

Last night we had our token three groups of trick-or-treaters. They were young kids from our street and cute as can be!

Shawn helped hand out candy at Deborah's house to about a hundred "kids" of varying sizes and ages. It seems the older teens, young adults, and even middle aged adults hit that neighborhood. Since we are on a dead end street up a hill we don't get neighborhood extras.

Julia and Derek went to visit some friends in the town he is from and ended up playing The Farming Game well into the night. These older teens/young adults give the game rave reviews.

Of course everyone is going to be enjoying a nice sugar high today from all the leftover candy!

Here are some pics of Julia and Shawn and their pumpkins. They made a perfect welcoming committee at our door last night.

Pre-carving

Santa's little helper is early this year?!

It pays to have long arms

The friendly giant!

Toothless (almost) grin

The welcoming committee