Properly Seasoned

I've been stuck in the wrong season. Thanksgiving day seemed like a measly celebration this year. Since I arrived, I've been living in a season of being thankful and grateful. Meanwhile the air got colder and the days shorter. Where was winter?? Somehow life was changing at the wrong speed or the gears were being shifted out of order. I was ready to move on, but the rest of the Earth was lagging behind. The thing that finally helped make it feel more like winter was the first snowfall that came on Monday night. I was out to dinner with the office ladies (aka, girl's night out) and just as we were leaving one of them said it was snowing. Sheer delight flashed into my eyes and across my face. My entire day changed when I heard there were flakes coming down.

I need the change of seasons. It's what flavors life and it's how life passes and flows for me. To miss a season is to miss a part of life or to lose part of the delicate balance of taste in a dish. It is the complexity of life that makes it taste so good. Here's to snowflakes that turn your day/week around and people who make you laugh enough to forget how you felt before.

Today's seasoning at the Border's Cafe is young single women reading books and older men passing time by reading or sleep-reading.

Camouflaged

Remember when you were younger and wished you had super powers? Okay, maybe you still do. I think most people wish they could fly or have super strength or have x-ray vision. The one power I never remember hearing much about was being invisible. I suppose maybe because it's not really a super power. It's pretty easy to do in the everyday. You don't need to be anything special to disappear. In fact it's helpful if you're more of a nothing because then you blend in better with the background.

There are times when I like being invisible. Today is not one of them. It's always the little things that make you feel that way too. Like forgetting to give you a bulletin or not remembering to tell you that you were responsible for making sure you had prayers to read because you've never had to prepare them before. Perhaps it would hurt less if I hadn't spent most of my life on the fringes.

Simmer Down Now

That was one of the favorite tag lines to a kids show when I watched Nikelodeon. The figure was a popsicle stick with googley eyes, marker lines for a face and a bow tie. I've been pondering that phrase the last few days and thinking about Sabbath. I try fervently to take my day off seriously and to protect it from work that might encroach. Usually I end up going out and doing something fun on my day off. This is good and renewing and refreshing, but should I be "resting" more?

What does it look like to rest? Should I be lounging on the couch more watching TV? Should I try to bring back more silent prayer time? How do you not do things (rest) while not feeling like a slacker or like you're missing out on a good opportunity to have fun? How do you do less but still have a full, busy, fun life?

Make me to lie down in green pastures Lord. Slow me down and make me stop so I can just breathe.

Ketchup

Life has been flying by the last couple weeks. Today I arrived back from a lovely trip across the state of WA to Wenatchee to visit Amanda. We had so much fun, why did we wait so long to connect??? Hopefully we can be more diligent about getting together the rest of this year. It was wonderful to connect with someone my age and who I know already. Great to share battle wounds and trade war stories from the front lines of internship. Best of all was the drive back today through the Cascade Mountains with the fog, rain, snow, sun; it was all there, even gorgeous rushing waterfalls right out the side of the mountain!!! Does it get better than this??

Just got back from a Silvertips Hockey game up in Everett. So much fun! Haven't been to a game in so long and they won to boot! Even managed to slip in a quick post for my online class.

Tomorrow is a marathon day:
--Attempt to get up early to watch the altar guild set up communion
--First service 7:45am
--Teach 9am and 10:30am
--Move furniture in the sanctuary to accommodate band for night service
--Acquire items needed for service
--Unlock lots of doors for people (i.e. play church host even though I don't know where lots of things are)
--Eat lunch
--Take a nap if I'm lucky (most likely not)
--Finish and set up my millennium goal station for the service
--Find last minute volunteers
--Pull off U2charist 6:30-9pm (read, serve communion)
--Clean up sanctuary
--Go to bed at some point after winding down for the day

So totally up for the challenge!

The Good Rat Race

Teach about Kierkegaard. Meet for coffee Thursday afternoon. Go to a planning session for the U2charist service. Meet with Paul to reflect on life. Cook lunch for staff after staff meeting. Funny how we can break our days down into bits and pieces. Quickly life ebbs and flows away. Especially when you are engaged in doing the "good things" and "fighting the good fight of faith." We are aren't we? We run the good rat race right?

It's amazing how easy it is to get caught up in the details and the doing and to forget about what's important. Such is part of the reason why I have taken to running in the morning and enjoying the silence of the sunrise out the back window of the house where I live. I appreciate mornings more now. There is something holy about the stillness of the morning and the fog as it seeps around you--especially when running. There is much to be said about delight and pleasure in the simple things of life. All too quickly it passes away and is gone. May this day be a moment where the quiet catches you off guard and you are made fully aware of all with which you have been graced and blessed.

Running High

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to run a 5K with a group of people. My competitiveness led me to be with 3 of the guys on the team of 8 as they headed out to the front. Evidently I didn't run as much as I needed to in preparation and I didn't run as far as I thought. The standing around for an hour at the beginning of the day didn't help either. After the large, long hill near the beginning of the race, I lost most of my energy. I ended up walking maybe a 1/2 mile at most.

The obstacles were loads of fun though: crawling through large tubes, portion of a climbing wall, crawling under a cargo net, clanging a cow bell on the edge of the lake and so many more! It was an excellent course and the park we were at was enormous. It'd be neat to go back and run around there again to get a better feel for the lay of the land.

Still feeling pretty good from the run too. I am looking forward to sleeping though. I get the full circuit tomorrow of preaching at all 5 services: 3 on site and 2 off site at nursing homes. Here's hoping the sermon is worth repeating that many times.