A Road Less Travelled

 Providence held it’s first annual Reformation Day Faire last weekend. Alas, I did not get any pictures of my costume so you will have to imagine just how stunning, elaborate, and otherwise regal it was… Okay, it was actually a plain peasant costume made out of an old sheet, but I did really like how it turned out. Maybe I can get a picture of it to post later.

Since I got a bunch of pictures I decided to upload them elsewhere and provide a link. That way those who are interested can browse through my average photography of spectacular costumes–yes, I really do mean spectacular this time, some of them were quite elaborate–while those with dial-up can choose to forgo the graphic heavy experience.

Since we were missing our first-string photographer I made an extra effort to capture some of our great historical moments on film–err, electrons.  I  did try not to post any the unflattering pictures I accidentally snapped, but if you find a picture of yourself that you don’t want posted, or just don’t want any photographic evidence of your existence. let me know and I’ll remove the picture(s).

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Yesterday Raquel and I took a self-guided tour of Peoria Heights. That is to say we bopped into our favorite stores and spent money. We had been planning this outing for a week or more and it was as much fun as I’d hoped. But before we got to Peoria Heights we ate lunch at a new restaurant called Zim’s.

I can’t say how long Zim’s has been open because I don’t really notice that sort of thing, but Seth and Crystal went there for the first time on Tuesday for coffee and a sticky bun and said we should try it out. It’s in Campus Town on the corner of Main Street and University right across the street from One World. It’s like a combination greasy spoon diner and nifty cafe.

I liked the décor. The walls were a light, light orange and all the furniture was black. There’s a bar just like I would want in a diner except it’s jet black and looks wooden. I thought about asking to sit at the bar, but I didn’t think of it in time so we sat at a table. It’s small area so if you’re looking for someplace to have a private talk I wouldn’t recommend Zim’s, but for a simple lunch it was good.

The food was fairly standard diner fare. It wasn’t great, but it was good and the prices are resonable. We ordered a spinach dip and chips appetizer and then split a 1/3 pound cheeseburger with an extra side. So I ended up with some spinach dip and chips, half a cheeseburger, and an order of fries. It was the perfect amount of food for right then. The cheeseburger was cooked to order, the fries were yummy and the spinach dip was hot and creamy. And all in all we spent about fourteen dollars.

I was very impressed with service. Our waitress was friendly and fun, though she obviously had a lot of customers at the moment so some things were a little slow. There was a man who I’m guessing was the manager or the owner who would just circulate around the room lending a hand here, answering a question there or helping clear a table. What impressed me most about the service, though, had almost nothing to do with food or eating. There was an older couple sitting at a table across the aisle from us who were down from Chicago. They needed to get from Zim’s to somewhere else and were a little lost. They asked the manager or owner or whoever he was for directions, but had trouble following his directions. He left their table and came back with MapQuest directions of how to get from there to where they needed to go complete with a map and then walked it through with them. I was quite impressed.

Seth and Crystal went to Zim’s this morning for breakfast. We agreed that on a four star scale we would give Zim’s a two and a half. It’s not great, but it is a solid good. I can easily see myself walking down there with one of the children and having a special lunch or breakfast. We’d probably sit at the bar. To quote a phrase we’ve been using around here lately Zim’s doesn’t bring the awesome, but it does bring the quite good. So, if you happen to be in the neighborhood you should stop in and try it out. Maybe I’ll see you there.

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On the occasion of relief from a headache and a beautiful day.

O God the Perfectly Gracious
Who brought the sun out today and makes the leaves sing
Grant me words enough to praise You for Your kindness to me
That I might give You worthy praise and thanks
In Your Son’s good name I pray
Amen

For more information on what I’m talking about click here.

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Recently we have started having door knob problems. Specifically, the bathroom door knob likes to fall apart. I go to open the door and end up with half the knob in my hand and the other half on the other side of the door. Yesterday Noah tried to open the door. He turned the knob, pulled and it fell off in his hand. Before I could say anything he said in a disgusted tone of voice, “Ugh, Noah!” Then he turned to me and said with that annoyed “I’m telling on you” lilt in his voice “Titi Gaby, Noah broke it!” If only he was this hard on himself when it mattered.

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This is the first part of East to West, by Casting Crowns. The rest of the lyrics are here.

Here I am, Lord, and I’m drowning in your sea of forgetfulness
The chains of yesterday surround me
I yearn for peace and rest
I don’t want to end up where You found me
And it echoes in my mind, keeps me awake tonight
I know You’ve cast my sin as far as the east is from the west
And I stand before You now as though I’ve never sinned
But today I feel like I’m just one mistake away from You leaving me this way

Jesus, can You show me just how far the east is from the west
‘Cause I can’t bear to see the man I’ve been come rising up in me again
In the arms of Your mercy I find rest
‘Cause You know just how far the east is from the west
From one scarred hand to the other

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 So, there’s this game called Blue Moon. The oversimplification of the rules goes like this: You play cards, trying to beat the number of the last card played by your opponents. (There are various things you can do to boost those numbers, but this is the oversimplification, remember?) You continue until one person retreats, and the next round starts. Every time you retreat your opponent gets a point.

Naturally, I have always played this game as though every round were the deciding factor. I eke out every last drop from my hand of cards, hoping against hope that this bare minimum play will  be the last straw for my opponents resources. Never give up! Never surrender! Never retreat!

And then it occurred to me that I could retreat before it got to the point. I could let my opponent win a battle in order to put myself in a more strategic position for the war. Retreat before it’s a dire necessity? Whoa. Weird.

This is when I discovered that I don’t like to retreat. I tried it, and it worked well as a strategy. But it felt wrong. It felt cowardly to flee the battle when I still had resources at my disposal. It felt like surrender. This probably says something about me in general, but I’m not sure what. Consider it a random observation.

This post was going to end there until I realized that this all sounded vaguely familiar. Hmm. You’d think I would have  connected that up a lot sooner. Except that moving to the country has never felt retreatist to me. To follow the analogy, it feels more like stratigic deployment of troops to secure supply lines and provide training camps and defensible bases of operation.

It does make me wonder though how this does show up in the way I think. What in real life would I consider to be ‘retreating’? And is it actually strategically sensible or not?

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 The funeral happened at the small country church that Grandma and Grandpa attended. (Historical note: This happens to be the same church where my parents got married.) It was crowded enough that they put up folding chairs in the back, a few people were standing in the back without a seat, and the only seat I could find was in the very front row. It was the best funeral I’ve ever been to.

 I’d forgotten to bring in my spare packs of tissues, but Eva and I shared the pack I did have, and it sufficed. There was even a tissue left at the end of the funeral.

 My grandpa planned out his funeral ten years ago, after having a stroke and thinking he was going to die soon. He included hymns to be sung, a request for his grandchildren to all sing a song together, a charge to the family, the topic and length of the funeral sermon, and a note reminding us to contact Ladies Aid to provide the lunch afterwards.

 This was all explained, we sang a hymn, and then the grandchildren got up to sing “I’ll Fly Away”. Thankfully, this was a fairly low pressure assignment. As Theresa pointed out, we could have all broken down and started sobbing in the middle and it would have been fine. I think it actually came off pretty well, especially when you consider we had about twenty minutes to practice together.

 After this we settled in to hear stories of my grandfather’s life. I was sitting right across the aisle from my grandmother and my mother and her siblings, so I was never quite sure if I was crying just because I was watching them. Except of course, when we were all laughing. I enjoyed hearing about my grandfather throwing a cat out the window (it was on his bed when it wasn’t even supposed to be in the house) and how he managed to nudge together another couple (I’d never thought of my grandfather as a Yenta before…). I think my favorite story, though, was from back when he was a single young man, and he told his sister he was not interested in going out with my grandmother because ‘her feet were too big’.

 I think that was the closest I ever felt to my grandfather, sitting and listening to stories of his life. It was sad because it was over, and because of the people closest to him that he’d left behind. But it was wonderful, because even with all the hard parts, it was a really good life, and it was over now and he’d gone Home.

  So we listened to the charge he’s left for us, that when the time came for us all to be  gathered together in Heaven, there would be no gaps in the family, that we’d all be ready to go when the time came. And we filed out under the blue sky to stand by his grave as the funeral came to end.  It was goodbye for now, and time to go eat lunch, courtesy of Ladies Aid.

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not another gray day
not today
when the sky’s so blue

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 Coming back to my grandparent’s house this time I particularly noticed certain ‘historical’ items. I’d already explained some of them to Gabrielle when she visited with us a few months ago. I told her that the back bedroom was always where the older cousins stayed when they worked on the farm, which particular room was in my mind ‘the grown-ups room’ or usually ‘Uncle Kevin and Aunt Mary’s room’ (I have still rarely entered this room), and which one we piled all the younger cousins into. I noticed everything was smaller than it used to be.

This time I perused the cross-stitching on the wall which contained important family dates and the names of all the grandchildren. I remembered how they used to be segmented at the time– Mike and Jen I’d barely met, so they were the really old cousins (a little older than Theresa and Donna, I think). Eva, Robin and Roi were old, but not old enough to have moved far away (in other words, mid-to-late teens). I remember liking Robin, though not interacting with her a lot (since, after all, she was old). Chenel was usually filed with them, though she drifted down to our group during certain age ranges. Then came the three of us who were the same age: Kristin, Charis, and me. I saw Kristin most often and frequently fought with her. We discovered one time that neither of us had ever fought with Charis, except for one argument Kristin had with her when they were three. Then came the cousins who were in Merrianna’s age range: Lisa, Matthew, Ethan and Melody. I think to some part of my mind they will always be three year olds running around the farm.

I glanced over a collection of pictures of us ten to fifteen years ago–the way I remember us. Then I walked downstairs to find that my small, slightly annoying male cousins were men wearing suits and ties, and carrying them off quite well. My little sister was taller than me by an inch or two. In fact, I think all of those little three year old girls might have been taller than me. Perhaps most disconcerting of all, Kristin and I did not have a single argument the entire day. The world has changed and become a strange place indeed…

We headed off to the church and most of us cousins who were there practiced “I’ll Fly Away” to sing during the funeral. Roi played the guitar, and all of us, who hadn’t been all in the same place for at least ten years, managed to pull of a decent rendition of the song.

Later, after the funeral, some of us stood around in the kitchen while my mother offered homemade goat cheese to everyone who passed by. I saw my mother’s gestures and expressions on her sisters, and wondered if I have the same ones. I watched my cousins flow through the kitchen, listened to the random, mundane chatter about what large amounts of food we’d been given and how good such and such a cake was and how such and such a distant relative had chatted with so and so at the funeral. I mused on cousins, and considered that perhaps if I had managed to go ten years without realizing I missed them, they could have decency to stay away so I never did have to realize it. Or we could just go with the plan Kristin and I agreed on: Someone needs to get married soon so we all have a wedding to go to and get to see each other again.

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So here I am, the non-musical jargon person, writing another album review. The David Crowder*Band’s new album came out on September 24th and Seth was right there to buy it. I must say it isn’t as artistically put together as the previous album, but the lyrics and music are as good as ever.

The album is called Remedy and true to David Crowder form the title track is the second to last. It is beautiful. The words echo out of a soul that has seen the horrors of this world and that longs for healing, for remedy. And at the end of the song there is the call for us to bring the remedy to our world. It is a call for love in action. And the album wraps up with a song asking “What will you do now?” and supplying a fine answer.

“Surely We Can Change”

And the problem is this
We were bought with a kiss
But the cheek still turned
Even when it wasn’t hit

And I don’t know
What to do with a love like that
And I don’t know
How to be a love like that

When all the love in the world
Is right here among us
And hatred too
And so we must choose
What our hands will do

Where there is pain
Let there be grace
Where there is suffering
Bring serenity
For those afraid
Help them be brave
Where there is misery
Bring expectancy
And surely we can change
Surely we can change
Something

And the problem it seems
Is with you and me
Not the Love who came
To repair everything

Where there is pain
Let us bring grace
Where there is suffering
Bring serenity
For those afraid
Let us be brave
Where there is misery
Let us bring them relief
And surely we can change
Surely we can change
Oh surely we can change
Something

Oh, the world’s about to change
The whole world’s about to change

But strangely enough that’s not what I want to talk about. There’s this song towards the beginning of the album. The chorus has a logic that I find troubling and wonderful.

“Everything Glorious”
You make everything glorious
You make everything glorious
You make everything glorious
And I am Yours
What does that make me?

Anybody who has followed this blog for any length of time knows that I don’t actually like myself very much. My brain is all well and good, but my soul is a besmirched cesspit of filth and misery and my body is really only so-so. The soul my Father is working on, but it’s the body part that I get stuck on. It only works okay and, in my opinion, only looks okay. Really, I should just be an emotional brain floating in decorative orange goo and then I would be all good. But God made me and He made me this way.

There’s a saying I saw on a poster a while back. It says “I know I’m special cause God don’t make no junk.” It’s the same logic as in the song. God has made everything and He has made it all very good. I’m part of that everything. It’s not like God made male and female and it was all good except for Gabrielle. He has made everything and He has made it all very good. That includes me.

So I guess the question now is do I believe Him? Do I believe the Almighty when He tells me that even my body is something glorious? Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief.

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