Monday, March 23, 2015

Three Beautiful Things 03/22/15: Olivia and David Arrived, Deep Personal Church History, Laptop Tune-Up

1.  I went to Safeway early in the morning to replenish the pantry and when I returned, I could hear children's voices in our apartment home and, indeed, in my brief absence, Olivia and David had arrived for their day with Grandpa and Nana while Molly drove to Harrisburg to hear Hiram perform in the symphony.  Later, David and Olivia and I played the single die game the Deke invented -- the numbers 1-6 written down twice on a piece of paper, roll the die, and circle the number on the sheet of paper and try to get all the numbers circled.  I tried to teach the children what I learned from my father:  how to blow on the die and shake it under each arm pit.  This method didn't really catch on.

2.  I once again worshiped at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in College Park and, once again, it was unspectacular and deeply satisfying, not because the choir was amazing or because the sermon was out of sight -- they were both fairly run of the mill, and just fine -- in short, not because there were great performances.  No.  It was over an hour of prayer and meditation inside my personal deep history and the deep instutional history of the liturgy and of Lenten hymns that threw me back to spiritual experiences so deeply rooted inside of me, I couldn't specifically locate where I'd first sung them.  The United Church in Kellogg? First Pres. of Cd'A? Worship at Whitworth?  St. Mary's in Eugene?  Some of these places?  All of them?  I don't know -- I just know that the hymns gave me the deep satisfaction of being a part of a history of worship much larger than the moment I was in at St. Andrews, College Park.

3.  I had done the same thing with my laptop earlier in the morning and then I spent some time on the Deke's laptop, as well,  running security scans and getting a tiny bit of infection knocked out and tuning up our computers and they are running well.  I get kind of nervous about this kind of thing and it was a relief to me to spend some time doing this.


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