While I meditate, I enjoy the gift of service that others freely, joyously, unselfishly share with me this time of year:
Patricia Rhoton, Pastor White, Afton Stewart, Rebecca George, Rex Ennis, David White, Andrea White, Madison Price, Bill Phillips, Earline Price, William Phillips, Mary Ellen Elkins, Sarah Klepper LeRoy, Tammy Lyons, Terry George, Chad Hill, Chancel Choir, St. Andrew's Choir, Higher Sounds Handbells, ushers and Sue Livesay.
The Joy Gift Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Flutes like angels singing in the balcony. Violin and piano duet like a heavenly stream or waterfall. Rearranged hymns. Solos that go so low and so high, I'm flushed with envy.
Raising money for the Christmas Joy Offering, 50 percent which goes to the Presbyterian Board of Pensions and 50 percent which goes to the Presbyterian racial ethnic schools and colleges (per the General Assembly Mission Council handout).
Teaching traditions.
Christmas versus/and other family-based holidays.
Sometimes, caught up in the noise and haste of modern life, I forget that family and friends are all that matters.
That's why these moments of meditation are important.
Otherwise, I'd get lost in the international games we play, that move millions and billions around like faceless chips on a gambling table.
We can still do that, but let's get to know each other before we take risks with our neighbours' lives.
Let us pray...
Showing posts with label holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Times of the Signs
Best holiday idea for 2010:
Visited a friends' house - to make holiday cleanup easier this year, our friends have placed their wired, clear plastic storage container of ornaments on the floor, plugged it in and placed their gifts on top. The top view of the container's arrangement of ornaments will be revealed as they hand out and open the family holiday presents (the presents put inside prewrapped, hinged gift boxes that can be reused every year).
The storage container also serves as their post gift-opening holiday dinner buffet table.
When the holidays are over, they'll unplug the container and put it back in the attic along with the reusable gift boxes.
Lazy?
No, just a typical geeky engineering couple looking for many ways to hack the holidays and optimise their time.
Visited a friends' house - to make holiday cleanup easier this year, our friends have placed their wired, clear plastic storage container of ornaments on the floor, plugged it in and placed their gifts on top. The top view of the container's arrangement of ornaments will be revealed as they hand out and open the family holiday presents (the presents put inside prewrapped, hinged gift boxes that can be reused every year).
The storage container also serves as their post gift-opening holiday dinner buffet table.
When the holidays are over, they'll unplug the container and put it back in the attic along with the reusable gift boxes.
Lazy?
No, just a typical geeky engineering couple looking for many ways to hack the holidays and optimise their time.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Imminent. Fiscal. Free. Osmosis
Two activities my grandmother frowned upon - dancing and card playing.
Her second husband, my "real" but nonbiological grandfather had a vice - he smoked until emphysema attached oxygen feeding tubes to him for the rest of his life.
Do you ever see a vice squad go after smokers?
I'm not a health nut but I watch what I eat, smoking fewer cigars every year (don't have the nicotine addiction gene, I guess).
Doesn't mean I'm healthy but I do dance. Don't play cards much, though.
Last night, after the usual great service by Noina, Gift, Eric and Rainy at Thai Garden, the missus and I wandered into Lowe Mill in our minimalist dance costumes.
There, we learned about a subculture called the steampunk/zombie apocalypse epitomised by Cherie Priest's book, "Boneshaker."
Goggles, leather and gears. Worn by a young woman dressed up for the Halloween contest tied to the dancing.
Our musical guests, the Rocket City Jazz Orchestra, played a few sessions of big band sound - Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Mack the Knife, etc. The perfomers were all middle-aged guys like me, with the exception of the lovely singer who bewitched us with her sweet voice, one part Deborah Kerr and one part Doris Day.
Spellbound, I remembered my days with the Georgia Tech Navy ROTC jazz band, marching in Georgian smalltown parades and the Nawlins Mardi Gras festival.
As my wife noticed after prying me out of seat to have a clumsy good time on the dance floor, we spent all of our childhood and I a good bit of my early adulthood performing on stage, not thrashing around with the sweaty throngs.
We enjoyed seeing the dozens of young people jiving and swinging, keeping the music of the '20s, '30s and '40s alive and doing well under the shadow of cotton mill water towers and moonshot rockets.
Here in the Heart of Dixie. The lottery-free trophy buckle of the Bible Belt.
What would my Southern Baptist mission-founding grandmother say about that? "God works in mysterious ways. There's a purpose for everything. That orchid you and yo wife have is pretty enough to be in a Federated Garden Club show."
And my grandfather? "Did you have a good time? Did you stay out of trouble? Would you like to hear a story about any of my 29 years in the Navy between 1929 and 1959?"
It's Halloween, as much a part of our culture as religion and jazz.
Pirates, jellyfish, Rafael, tomb raiders, flappers, ninjas, Rainbow Brite, phantom of the opera, Lady Luck, dragonfly lady, angels and Antoine Dodson. Outfits befitting the times.
What pilgrims could have imagined the local natives introducing them to a grain that would grow into a maize maze? Amazing!
How do we let politics and influence peddling get out of control? Have we? Should we? Should we not? Simple. Never trust accounts receivable and accounts payable to the same person(s).
Her second husband, my "real" but nonbiological grandfather had a vice - he smoked until emphysema attached oxygen feeding tubes to him for the rest of his life.
Do you ever see a vice squad go after smokers?
I'm not a health nut but I watch what I eat, smoking fewer cigars every year (don't have the nicotine addiction gene, I guess).
Doesn't mean I'm healthy but I do dance. Don't play cards much, though.
Last night, after the usual great service by Noina, Gift, Eric and Rainy at Thai Garden, the missus and I wandered into Lowe Mill in our minimalist dance costumes.
There, we learned about a subculture called the steampunk/zombie apocalypse epitomised by Cherie Priest's book, "Boneshaker."
Goggles, leather and gears. Worn by a young woman dressed up for the Halloween contest tied to the dancing.
Our musical guests, the Rocket City Jazz Orchestra, played a few sessions of big band sound - Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Mack the Knife, etc. The perfomers were all middle-aged guys like me, with the exception of the lovely singer who bewitched us with her sweet voice, one part Deborah Kerr and one part Doris Day.
Spellbound, I remembered my days with the Georgia Tech Navy ROTC jazz band, marching in Georgian smalltown parades and the Nawlins Mardi Gras festival.
As my wife noticed after prying me out of seat to have a clumsy good time on the dance floor, we spent all of our childhood and I a good bit of my early adulthood performing on stage, not thrashing around with the sweaty throngs.
We enjoyed seeing the dozens of young people jiving and swinging, keeping the music of the '20s, '30s and '40s alive and doing well under the shadow of cotton mill water towers and moonshot rockets.
Here in the Heart of Dixie. The lottery-free trophy buckle of the Bible Belt.
What would my Southern Baptist mission-founding grandmother say about that? "God works in mysterious ways. There's a purpose for everything. That orchid you and yo wife have is pretty enough to be in a Federated Garden Club show."
And my grandfather? "Did you have a good time? Did you stay out of trouble? Would you like to hear a story about any of my 29 years in the Navy between 1929 and 1959?"
It's Halloween, as much a part of our culture as religion and jazz.
Pirates, jellyfish, Rafael, tomb raiders, flappers, ninjas, Rainbow Brite, phantom of the opera, Lady Luck, dragonfly lady, angels and Antoine Dodson. Outfits befitting the times.
What pilgrims could have imagined the local natives introducing them to a grain that would grow into a maize maze? Amazing!
How do we let politics and influence peddling get out of control? Have we? Should we? Should we not? Simple. Never trust accounts receivable and accounts payable to the same person(s).
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