Today, I sat down beside my pastor’s young daughter and struck up a conversation. We got to talking about my new watch–and how it has interchangeable wristbands (black, white, tan, and pink). Ashley asked that I wear the pink wristband next week.
“I’ll have to figure out something to wear to match it.” I said. And then I realized my mistake: “But chances are I’ll have no problem, next week being Easter.”
Because Easter is the time for fancy pastel dresses and big hats.
[Click on the picture for a slide show of some of our Easter outfits through the years.]
My grandma always bought the girls Easter dresses and the boys Easter suits. Oftentimes, they were the only truly NEW clothing that we got all year (well, except for the Christmas outfits that she bought us.) Everything else was hand-me-downs or used store garb. Not that we complained about the rest of our clothes–but it sure was fun to have some new clothes.
We would take our semi-annual trips to the mall with Grandma and gasp as she urged us to try on dresses that cost 30, 40, 50, and even 80 dollars. In our minds, that was a simply preposterous sum for one article of clothing. (In my mind, it still is!)
But we ended up with quite a collection of Easter dresses.
Now that I’m a “grown-up”, I miss the fancy dresses of my youth. We don’t dress up like we used to, not even for church. Little girls could still pull off what I wore–if they could find it–but grown women certainly don’t wear pretty springtime dresses at Easter like they used to when I was a girl.
I’m trying to think of something interesting to post. Something non-bookie. An anecdote or a piece of silliness.
I’ve got nothing.
Today I’m taking 18 books to the library. That’ll put me down to 36 books checked out–assuming I don’t check out any more.
I am currently in the middle of seven books.
Apart from that, I’m…uh, reading the Bible. And, uh, reading (and creating study materials for) Wardlaw’s Perspectives in Nutrition. And, well, reading Health Promotion Practice and Research.
Exciting, I know.
At some point, my life may not be so reading heavy. But now is not that time.
The McDonalds at 11th and Cornhusker knows what to expect come 8:30 Wednesday nights. They’ll be suddenly inundated by a rash of students in their late teens and early twenties, all of them ordering a couple of items off the dollar menu and sticking around for at least an hour.
The manager is out to greet the visitors as they come in–and more often than not, a half a dozen employees will make their way to the front counter to exchange some remark with one or another of the guests.
We’ve been going to McDonalds after youth group since my brother first got a job there five years ago. Then, I was a youth sponsor, chaperoning a gaggle of giggling girls. The “group” that went to McDonalds after youth group was me and a bunch of youth group kids.
As we’ve gotten older, so has the demographic of the “group”. I go after Bible study. Jeremy (the youth pastor) drops by. Joshua (a youth sponsor) comes. John and Steve (who sponsor for Rock Solid, the kids group) come. Joanna comes after she’s done doing nursery for all the Wednesday night church events. Debbie stops in after classes. And there’s still the group of high school students: Tim and Grace and Kayla and John and Eli and Elinor and Brittany and others.
We take over the little nook with its two circular corner booths and little table and armchair lounge. We talk and we tease and occasionally we take pictures. We have fun. We hang out.
It’s a relaxing time, a do-nothing time. Everybody’s just being.
And then there’s the occasional game of hangman.
Which morphs into drawing smiley-faces.
Which becomes drawing emoticons (which others scribble out.)
Then someone draws a picture of someone getting blown up by a hand-grenade.
And someone tries to write an onomatopoeia of the crazy noise he makes every so often.
Which somehow leads to genie jokes.
And then someone comments on my grading pen–and discovers that I grade with the blood of former students.
Bet you didn’t know that.
I don’t really share it often.
But now you know.
Students beware of taking a class by Miss Menter. :-P
I wonder who’ll be more surprised: my students, my supervisor, my classmates, or the kids I’ll be picking up trash with this afternoon?
(For context, I wear jeans approximately twice a year. The last time I wore jeans, a good friend who I’d known for probably ten years said “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear jeans before.” Yeah, so I don’t wear jeans very often.)
Does anybody else feel like my blog has been a little bit “thinking heavy” in the last couple of weeks?
I’ve been rushing though Why We Love the Church trying to get it done before it has to go back to the library (on Interlibrary Loan)–and it seems like all I’ve been doing is writing book notes. Problem is, I still have all sorts of book notes in my (paper) notebook that I want to put up at some point.
I could just take the plunge and devote myself to the “thinking blogger” genre. But I don’t think I really want to do that. I like the wanna-be-mommy-blogger and bookie-blogger genres too much to let go of them entirely.
Alas, when a simple hobby begins to take such crisis of identity proportions.
As I send my words out into the void, somebody please affirm me (because really that’s what I want :-P) Tell me what you like me to write about. Tell me what you don’t like me to write about. Just tell me something. ‘Cause I’m tired of thinking and just want some nice inane chatter.
God is currently challenging me to be faithful in the little. The little things like getting my grading done and keeping up-to-date on school work, that is. So I spent the day getting caught up on grading (but now, at last, I am caught up!)
I’ll be planning on posting the next installment in between lab and my office hours tomorrow (early afternoon)–or, should unforeseen complication arise, I’ll have the next post ready for tomorrow evening.
In the meantime, I encourage you, also, to be faithful in the “little things” God has given to your charge–even when the “little things” aren’t exactly your favorite things.
The snow on my head
melts
and runs to my eyelid
It dissolves
my mascara
which drips into my eye
I cry
Once upon a time,
while snow came down
in a flurry,
a girl went out
in a hurry.
The ground was slick
and her glasses
were blurry.
Twice, she slipped.
But not to worry–
She fell into
a soft mud slurry.
I was born in the 80s, a child of the 90s, coming of age in the millennium. But my heart belongs to an earlier day–or more like many earlier days.
Nothing takes me back to my childhood (and beyond) like the sound of the earliest Christian rock, 70s rock–the likes of Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill.
My mom and dad’s LPs that we listened to endlessly.
Larry Norman’s “In Another Land” (1975):
Turning back the table once again to enjoy our favorites.
“He’s a rock that doesn’t roll
He’s a rock that doesn’t roll
Well He’s good for the body
and great for the soul
He’s a rock that doesn’t roll!”
“He’s an unidentified flyin’ object
You will see Him in the air…
And if there’s life on other planets
Then I’m sure that He must know
and He’s been there once already
and has died to save their souls.”
And of course, trying our hand at the glorious harmonies of “Righteous Rocker #3” while Mom tells us stories of her college buddies who would break out into harmony while walking through campus.
“You can be a righteous rocker
Or a holy roller
You can be most anything
You could be a child of a slum
Or a skidrow bum
You can be an earthly king
But without love
you ain’t nothing
Without love
Without love you ain’t nothin’
Without love.”
Chuck Girard’s “Chuck Girard” (1975):
Crying for the girl from Tinagera. Crying in worship to “Sometimes Alleluia”. Walkin’ by the Sea, the Sea of Galilee. Rockin’ out to “Rock’n’Roll Preacher.”
Randy Stonehill’s “Welcome to Paradise” (1976):
Already a budding health activist, belting out the lyrics to “Lung Cancer”.
“She went down to the corner store
And bought a pack of filter kings
Don’t you know tomorrow she’ll be back for more
Cause she really likes to smoke those things
And every time that she inhales a cloud of that cigarette smoke
She’s just one step closer to the man in black
And 60 cents closer to broke
She’s been working on lung cancer,
Emphysema, a cardiac arrest…
She’s been smokin’ that C-I-G-A-R-E-T-T-E”
Meanwhile, Anna and Josh enjoyed the much more beautiful and poetic “Puppet Strings”.
“We are all foolish puppets
Who, desiring to be king,
Now lie pitifully crippled
after cutting all our strings.
But God said I’ll forgive you
and face you man to man
And win your love again.
O how can there be possibly
a greater gift of love
Than dying for a friend?”
2nd Chapter of Acts’ “Mansion Builder” (1978):
Joshua singing Matthew to Anna’s Annie, harmonizing beautifully to “Mansion Builder”.
“So why should I worry?
Why should I fret?
‘Cause I’ve got a mansion-builder
Who ain’t through with me yet.”
Lamb’s “Lamb I” (1972):
Joshua singing along with his favorite band, his child’s voice mingling with Joel Chernoff’s tenor:
“The sacrifice lamb has been slain
His blood on the altar a stain
To wipe away guilt and pain,
To bring hope eternal.
Salvation has come to the world;
God’s only Son to the world;
Jesus the One for the world–
Yeshua is He.”
The songs that take me back, that make me remember the wholehearted enthusiasm of three little children digging through Mom and Dad’s records. The songs that remind me of the days when we spent hours luxuriating in melody and harmony and rhythm. When we pored over the record sleeves, enjoying the long-haired hippyness of the Jesus-music, enjoying the poetry and occasional childishness of the lyrics and tunes.
These artists created Christian music as we know it today. They were decried as singing “devil music” because the music was syncopated–a Gothard anathema. They started their own labels to create a niche for themselves, unwilling to “let the devil have all the good music” (in the words of Larry Norman). And so began Christian rock.
But we have forgotten them along the way, now in our world where Christian music is ordinary, mundane, (in my opinion) boring. It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a day, the idea of Christian rock and roll was revolutionary. These were the pioneers. They dared to think that modern music could be a medium for the Christian artist. And they created true art. The art that fed my child soul.
Although scientists have struggled to discover precise genes for addictions, it is generally recognized that certain addictions tend to run in families. Alcoholism. Nicotine addiction. Addiction to elicit drugs.
Just like most issues ascribed to genetics, the question always arises–is it nature or nurture? Do I act like my family acts because it is hard-wired into me or because I learn it from my family? I don’t know. Scientists don’t know. It’s been debated for years.
My family might be said to have an addiction. At least, my father and I share a common addiction. We’re both “information junkies”. We like to be surrounded by information constantly–whether reading it, listening to it on talk radio, discussing it with a friend, or watching a documentary. Give me information.
Cut off from information, I go through withdrawal–I start to twitch and make random noises. :-)
Thankfully, information is readily available at my local library, online, and across the yard at my parents’ house. So I rarely have to experience withdrawal.
You might say it’s genetic. My dad is a notorious information junkie.
But maybe it’s nurture. I grew up listening to Ravi Zacharias on the way to church, Rush Limbaugh on errands, and RTB Radio Podcasts while my dad showered in the room next door. I remember watching coverage of the Gulf War after dinner on the little television we took out of the closet expressly for that purpose. My family had (still has) three sets of encyclopedias. I read them regularly.
Nature or nurture, I’m an addict. So is my dad.
He got me hooked at a young age, as I took sips from the deep glasses he drank from. The encyclopedias acted as a gateway drug, the library my nearest pusher. Soon I was a full-fledged addict. Our drug choices and routes of delivery diverged throughout my teen years, although we still took time to snort together.
But now, again, we have come to share in our addiction freely.
I read blogs, a great variety. My dad reads blogs, mostly news, science, and politics. In Instapundit, we have again found a shared addiction.
“Did you read that article by the Instawife?” Dad asks.
I ask for a bit more description. I checked Insta early that morning–this hadn’t been posted until the afternoon. Dad catches me up on the latest.
“What do you think of that piece on electric cars?” I ask him right back.
We discuss nuclear energy, Supreme court rulings, male empowerment, and liberal extremism–all sparked by our new common link.
Maybe it runs in families, maybe it’s just us–but information is our shared addiction, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
