Advent Music

The weather outside right now seems perfect for revisiting my Advent Playlist: the bright light of the past few days has been drastically dimmed by the clouds and wind. It feels like the lights have gone off. This time on Monday, I was sitting in the yard chatting on the phone and getting a sunburn. Now I am sitting in a room--walled with windows--that is illuminated by the glow of my computer screen. It is midday and dark.

Last night, I got an e-mail from a friend (10th Century Church, below) asking whether I have an Advent playlist. I have a couple of these musical lists for the season. We have one from 2011 that's a King's College-Cambridge type, and one from 2012 that's my most recent "official" one.

Last year, mid-Advent we had our continental transition; and instead of spending time and energy to build a new playlist, we repurposed the one from 2012. My real playlist for Advent 2013 was the rumble of the métropolitain and the tap-tapping of my crutches on cobbles, tile and concrete; the musical soundtracks of iPad apps the children favored, and the silence of cold rain that (not unlike a puritan child) could be seen but not heard.

And so many other silences.

Paradoxically, during a season that looks for and celebrates light coming out of darkness, I remember advent last year as a time that felt like the lights were going out. The curtain dropping. Not unlike today.

I have been thinking about the seasons. I have been thinking about them a lot. I have been thinking about them as something new to enjoy in a foreign-yet-familar land, and I have been thinking of them in relation to seasons of my own life. I have been thinking of fruitfulness and death and resurrection. I have a harder time with fall than with the other three seasons, but I am thinking about that too. Which is good, I suppose, because it's fully here.

It looks like today will be the last warm day we have. Indian summer is over. Doubtless we will have sunshine--and many leaves have yet to fall. But Summer is no longer "beginning to give up her fight."And we are only a month and a day away from Advent 2014--its own season, coming just this one time although echoed in the advents before and the advents to come.

I am grateful for the message from my friend. It was a reminder of goodness past and goodness to come: and of hardships, too, and light from darkness and advent banners and lessons learned and grace.   And of singing songs no matter the weight of one's own heart (there are different kinds of songs).

And so now I look forward to Advent. I even have begun to think with some eagerness about building a new playlist for Advent 2014. Which songs will push back the silence and draw us home?

#TBT--Friends and Europe Semester

As I have mentioned, we are trying to slow things down around this year. I would like to be more intentional about how I spend my time and how I communicate, especially with the ninjas/niñim (the kids). I also would like to "get caught up" with life--does that ever happen?--and as such have started sorting through photographs that I haven't seen since I took them...sometime over the past three years.

It's great fun and longing and loneliness and gratefulness to see all of these photos again. One benefit is that I came across a photo I took early on in Athens, just because it made me think of a friend.  And then I remembered that I took several of those while in Greece, missing my friends and being reminded of them in so many mundane moments. And I remember how grateful I was for any word from them, and how waking up to a message (written and sent in deepest night, Athens-time) would reel me back in, remind me that I am in fact a vine tendril or branch of something bigger, and that my identity was so much more than the work I was doing in the moment. It was good work, and I am incredibly grateful to have had it. It was also a gift to be tangibly reminded that my identity extended far beyond its borders; its triumphs and failures.

I am still grateful for that. And for how they continue to be my friends and care for me (each in her own way) now,  during what sometimes feels a bit like a long, slow walk in the desert after last year's Exodus.

And so, rejoicing in each of my friends, I post "their" photos here for #TBT (Throwback Thursday, Mimi!). And I would remind them that I mentioned each of these locations last September, challenging them to guess who was who. :)

Pixie pretending to be the photo's subject, instead of the yellow bag,
so that the shopkeeper would let me take the photo. Athens Plaka.

Typewriter (one of many) at the Monastiraki flea market

Delphi olives. (Telescope Cafe, Delphi)

Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Apostles.
Roman Agora, Athens. 10th Century.

Xoriguer Gin Distillery, Port Mahon.

Philadelphia -- Guest Post by Pixie

Last month, we went to Philadelphia for the day.

It was fun to go back to the city we lived in when J proposed, and where we were early marrieds. During those years, we often took visiting family and friends to tour the historical downtown. This time, we took the 4 Ninjas! So fun.

After we returned home, the three "olders" each wrote about the day. And so, with her permission, I share Pixie's write-up as a guest blog post. She chose the photos to accompany.

Our Trip to Philadelphia

by Pixie

Philadelphia was amazing! I really enjoyed seeing the Liberty Bell, which was a lot smaller than I expected. The line was really long, but we were in it for less than 15 minutes! Security was really stiff there, though. Actually, it was strict everywhere we went!

Afterwards, we went out and got Philly Cheese Steaks at Jim's on South Street. They were sooo good! (Booo Pat's). Mine was just plain steak, though--no cheese sauce! With it, I had a Coke--but it almost broke my heart when Meggie asked me to get a Barq's. She was so cute and sweet!

By then I really had to use the restroom, so we went back to a museum and used their restrooms. When we finished there was this really cool brick tunnel that was a cellar in colonial days. 

The Second Bank of the United States, which houses a collection of portraits by Charles Willson Peale. The portraits were amazing...and the cellar pretty cool, too.

Then my dad remembered a big dilemma.

We had to pick up our tickets for the Independence Hall tour 45 minutes in advance! But is was only 25 minutes until our tour. Dad ran to the ticket booth while we walked to the Hall. He got the tickets, but just barely. We met him in the security line for the tours. 

He had run all the way there! Again, super-stiff security, but this time I was mostly glad we had our tickets. We had to wait outside for a bit, but it was worth it. I really enjoyed the guide's talk that happened before the tour. It was all about the history of Independence. 

There were only three items that were proved to have been there at the Constitutional Convention. The first is a painting on the wall of the Pennsylvania coat of arms. This is a reminder that Independence Hall is actually the Pennsylvania State House. 

The second item is the chair George Washington sat in as president of the convention. He also sat there while the Constitution was being signed. 

The third item is the Syng Inkstand that was used to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We went to see it afterwards, along with the copy of the Declaration of Independence that was read to the people. 

After all that cool stuff, we started heading back towards the Independence Welcome Center. We planned to watch a short film, and then head home. But guess what? Our parents took us on a carriage ride!

It was really fun, and our guide was nice, too. He kept pointing out fun stuff...and we KNEW they were fun...because we had already done them! We got dropped off at the visitor center, which was nice, because it saved us a LOT of walking.

The film was an interesting documentary about young people during the revolution. It was good to relax there, and in the car on the way home. We were tired but happy. What a good day!

Sunday Morning

Sunday mornings can be chaos around here. Loading into the van to travel to worship is the resolution of a complex and shifting algorithm, which incorporates a wide range of factors. Factors like cleanliness of "church clothes" and the wrinkliness thereof; how much sleep everyone got the night before; relative priority placed on the brushing of teeth; and how quickly a three-year-old will eat a doughnut.

Now that we are sojourners away from our home church, the uncontrollable factors continue after loading into the van. Before today, we had not been repeat visitors at any church here since we landed six weeks ago. One Sunday morning we got so lost on our way that we spent an hour and a half in the car without making it to a worship service at all (the next Sunday we knew how to get there, though! We'd had lots of practice).

Anyway, this morning we went back to the same church we visited last week, which reduced the chaos in finding a location and knowing how to transition into worship (this morning I knew exactly where to find the crayons).  This church is the one nearest our house, which makes us happy in a "parish" sense of neighbors knowing one another and worshipping together. Indeed, many of the surnames of the people we've met at the church match the names in the church graveyard. The new pastor is about to move into the parsonage across the street.

I had been hoping to worship at an Anglican or Episcopal church during this year away--among other reasons, I find the prayers and services of the Book of Common Prayer intensely beautiful. For various reasons, that is not going to work out. Neither is the pre-Revolutionary stone church with stained-glass windows that I envisioned.

Instead, though, we have two minutes away a Dutch Reformed church--a different kind of liturgy, and a different kind of beautiful, and with different European roots. There is a gallery upstairs. There are pews with doors and numbers on them. There is an organ that is played with skill and grace, communicating majesty as perhaps only an organ can. Yesterday after the service the organist invited Bud and Wombles upstairs for a tour, and later I heard "Jesu, Joy of Men's Desiring" as Bud played the melody and the organist accompanied him.

While most of the congregation is elderly, there has been a warm and enthusiastic welcome of us and our children. I had a flashback to Greece and the wood shop after I saw Wombles up in the gallery above and started vehemently directing him to Come down!  because that was not where he was supposed to be! --because immediately a woman cut in on me to sweetly but directly inform me that the organist had invited the two boys up there and had opened up the organ (I don't even know what that means) and was giving them a tour. With a smile that said clearly, "So you just let them stay up there."OK. Message received. I am a control freak.

The building was finished in 1832, after local congregants wanted to stop driving the 3-4 miles to the nearest Dutch Reformed Church. So really, this is a very old church plant. And I deeply appreciate the desire to go to church in one's own neighborhood. Having to wrangle the six of us out of bed, through breakfast and into the van can be complicated enough on Sunday mornings without adding the potential mishaps and delays of travel. There's no algorithm that can accurately predict just how long the whole process will take. I guess that was as true in the 1820s as it is today.

I am grateful to have found a place to worship for the next three seasons, and grateful for those who have been praying for us. I miss our church at home. And I look forward to seeing how God will bless us and hopefully use us to bless others during this season on the road.

Eek! Snow!

The sermon text Sunday was Matthew 21:33-46. As the pastor was reading it on Sunday, he paused just long enough at "go to..." that my mind immediately filled in a line from a song we sing at CPC. I had it running in my head for the entire service, contributing to a strange, two-places-at-once feeling that was both homesick and at-home at once. You can listen to the song here, much like it sounds back home in Santa Barbara:

Questions I Was Asked Today

In no particular order, here are ten of the questions I was asked today...these being the questions asked when I was near enough my notebook to write them down.

• How many dwarf planets are there?
• What is for breakfast?
• Do you know where the four-square ball is?
• Can we watch Phineas and Ferb?
• Did you really get married?
• Can we do chalk art on the driveway? (repeat: seven times. or so.)
• Do you know who my favorite quarterback is?
• How long does it take a probe to reach Mars from Earth?
• Do you want to see my sleeping impressions? 
• What would happen if all of the earth's inhabitants turned into heavyweight boxing champions?

(I did a better job of answering some of these than others.)

And when they are not asking questions, they are doing this:

We've been here six weeks today. Happy fall!

PS In case you are interested in my answers to the above questions, here they are--sometimes with the immediate response of the child:

1. Four? Nope! Three.
2. Bagels with cream cheese. Mmmm, so yummy!
3. No. Yes. Either in the ball box where it is supposed to be, or the garage.
4. No. 
1. No.
2. No. 
3. Not now. 
4. Yes, if you put away Clue and put your pajamas on.  
5. Yes. And then I was born!!! (Well, yes, 12 years later.)
6. No. 
1. Still no.
2. Not now. 
3. Look, I have to move the van to block the driveway before you can do that, and there are people coming over to drop off their dog for us to dog-sit and I can't block them out of the driveway, so no.
4. Later.
5. Probably after quiet time.
6. OK, yes.
7. Yes! Peyton Manning. No, it's DADDY! Peyton Manning is my SECOND FAVORITE!
8. I have no idea. A few years? I'll have to look it up.
9. Yes. Oh, please, yes.
10. No words. No answer.