Today would have been my mother's 92nd birthday. These are some of the flowers that we put in the church in thanksgiving to God for her life.
At my desk in the afternoon of what has been a brightly sunny day, with a little more moderate temperatures.
A string orchestra of young people is at this very moment playing a concert in the nave...with considerable verve, if not perfect intonation. We have become a favoured venue for recitals and small concerts, especially since the new grand piano arrived a couple of years ago...a thank-offering from one of our couples to the glory of God and in gratitude for 50 years of a happy marriage.
(Ah, they seem to have got the pizzicato part all together, excellent!)
Heaps of work to do both here and at home before bedtime.
The banquet last night was fun, plenty of nice food...and there was a little three-piece band (with recorded rhythm tracks) for dancing afterward. It's a long time since I was asked to dance...I was flattered, but declined as gracefully as possible (having had hot packs on knee and ankle all afternoon).
The management of the housing agency begs ~~or cadges~~gifts from local merchants, enough for each of the attendees: gift certificates from the supermarket, vouchers from restaurants and cafes, little luxuries from the drugstore. Much hilarity when these are given out.
Tomorrow being the 2nd of Advent -- there will be a special visitor at the end of the later service; one of the tenors in our choir will impersonate the bishop of Myra...to general mirth...
And the orchestra has finished up triumphantly with a truncated version of the William Tell Overture, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WHICH a woman phoned to ask whether she could be baptized without actually, like, y'know, joining the church, "because like I'm not sure I would want to join a CHURCH, I just hafta be baptized..."
4 comments:
I appreciate you writing about your mother's birthday, with the flowers, too. It's odd how thoughts of my mother will come up, and I'll miss her all over again, even though she died in 1992. Peace to you.
Similar thoughts to Jan, from me. Mine has been gone 20 years now, would have been 82 in November.
Re: woman who just "hasta be baptized" -- I used to get calls from people wanting to be married in the Catholic Church who needed to prove their baptisms as Methodists or Lutherans. I wonder if this was her issue as well. Another interesting call was from a young man who had been baptized at the church where I worked. He was now getting married, in Greece, and needed a letter stating that I had examined our record books and that he had not been married in the church. Of course, this didn't prove he hadn't been married anywhere else...but my letter was apparently enough!
we had some discussion about this, this morning...for so many folks, baptism is a private accommodation with God who thereby promises not to strike them dead without warning, or something of the sort. I get a lot of requests for babies' baptism before the family travels anywhere...it grows discouraging to realize they picture a God who lies in wait to destroy the unbaptized, and is also so stupid he won't notice they've lied through their TEETH on every single baptismal promise...
aie... i'm struggling with the fact that i have a baptism next week in which the mother of the baby wants the father of the baby to participate even though he has only been in church once- for the baptism of his older daughter. and she is now separated from him. and he isn't interested in having much of a relationship with his daughters. yet... she wants him to take the vows. "Really? Are you sure you don't just want him there, but you take the vows?" "No, I'm hoping he'll change." I counsel with her on Tuesday. Sigh.
are you going to do the baptism?
how neat to have live music while you work- well, out of tune, maybe not.
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