Do it!

"Don't be afraid of being the one who cares too much." ~unknown (by way of my mom)

I serve on the board of Heart of the Triad Choral Society, and we're doing some visioning this week. Doing my homework in advance of our meeting tomorrow is reminding me how much I've fallen off doing my own vision boards and how desperately I need to get back to mental clarity for myself.

Please pray for me to emerge from mental funk by doing the daily habits, the morning prayers (evenings too, but particularly the stuff of starting the day well), the scripting, the focus. And above all the hopeful expectation that God will show up, knowing that God will, in the fullness of time.

At Tara - A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Went on a solo roadtrip recently, unusual for me, but Big Frog was off on a different roadtrip with some colleagues.  I chose to reread Madeline L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet via audiobook as I drove¹.

1 Overdrive is one of the many many phenomenal resources public libraries provide -- you can borrow e-books & e-audiobooks for a few weeks at a time.   It's a free app. 

As I intend to read A Wrinkle in Time to my rising 1st & rising 3rd grade godkids when they visit², I got in the mood for some L'Engle.  Some authors' work reads aloud better than others... I think hers is right up there towards the top.  And her word painting is wonderfully illustrative.

2 Yay, my Harrisburg godkids are coming to visit for a whole week in August!  I am super excited for that; I've missed the weekly adventures we went on their entire lives until I moved 6h away.

St Patrick's Rune is a major plot device, but it also is a tremendous prayer in and of itself.  Turns out it is also verse four of an eleven-verse hymn.  Sometimes contemporary stylings need to give way to the classics of powerful liturgy. The prayers of those who have gone before us help me tremendously to see the church universal, in different cultures and different times, is an extension of the church here and now.

source: MShades, via deviantart

Powerful stuff. Good thing we serve a mighty God.

JAARS -- The Harvest

Big Frog and I went to JAARS Day, once again on the hottest day possible.  We had a blast!

JAARS is currently running what it calls "A Campaign for Possible", which is not seeking funds but people for partnership.  Thing is, Jesus didn't say “The harvest is plentiful but money is lacking.” (Luke 10). The need is people.  

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This visit we went off-roading(as passengers) on their course, which was designed to get missionaries ready for jungle living.  The key difference between that and adventure off-roading is that you trailer in your adventure vehicle behind your everyday vehicle and you can go rough-and-tumble with it with no repercussions except inconvenience.  But when you go off-roading in your primary vehicle, you drive "as slow as necessary" because from the middle of the jungle you still need to get back home¹.




1 YouTube asked me if I wanted it to smooth out what it read as shaky camerawork. 
 

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One of our cool discoveries in our visit last summer was the solar powered audio Bible.  They make it in many languages and use it in oral cultures, to be certain, and the JAARS staff can share anecdotes of people putting it on their hat brims to listen to as they work outdoors, or of kids quoting off entire chapters and books from ongoing repetition.

Our need for it was somewhat different.  Big Frog's dad read the Bible consistently and completely, all his life long, but by last summer he was at a point where his vision was beyond the giant print Bible he was using by the time I joined the family.  We considered getting him the Bible on CD, but to teach him to use a complex device like a CD player we knew would be a challenge.  This is the kind of gent who wouldn't get a TV for the house, and even when Big Frog's mom finally did smuggle one into the house (Big Frog was 13), it served as an end table, boxed up and with a tablecloth over it, any time it wasn't in use and certainly any time Big Frog's dad was home.  But the Megavoice is as close as you're going to get to a big green triangle and a red square.  Simple.  You don't even need to replace batteries in it.

And in his closing months Big Frog's dad made heavy use of that device.  We learned that Joshua was his go-to book.  And the words, in Joshua and in the whole of the Bible, brought him comfort.   

We didn't need it in a bilingual version, or a newly translated language.  What we needed for Big Frog's dad was the old-school King James Version.  As new translations proliferate, King James is sometimes shuffled aside.  But Big Frog grew up in a church where if you so much as read in a different version people looked askance at your theology.

So on this visit, I thanked the JAARS gift shop staffer for making that version available to my father-in-law.  For, in a place dedicated to world missions, having an easy-to-use device available in Spanish and African languages and Asian languages, but for sending it to him in King James, in a format he could make use of.  To this lovely older lady, whom I had never met before but who I felt certain would understand me even if she herself was a loyal KJV-er, I said that "it was, after all, 'the Bible Jesus read'".  And she gently commiserated with me, and then pierced the veil for me when she pointed out that "King James was his heart language". 

Of course it was.  For the first time, I got it.  Just as much as the mother tongue of a tribal people group is a heart language, to this old dude who prayed "O Lord, help us to be humble, and help us to be oh so grateful" as a constant refrain, King James is what his soul knows.  And as he is face-to-face with Jesus now, he no doubt still worships in thees and thous.  I could stand to learn from such an example.

#hotdogprincess

Literally just yesterday I wore a tiara to church because I am the popcorn princess for First Friday Films.  Be proud to be you.

But this little girl has the freedom within her to bust out the full-body floor length hot dog costume on princess day.  I <3 Ainsley. 

Image source: her dad, Brandon Turner

Mr L's Opus

Rick Lawrence taught choir, which includes chamber choir and madrigals, at Howard High for 33 years. Thirty-three years. My experience with him, in 1993-1997, included concerts, caroling, Fiesta-val in Myrtle Beach, adjudication, Trivial Pursuit, so many movies (yay 4-period day), thrown erasers, practicing piano before school started and during lunchtimes, and just an ongoing steady presence and expectation of superior performance, musically and otherwise. And grand champion at every competition. If I had gotten fully involved, and in retrospect I really wish I had, there was the spring musicals, and Showcase. Ahh, Showcase.

photo source: Metro Nashville Chorus

So when the call went out, fully a year in advance, that Mr L was retiring and we had the chance to properly laud him, decades of alumni started making plans. Plans to travel, and debates of how best to show our appreciation. Was there a favorite song? One we all knew? Perhaps one he wrote? (I voted for John Saw Duh Numbuh. Good times.) Once his spring concert was set, organizers Mrs L & Valerie made the decision for us to join his existing choir for their last two numbers. Thank goodness for Facebook! Scanned music and youtube links went out. Ongoing discussion and building excitement percolated in secret. And then the big day came.

Friday, May 6, 2016.
Howard High School auditorium.
(Although not the auditorium that was there when I was there. In fact, if I hadn't been warned of the second renovation since my graduation, I would have ended up at the far end of the school.)

photo credit: Amy Oaks LoPresti

It was better than a class reunion inside. Most of the kids I hung out with in high school were in the years around me. (I have always advocated multi-class reunions for that reason.) And the auditorium was packed. The current choir sang (I was surprised that I recognized most of their pieces, some from singing with Mr L and some from Heart of the Triad Choral Society.) We heard anecdotes from different facets of Mr L's time at Howard, including speeches from Gene Streagle, who was principal when I was at Howard, and from one of mom's former piano students. And then it was our turn.

The curtains were drawn and alumni singers were invited onstage. We swarmed the existing choir, squashed them closely together, filled out the risers, and just kept coming. Rows upon rows to the sides and to the front. (I was glad to be near the current altos, less glad to be behind three rows of adult males. All cues are now unseen. Oh well. Strength in numbers.)

Then Mr L came out.
The roar of welcome was deafening. He seemed overwhelmed. That's a GREAT surprise party.
Looking around at the lot of us, and realizing that we've not rehearsed this together, Mr L quipped, "I've been conducting since I was 19yo, and I've never had anything go to pieces on me before." And he took the stand.

Sing Me to Heaven
Videos posted by Cindy Neat Six. Thank you, Cindy!


Soon Ah Will Be Done

And because no one wanted to let the moment go, we pleaded for an encore. When does the chant for an encore come from the stage? Oh, it was glorious to be a part of this group! And Mr L gave us one that everyone knew, unseasonable as it was. And everyone joined in, in full harmony, without music, without individual rehearsal... some things have had enough repetition that it doesn't take work for the embedded memory to surface. And it's lovely to be part of a group that can just go.¹

1 I remember watching Top Gun on the bus to Myrtle Beach and everyone sung along to "You Lost that Lovin' Feeling" in full harmony, just for fun, complete improv, diy harmony, but well. Later that weekend a men's choir took the stage wearing shades and untucked white shirts, turned their collars up, and sung "You Lost that Lovin' Feeling". We did better than they did, unrehearsed and on the bus.

Carol of the Bells

photo credit: Terri German Goodrich

photo credit: Tish Horney

photo credit: Ryan Hollingsworth

PS Big Frog says that the auditorium, which as you may recall was packed for the current choir's performance, was largely empty. We were all onstage and it was only spouses and current singers' parents out in the seats.

Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!

I went to Howard with a number of truly gifted singers and musicians. One accompanied us in choir and Showcase for perhaps two years before transferring to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. I turned pages for Daniel; that was my skillset.

Recently his grandfather, Rev Eddie F Moore Sr, passed, and as a tribute at the Homegoing, he played the song his grandfather always requested. And he played verse after verse in different styles, each heart-grabbing. God's truth is marching on.

Daniel's testimony after the fact:

"I just wanted thank everyone who has expressed their condolences to me & my family by sharing, commenting, and/or liking the video of me paying tribute to my late Grandfather. When I was a kid, it didn't matter whether I was practicing Chopin, Whitfield, or Monk, my Grandfather would always walk by and say, "Play the Battle Hymn of the Republic!" I never really knew why he liked that song so much, but it's the only musical request he's ever made of me. Then the last time I saw him, he said "I thought I was out of here a little while ago, & I told them I wanted you to play The Battle Hymn of the Republic at my funeral." Well Granddad, here we are...

"I think my father said it best, Granddad's passing was bittersweet. We all knew he didn't want to live like that, and we certainly didn't want to see him continue to suffer, but that doesn't take away the pain we feel from his absence in our lives. I'll probably be numb for a little while, but i know he's resting now. As we strive to keep his legacy alive through excellence, consistency, & all the principles of life he taught us, all that's left to say now is..."Glory Glory Hallelujah, His truth is marching on!!""

Issues

me: You've got issues.
Big Frog (to the tune of When I Get to Heb'n): I got issues
me: And I got issues.
Big Frog: All God's chillen got issues, my Lawd.
me: When I get to heb'n gon' take OFF my issues.
Gon' ain't-issue all ober God's heb'n.