Sabbath, City Thoughts,

I love Sunday, and do you know why?  No, it's not because of church or brunch...it's because Sunday is the one day of the week when my children are allowed to play video games, and they are silent.  It's so silent in my house right now, while we wait for David to finish recording and uploading his sermon.  Then we drive to a nearby church that offers a parking lot service, and we sit in our car and listen.  And afterwards we let the dog run wild in the field.  

Sunday isn't my sabbath day of rest, I'm afraid.  Never has been.  If you work 40+ hours a week and DON'T have a wife at home to do all the home stuff, then you come home and collapse in exhaustion and then the days you do things are Saturday and Sunday.  That's just reality.  It was a bit easier when I was a student, because there were often long gaps in between classes when one could run to the grocery store, or do a load of laundry.  But, of course, now I'm at home with three children and I'm homeschooling them, and going to school myself, and all the other things.  So, no, Sunday isn't restful.  It's a workday - a day when my husband is off to church to work, and a day when I am herding people through reality.  

But that's okay!  While I think the concept of Sabbath is critically important, I also think the idea of everyone sitting silently in a front parlour as a family is incredibly outdated.  The video games give ME a sabbath from listening to people clamour for my attention and services.  Here I am, in silence.  I will take my sabbaths as a dozen little moments of peace throughout the week.

It's November which means IT'S ALMOST ADVENT!!!

Lalalalalala CHRISTMAS!!!

Don't hate me.

I know, I know, it's NOVEMBER and everything but I just love the START of Advent so much I drag it all out as much as I possibly can!

Okay, so have you seen the Jacquie Lawson Advent calendars!?  They are fantastic and so much FUN.  Every morning the children and I would log onto the Jacquie Lawson site and see what new Advent calendar thingy has popped up to explore.  For $5 you buy unlimited access to the Advent calendar and I'm not ashamed to say we still occasionally look at last year's and re-play the games over again.  It's Well Worth It, is what I'm saying.

Also I'm happily putting things into and out of my Amazon cart which is my very most favourite part of Christmas shopping.  Mostly because I cannot STAND going into stores around Christmas because there are so many people and some of them might bump into me or run their carts into my legs or have screaming children and...I'm just not a people person.  It's almost sad to eventually finish the Amazon order and sadly press 'order', because then it's all done for another year.

I've found myself a fun little project to work on when the children have gone to bed:

Image from Amazon

I've been patiently making my way through these paper cut ornaments for two Advents now, with no sign of stopping yet!

We're doing our shoeboxes again this year!  And we're hosting a packing party at the church, too!

Look at these wreaths!  It's almost time to make our annual front door wreath!

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I have a grapevine wreath that I made from vines I pulled off a downed tree in our backyard and every year I decorate it again with a new bunch of things.  Except right now, when I have actually hung up a bunch of multi-coloured corn on the door.  But soon it will be time for no more corn!!

Usually I buy a new Christmas tree ornament each year to add to the collection but THIS year I need a tree topper because our old one has finally bit the dust.  I THINK I want a star, and not an angel.  Mostly because I really prefer stars and also the angels tend to get a little over the top but also because angels tilt on treetops, I don't know if you've noticed this.  But the problem is what star to pick, because scrolling through stars has me realizing I don't actually love a lot of the stars EITHER.  There's this one, which I do like:

Image from Amazon

I don't know if I like it enough though.  It is very pointy.  But it's a far sight better than some of the tree toppers out there.  Or I could get one of these things:

Image from Amazon

I know it sort of skips the Christian imagery of the angel/star, but honestly that's fine with me because seriously, the top of my tree does not need to have a star on it in order for me to remember the, ahem, 'reason for the season', as they say.  But the problem is I don't really love any of those EITHER, but I still need something on the top of the tree!  What a nice, cozy sort of non-problem to mull over for a few weeks.

And speaking of mulling, one of my favourite things to do around the holidays is make everything smell nice.  And to that end I really want to buy this:

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I mean, I WON'T buy it, because it is $20 plus shipping, but I want to.  Vanilla, bourbon and white tea scent sounds lovely.

Am I alone?  Is anyone else getting all revved up??

Leave The Dying Churches Alone.

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I read this article, about the epidemic of closing churches, and I have mixed feelings.  That probably doesn't surprise anyone.  I specialize in mixed feelings.

I've been a Christian for so many years now that sometimes I feel like I've heard every argument people can make, and this is nothing new.  There are lots and lots of things any organization *should* do - every organization under the sun, not just churches.

And to paraphrase H.L. Menken: "For every problem there is a solution that is easy, neat, and wrong."

And yet it's hard for me to say this because I love the easy answers!  Yes, so simple, so OBVIOUS!  Just bundle all the Christians together into one big, effective, vibrant church and then all the little churches can close and you can be financially stable and so forth.

This sort of answer just pulls at us, doesn't it?  The simple and neat and easy and successful?  Get rid of all the complexity of messy humanity and be a substantial congregation and fiscally stable and all that - I mean, who wouldn't want to look at it that way?  Well, God, for one.  God doesn't look at it that way.  I can't count the number of times I've said the following statements:  "God doesn't call you to be successful; He calls you to be faithful.", "No one intelligent enters the ministry with an eye on financial success in life", "(my husband's) 'boss' is not the congregation; it is God".  And so forth.  I have to say these things over and over again because...this is not what the world tells us.  And Christians, including this author, have absorbed similar ideas.  The church is intended to be successful, the church should close old buildings and focus on what will really work, the people who cling to those old buildings are doing so because they have nice memories associated with them, but we should pass over those feelings and get rid of that old stuff, because there is New! Stuff! Ahead!  Go forth!

That...isn't Christian.  It's very popular, and it's very appealing and it would maybe give you the results you desire...but it isn't Christian.

The fact of the matter is that God is the head of those churches, as He is the head of all churches that follow Him.  I don't know the churches that the author mentions, but I would be hesitant to support any suggestion that we know all that God intended them for - that His plans for those buildings, those congregations, that history and community influence, are simply done now because the church isn't financially affluent.

When a church struggles these days, we immediately start to throw newness at the 'problem'.  And believe you me, I have experience with churches slowly 'dying'.  We find new ministries, we gussie the place up a bit, we start new outreaches and such.  And if we are doing this because we feel as though our faith has grown stagnant and needs to be renewed then probably this is all quite a good idea.  If we're doing it because the other churches in town have bigger congregations than we do and we want the same outward signs of success and prosperity...maybe not so much a good idea.

I've gone to those little churches before.  My husband once did pulpit supply for a church so small that when we showed up we doubled the congregation.  And I don't know what to tell you.  Those churches, like all churches, serve as beacons of God's word in the wilderness, even if they do nothing else of value in the world's eyes.  They are the church that you drive past on your way home from work.  They are the church your grandparents went to.  And who knows...maybe they're the church someone goes to that Sunday when "I should go to church someday" turns into "Today is the day I go to church."

I get it, I get the desire to have the big, the shiny, the new.  I get the desire to want to look out over the pews and see them full, just BURSTING, with people, and new people, and eager people.  But these people are cherished souls, and the old, the tired, the ones who look nothing like that vibrant congregation of your dreams, they are also cherished, in their old grey pews, with their well worn faith and their adamant desire to not use an overhead projector.

Leave the little, decrepit churches alone.  Or rather, don't leave them alone.  Go to them!  Attend them!  Help them make coffee and offer to print off a nice Easter bulletin for them or at the very least talk to them, maybe they have something to teach you.  Listen.

Stand Up! Stand Up for...terrible music

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Horatio Spafford wrote the hymn It Is Well With My Soul after losing four daughters in a horrific naval accident.  The second verse reads: 

                                    "Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,

                                    Let this blest assurance control,

                                    That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,

                                    And hath shed His own blood for my soul."

Alternatively, here's a verse from a popular worship song called Resurrecting, by the group Elevation Worship:

                                    "By Your spirit I will rise
                                    From the ashes of defeat
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    In Your name I come alive
                                    To declare Your victory
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    By Your spirit I will rise
                                    From the ashes of defeat
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    In Your name I come alive
                                    To declare Your victory (c'mon!)
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    By Your spirit I will rise
                                    From the ashes of defeat
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    In Your name I come alive
                                    To declare Your victory
                                    The resurrected king, is resurrecting me"

Some friends and I had a conversation this past week, not our first such conversation, about current Christian music in churches and how...different...some of it is.  And I thought these two examples would highlight that difference better than my own words could.

Maybe before I say anything else though I should mention that I actually quite like a lot of modern Christian music.  My car radio station is tuned to the three Christian stations I can get en route to the grocery store and I hear a lot of it and most of it is not awful.  It isn't all my style necessarily, but I can see past that and to the essential merit of the song itself.  And alternatively, I can see the merit in more traditional songs that are also not my style.

There are certainly reasons to dislike some contemporary Christian music, but style shouldn't be one of them from a purely detached viewpoint.

Here's something you can't sweep under the rug, though.  That second piece of music up there is complete rubbish.  It might be catchy, it might be upbeat, but it is categorically bad music.  It's stupidly repetitive, badly written, and theologically inaccurate.  In fact, it sounds like prosperity gospel set to a high school battle of the bands ditty that Todd figured out on the bass in his garage.

But...but WHY is this the case with more and more modern Christian music?  Well, I have a theory, which I haven't really researched or anything so feel free to disagree with me about, and it goes a little something like this:  Purpose.  What's the purpose of you writing or singing this song anyway?  And for a lot of these bands the purpose is commercialism covered in a thin veneer of Jesus culture. 
Beyond the pat standard Christian musician answers of 'glorifying God', what is the purpose behind these songs?  Does "The resurrected King is resurrecting me" bring glory to God?  No, of course not, it brings all the focus right back to numero uno.  Not to mention sounding utterly ridiculous because no, Jesus is not resurrecting you currently.  No he isn't, Todd.  

And if you're rolling your eyes at my nit picking well, I shall leave you to study your Bible and come back to me about the verse where Christ says "And verily I say unto you, you shall never be defeated or anything at all because by my spirit I shall make everything great!"

The thing is, if you live in the Western Christian world you are one of the wealthiest, most fortunate people on Earth.  You probably have food, you probably have some kind of shelter, you probably have access to education.  Four of your children are unlikely to die in a naval accident en route to England.  You aren't a sailor on slave trade vessels and so you could never write, as John Newton did:

                                         "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

                                         That saved a wretch like me.

                                          I once was lost, and now am found

                                        Was blind, but now I see."

Because you probably don't think of yourself as a complete wretch, even if you are one.  And maybe that sort of horribleness is what makes the great Christian hymns, well, great.  Not necessarily to everyone's musical tastes, of course, understandably, but still very much The Great Music.  You might not listen to Beethoven, but you're certainly not going to say he wrote bad music if you want to be taken at all seriously.  You might not enjoy reading Tolstoy, but he was an author of great and lasting importance and that's just all there is to it.

So maybe Elevation Worship and the like are writing from where they are - writing from their world of Big Southern U.S. Western Church Life.  And that's what they can write, because that's what they know.  I don't know and I'm not going to waste my time digging through the biographies of the band members because the point isn't that one particular song, which just happened to be one that struck me, but the problem of bad Christian music in general.  Maybe the question isn't 'shouldn't we aim for a higher standard?' but 'can we even write well anymore, now that we're so comfortable?'  

Auction

It's Wednesday, the day I've been dreading all week - the day that people from the church come to help empty out the garage and cart all the stuff that has been getting shoved in there for weeks to the auction that the congregation is holding on Saturday.  It's going to be a big, substantial event that will undoubtedly fill the hall and empty the garage, but I don't like the stress involved with it at all.

Not only does the garage emptying happen today, in two sections with two different crews, but I figure why not make it a whole DAY of auction stress and also bake the dessert I'm supposed to be delivering.  I was going to make baklava, but then (and this is going to explain a lot to you about how remote this place is) no one had heard of baklava.  I asked many people...okay I think one person liked it but most were confused.

So then I thought 'do I bake this dessert that will not get purchased because everyone is so confused about what it even is?'  And now I'm backing and forthing about the whole thing but think that what will actually happen is I'll make cookies.

World Day of Prayer stuff, church, my children.

Well, I announced in church this morning that the World Day of Prayer is on Friday, and hosted by the United Church this year.  We need to bring two readers, and I gamely volunteered to be one of them and hope that someone else will stand up as the second so I don't have to start calling people and asking them.

Trying very hard to keep the focus on our big vacation in 10 days - we're heading off on a 12 hour drive to see relatives and shop for summer clothes and other things that are difficult to do where we live.

Also at church - a large, gooey, celebratory cake which reminded me of that passage in Lauren Winner's book Girl Meets God.  Perhaps I am meant to be an altar guild member forever.

Saturday

Oh my word I just discovered that I'm supposed to be posting for seven days, not five.  Seven.  Which means that today, which I assumed was my last day of inflicting inane ramblings on the poor folk of facebook is, in fact, not.  I need to think of things to write about for another two days.  People, I'm not that interesting.

I woke up this morning, after having slept in until an embarrassing time, and David asked me if we could have company for supper tonight.  Now, I'm almost always up for company.  No, that's not true, here's the deal: when you don't have children entertaining consists of looking through lots of cookbooks and spending an afternoon shopping for food and possibly even a few days cleaning depending on how important your company is.  And then you all have a lovely long visit and eat all sorts of things and enjoy yourselves.

When you HAVE children, you can only cook in shifts, because otherwise whomever is in the kitchen is attempting to move around whilst dragging the dead weight of a toddler clinging to her legs asking for cheese/a drink of water/ cuddles/ more cheese.  "Oh how sweet' the childless among you coo; no it is not sweet.  It is, in fact, very far from sweet.  Your options are baby gates or a spouse who can effectively distract.

There is also no point whatsoever in cleaning anything because, as my living room can currently attest to, cleaning lasts 3.2 seconds.  And I'm not talking 'well we'll need to re-fluff those cushions' type cleaning.  There is currently a torn apart bun all over the floor.

This means that the only real option is so serve something from the slow cooker, arrange for the children to leave the premises for the majority of the day (or at least just before company arrives) and tidy everything by throwing it into the playroom.  I've been told that this changes as the children get older - but I can't see it from the trenches.

So, the company.  We're having it, and this company falls into the 'I'd like things to look and taste nice' camp, as opposed to family or friend company where my hope is that they like pizza.

I think I've decided to try and make my mother's recipe for zucchini stuffed chicken, and then serve that with something totally store bought, possibly even a store bought dessert.

Yada

My in-laws are visiting us for the next little while, so I might be a little absent from the blog.  Not that that's anything all that different from the usual deal around here - I'm not the best blogger, let's face it.

We spent the day in the city attending the kickoff for Operation Christmas Child (our church is the collection centre for our area) and I was reminded yet again why I should never attempt to take my children anywhere ever.  They ate food like crazy; an embarrassing amount of food.  They cried loudly during touching moments.  They played the drums on the church drum set and had to go to the bathroom and sobbed in the car because even though they had just said they didn't want to go into the grocery store with me they wanted to and I left without them.  

It was all very tiring.  And they're going to wake up soon and require water and changes of pajamas and comforting and so I had better go to sleep.

The first update.

It's been 15 days since my last post...and I'm sorry.  Wouldn't it have been nice to freak out alongside me for the whole awful, awful journey here?  Oh you would have just loved that, I can tell.  But it was not to be, and that's just fine because it wasn't nice, and it wasn't pretty, and it will have to be a story for another day because I can't handle re-living it right now.

So instead, let's start with 'and so they arrived.'  We got here.  Our stuff got here.  The cats and the children all got here and we were home.

The House

It's small, but not unimaginably so.  The main problem is that there is pretty much no storage space anywhere - no basement, no big closets, no linen closet, no coat storage....the result is that my linens are in the kitchen cupboards and the winter coats are currently in S's room.

The Yard

It's H.U.G.E.  Amazingly so.  There's a big, big front yard with trees and grass, then a side yard, then a back yard with a deck that is almost the size of our living room, plus a fire pit and lots of lawn, then there's MORE grass off to the other side of the house that also includes a big sand box and lots of huge climbing rocks and a beautiful hedge of lilac bushes and apple trees.

The Church

The church is well-sized for the congregation.  It's your typical little white steepled country church with wooden pews and a big hall for shared meals.  David's office is in the church and it's filled with bookshelves. It's all very nicely proportioned.

The People

I will say, in all honesty, that I never expected such a warm and loving welcome as we found here.  The congregation has been exceptionally understanding, kind, sweet-tempered, funny and real to a tired family of four with sore feet, whirling heads and sleep deprivation.  They have fed us like it's going out of style.  I'm not kidding.  In the week and a half since we've arrived I have received two shopping bags full of apples, three jars of apple butter, a tray of sticky buns, a large box of peaches, a bag of green beans, three cucumbers, a zucchini the size of my calf, a lemon meringue pie, a tray of bacon beans, a large amount of smoked ham, a margarine container of cut up vegetables, a tomato and cucumber salad, scalloped potatoes, a 10lb bag of potatoes, and have been given a huge lasagna dinner with fresh baked bread and salad.  And that's not including everything they stocked the house with before we arrived, including toiletries, milk, bacon, bread, eggs etc. Oh, and giftcards to restaurants.  We've eaten out already.

The Town

The phrase 'don't blink or you'll miss it' might have been invented to describe this little town.  What it lacks in size it more than makes up for in simply stunning scenery, though.  We're right on the banks of a gorgeous lake, the clouds are unlike anything I've ever seen before, the stars are incredibly bright, the trees..oh my heavens the trees and the hills...the vistas are just...it's breathtaking.

What We've Done...

The children and I discovered that there's a playgroup in town and last Friday we packed up and went to it.  I've only ever been to one other playgroup before so I didn't have a lot to compare it to - but this one was totally different from what I'm used to.  Also, it was packed, although the other mothers assured me that this is not common.

We all went to the local library to get cards and check out our first batch of books.  You know you're bookworms when your dishes aren't all unpacked but you've got a local library card...

Last weekend was the big fall fair for the area and I almost talked myself into getting a chicken.  I didn't, but I allllmost did.

Alright, now to bed.  The first week we were here we were in bed so early every night that the sky was still light.  Now I'm averaging about 9pm on a good night.

Sunday

Singing the Sunday solo again my friends.  David worked from 7-3, which means he left the house at 6:25 and got home around 3:30.  Which further means that I dealt with church all by my lonesome - and today I was upstairs helping with the Sunday school crowd.

Let's recap:

Multiple time outs.  No one wanted breakfast.  Long walk.  Tired me.  Heard nothing of the service.  Off to small group.  Everyone cried.  Home again.

There.  Now it's like you lived it with me.

Falafel and french fries for supper.  Children cried until I just put them to bed.  Tomorrow may or may not have a playdate in it - the one thing I can say for certain will be present is fish, because it is essentially some of the only meat present in the house and all of the stores are closed tomorrow.  I'm thinking a big feed of pancakes for one of the two *bigger* meals, and then fish and....something...for the other.  Every time I look in the fridge I get depressed.  I'm going to have to actually meal plan this coming week.

So...even more cloth diapers are heading out from our rotation.  My six Bummis super whisper wraps are officially too small for little miss chubby, so we're cutting those out of circulation.  She's slowly outgrowing every diaper I have for her.  Right now there are pretty much five Bummis super lites, a Nubunz, an AMP and a Rumperooz cover that still fit.  I have some one size covers that I tend to use on S, but could adjust for C, but other than that - my cloth diaper stash is getting quite low.

Good Friday

Good Friday is about poverty.

It's about losing the most important thing in the world.  It's about everything, everything, being dark.  Very dark.  About hopelessness and heartbreak; curtains ripping from top to bottom, God turning away, blinking.

About crying.  It's a lot about crying.

I struggle with balancing this darkness with the knowledge that daybreak is coming again.  I also struggle with Holy Saturday, but for entirely different reasons.  But on Good Friday my problem is simple:  how to feel deep, lasting, spiritual mournfulness when I know how the story ends.  In two days He rises from the dead!  Let's just skip all of this sad stuff and get to the happy ending!  Right?

Hmmmm.


{Okay, after reading another post on Good Friday I feel like, just in case anyone decides to mis-interpret the above sentences, I need to just add a small bit of clarification.  I am a Christian.  I understand in both a historical and a spiritual sense what the death of the Christ meant to me as an individual and to the world as a whole.  I know of the horror He would have endured and, as much as a woman who has never been beaten who is sitting in front of a computer in 21st century Canada is able to, I understand the story.  This is not me saying 'Meh.  It wasn't that big a deal.  He comes back to life."  This is me saying "It IS a big deal.  It is the biggest of big deals.  And I don't know HOW to make it a huge big deal in the context of the entire Easter story."  Because when you know how the story ends, sometimes you have trouble with the emotions that are supposed to be there when you don't know how the story ends.  Anyway, end of rant.}

Random

C is an eating machine, a bottomless pit, a hungry hungry hippo of a child these days.  She's shaping up to be the exact replica of her brother in this regard.  Big feet, hungry stomach, lots of hair, adorable and terribly good-natured.  She a good sleeper, not happy with the diaper changes, and only content with being held on her terms.  On the other hand, I'm really starting to see the big differences in the children as well.  C is determined to get her own way, where Sl is much more easy-going.  C is going to shake the world, but S is going to be the stubborn, kind type.

Look what I did!  Desperate for spring (and by the look of it, you'd assume desperate for a home filled with hipster versions of Ms. Stewart) I've resorted to injecting sunshine wherever I can find it.  Did you know, by the by, that P.interest has pages and pages of pictures of painted clothespins?  I mean, not the painted clothespins the like of which you see above, but ones with tiny miniatures of sea creatures painted on and such.  It's...almost creepy.

So.  The church we attend is going through a lot of upheaval right now; big changes are happening in the staff.  Currently the church employs a lead pastor, an assistant pastor, a youth pastor and a children's pastor, along with a ministry assistant (different from the assistant pastor - confusing, I know) who is also the office administrator.  Well, the assistant pastor has announced that he's retiring, and the children's pastor has announced that she's resigning, and the ministry assistant is moving to the States with her family!  And the youth pastor is a newer hire so really, of the old guard only the lead pastor is left.  Add to this that several families who are heavily involved in the church are embarking on new adventures with their families, and there is going to be major reshuffling.

I don't like reshuffling.  I like settled.

I also like cooking.  Which I do a lot of around here.  It's my 'fun chore'.  Do you have one of those?  You might not want to admit it because then people are going to actually make you do it, but it's nice to have one occasionally.  I like the cooking.  Well, I like it better than dishes.  Dishes are the worst.