IrishOboe

It’s a long story, but because of Tim.  I got to thinking about when we should follow Jesus’s example when he warns the spiritual leaders of the day with words such as “brood of Vipers,” “children of the devil,” and “hypocrites.”  Of course I wrote too much for a comment on Tim’s blog and decided to subject you to my musings.  These are musings though they may come across as strong beliefs.  I’m open to thoughts.  Let’s get some more great discussion on spiritual matters like we had going a while back!  (Yes, that was a shameless plug for comments) :-D

I want to cry.  I want to sing.  I want to dance.  I want to hold on.  I want to fly.  I’m in my room with computer stuff everywhere trying to get organized before I leave.  Praise God that little by little most stuff has gotten done and I’m not panicking.  After crying to some Les Miserables (I’m good enough at piano now to accompany myself now) I danced to some Irish music, which never fails to lift the spirits.  Mom and Dad are off at a symphony concert and I’m supposed to be finished backing when they get back – ha!  I’m close, I think (it’s not the packing, but the leaving everything behind in order and knowing what I need to take).  The inspiration for this post is a back walkover.

I just had another hilarious encounter with customer service, but unlike usual, I wasn’t talking to someone in India, she actually addressed my needs, and was even pleasant while doing so.  There are enough customer service horror stories so I thought I’d put out an experience that’s the polar opposite.

My apologies for talking so much about this book before reading it then failing to write about afterwards.  I started notes about it and lost them so I was waiting for them to show up . . .

As we pass the one week mark I’m finally going through papers I should have gone through long ago and what should I happen to come across but a paper entitled “Italy” and on it a list of about eight points briefly reminding me of some of my adventures there.  Sharing this with my mom, she pointed out that she did a website for me while I was in Italy, but had completely forgotten if I ever realized it because I wasn’t much into computers and certainly hadn’t heard of a blog.  The link is still on Mom’s homepage and the password is the same.  It has all my pictures labeled and everything!  There is a separate section entitled “Men” that has no content because apparently I promised all the juicy stories and never got around to writing about them.

Saturday Daddy took us to see La Nouba by Cirque du Soleil in Downtown Disney.  It was so amazing but I can't write about it or post pictures because I haven't been able to recover from the relapse with my arms.  Keep up those prayers, please!  Namely, that I would have patience not to do work on the computer, play piano, or basically get any work done even though I leave for Switzerland in a week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had my vielle (medieval fiddle) debut at church yesterday.  I played prelude and postlude and hymns for two services.  I did a mostly prepared improvisation on Be Thou My Vision and a different improvisation on the Spanish 13 c. song I did on my audition.  It went pretty well considering, and it helped humble me and give me confidence.  

I’ve had a slight relapse of my arm problems from thinking I’ve healed more than I have.  I must write about the movie I just watched so I’ll try thinking more than typing.  Here goes . . .

Friday Jimmy took the day off so he could drive down and visit me for the weekend.  He got me out of the house for something besides church, choir practice, and grocery shopping.  Wasn’t that nice of him?  It was quite nice, actually.  I don’t have many connections left here in Orlando so it was nice to spend time with a friend.  This is not to diminish the value of being with Mom and Dad nor to denigrate the friendship of people still in Orlando, but mostly my friends are not where I am, which is proving to be more difficult than I’d supposed.  Here’s a big hug from me to everyone (and there’s a good number of you!) who has kept the emails and the love rolling.  It is very much appreciated. :)

There's a good discussion going on here about different ways churches serve children and families.  Unless you dig, you'll miss this description of a family generally unused to family worship experiencing it on one occasion "The children were back with us and we were singing. Hannah was really into it, and started singing loudly, off-key, and sometimes at the wrong times, but from the bottom of her heart. My first reaction was embarrassment. I like to keep a low-profile. Then, I started wondering what other people were thinking. Once I was able to get passed all that, though, I saw how absolutely beautiful it was. There we were, as a family, united in worship before our God, living out what we're trying to teach at home. Even Daniel was clapping his hands. I couldn't help thinking that this is how things were meant to be."

Many people comment that they are embarrassed to sing around me in church because I am a musician.  I might have been a snob as a kid, but now when I worship every noise I hear is beautiful and if it's off-key but loud, praise the Lord!  I do blame the invention of recorded sound for our lack of community singing - sacred or otherwise – but that’s a different topic.  My tendency to let it all out and worship the Lord without being self-conscious of perfection sometimes has the detrimental effect of speeding up while playing a hymn or not caring if we mess up.  I do believe in doing our utmost for the Lord, and my idea of “not caring” is probably still holding myself to a high standard, but one cannot worship if the whole of the attention is looking at what can be improved musically!  That said, there is something marvelous about singing in a large group of worshipers who can sing!  I’d rather take the room of heart-worshipers with no voices than the room of singers with no worship.  I’ve sung with 800 music teachers and it made a beautiful noise, but it’s nothing like a joyful nice made unto the Lord!

Speaking of making joyful noises, last Saturday we visited Linda and Justin and after a lovely dinner we sang through some choir anthems and Linda and I played together (piano and fiddle respectively).  There is something special about gathering around the piano and singing together (and we had accompanied SATB!)  Then there’s something magical about improvising to a hymn tune with someone who you grew up playing with.  I’ve been playing in church with Linda since I was about 10 and much of my musical ability was shaped by playing with her and listening to her direct the church choir, which was a treasure we didn’t fully appreciate until it was over.  I was too young to be in choir (silly age discrimination!) but I had to go to rehearsals because the rest of my family was in it.  There are many great memories from that time, but I’ll relate a funny one because I cannot relate effectively enough the more moving stories.

Since I wasn’t allowed in choir (see, I’m not bitter) I was the official ‘tage purner.’  (I’ve always had trouble with spoonerisms in my speech.)  One Sunday the choir sang “The Heavens Are Telling” by the Haydn, and it is a glorious work (think of a chorus from Messiah, if you don’t know this piece.)  They’d worked so hard on it and Linda was using the KORG too accompany the piece in order to have orchestra (including tympani!) sounds.  As church performances go it was quite special, but the unfortunate bit was that I was a growing teenager at the time and didn’t quite know the length of my arms.  As I reached over to turn the page at a rather climatic part of the piece my elbow hit a button on the KORG and it suddenly went silent.  The whole choir froze and looked down at us with expressions of shock.  “What did you hit?” Linda whispered to me, “I don’t know, I think it was this” I whispered back in complete terror.  Somehow she managed to find sound again and the choir continued, though I have no memory of that.  I was mortified but some sweet choir member told me afterwards that it’s a hard piece and it was nice to have a little break in the middle of it.

You better believe the page tuner’s job is an important one!

I only hinted about my one and only self organized solo trip in Switzerland.  Life came at me fast after I returned and I had a hard time simply keeping up with new stuff on the blog.  The trip was too amazing to leave to a quick write up, and as often happens, that perfectionism in my lead to procrastination and now it’s half a year since and doubtless I cannot tell the story as I would have at the time.  The experiences that made it incredible would have been just as impossible to relate then as they are now.  The shear majesty of natural beauty was overwhelming.  My pictures and videos cannot do it justice.  The time I had to think and pray and BE with God was equally precious and inspiring, but even if I remembered what particular struggles and revelations I had at the time I doubt I would or could have related them to you.

As it turns out I did start the write up, but didn’t finish it.  I’ve copied the text below with my current comments in brackets []. (More)

Occasionally I indulge and look at the statistics for my blog to find out how people find my website.  Very often people searching for Japanese words or information on the Hippo Family Club come to my blog.  It turns out that if you search for Hippo Family Club in Google France I’m the first hit – even above their official website!  The point for this post comes from a more interesting part of the globe.  If you search the Arabic Google for “learn how to do makeup myself” you get two hits, the first of which is my post “It’s All About Me” about being a bridesmaid for my friend’s wedding.  Just for fun I had Google translate the page into Arabic and this.  I wonder why this person made that search . . .

Here’s a toast to the fact that I was able to keep my blog updated regularly despite the fact that a new adventure followed quickly on the heels of the latest Swiss adventure.  Still, there were a few things I skipped and planned to write about later, but never found the time for.  Now I’m trying to get my housekeeping done before going back and I’m sick of taxes (they changed the rules on my regarding foreign earned income – blah!!!!!!!!) so here is a flashback in picture of Basel’s crazy (but not drunk and dangerous) pre-Lent celebration that occurred after Ash Wednesday because Bebes (Baslers) are special.

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I hope everyone has a lovely day.  We’re having long time friends over and eating hamburgers from a friend’s ranch.