Thanksgiving Day

Memories of the day--

sixteen people around two tables;

the loveliness of knowing exactly what would be on the menu;

using Grandmother's measuring spoons, recipes, and serving silver;

hearing belly laughter from the four youngest as they watched a movie;

crunching through the leaves in the park, eleven of us, between dinner and dessert;

singing the Doxology, enjoying the beautiful harmonies of my singing family's voices;

burning the candle that once burned in Grandmother's house;

and giving thanks from the heart, knowing we truly are blessed beyond all we could have asked or imagined.

Thanks be to God!

Kitchen Thanksgivings

I Just love this pie plate I found last year on sale in a Hallmark shop. I'm not a big shopper and generally don't buy things on impulse, but this was too sweet and at too good a price not to bring home. It's hoping to hold a pecan pie tomorrow, though, not an apple pie.




This was the first time I ever bought whole carrots. They are just beautiful. So different from the bagged type with the green cut off.




Our little version of the horn of plenty.

Touched by God Himself

I offered to let my sister write a guest-post while I was out of town and away from the computer, but I see she didn't take me up on the offer.

She did, however, post that last Kierkegaard prayer, so many thanks to you, Lisa.

I've been away and have photos and things to share, but it's late, so that will have to wait for another day.

In the meantime, a quote from St. John of the Cross that has been with me recently:

For when once the will
Is touched by God Himself
It cannot be satisfied
Except by God....

Prayers of Kierkegaard, IV

Father in Heaven!
Hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our sins
So that the thought of Thee when it wakens in our soul, and each time it wakens,
Should not remind us of what we have committed, but of what Thou didst forgive,
Not of how we went astray but of how Thou didst save us.

Prayers of Kierkegaard, III

Father in Heaven,
Well we know that it is Thou
That giveth both to will and to do,
That also longing,
When it leads us to renew
The fellowship with our Savior and Redeemer,
Is from Thee.
Father in Heaven, longing is Thy gift.
But when longing lays hold of us,
Oh, that we might lay hold of the longing!
When it would carry us away,
That we also might give ourselves up!
When Thou art near to summon us,
That we also in prayer might stay near Thee!
When Thou in the longing dost offer us
the highest good,
oh, that we might hold it fast!

Prayers of Kierkegaard, II

Lord Jesus Christ
Who suffered all life long
that I, too, might be saved,
and Whose suffering still knows no end,
This, too, wilt Thou endure:
saving and redeeming me,
this patient suffering of me
with whom Thou hast to do—
I, who so often go astray.

Prayers of Kierkegaard, I

O Thou Who art unchangeable,
Whom nothing changes,
May we find our rest and remain at rest
in Thee unchanging.
Thou art moved
and moved in infinite love by all things:
the need of a sparrow, even this moves Thee;
and what we scarcely see,
a human sigh,
this moves Thee, O infinite Love!
But nothing changes Thee, O Thou unchanging!

Amelia

Who wants a life imprisoned in safety?

Everyone has oceans to fly, as long as you have the heart to fly them.

Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?

The world has changed me.

Lines from the movie Amelia, which I just saw for the third time. Most years I make only three or four visits to the theater at all.

Here's to flying oceans...and to courage, to having the heart to fly.

The Deal with My Blog

Here's the deal.

When I started this blog, things were not as advanced in the technology as they are now. You wrote your stuff, and it got archived by the month.

Then things started changing. There was a period of time when Blogger was testing some new program (or something; I'm not sure what the right word it), and it made everything more complicated for a while, though they said it was going to make things easier.

Then at some point you had to choose whether to change over to the new way or keep the old way. I chose to keep the old way at the time, thinking I could change later if I wanted to.

Then I noticed that John Michael Talbot's blog had the same basic look as mine, but that it was in a different format from mine, more techno-looking and not as classic and pretty.

Then I tried to put a counter on my blog, because a friend said she was able to see from what countries people were reading her blog, and I thought that would be fun. But to install (if that's the right verb) the counter, it said I would have to switch my blog over to whatever it was that makes it more complicated. And it said that making the switch might cause me to lose some things.

I decided it wasn't worth it.

But in the meantime, everybody's blogs have this ability to tag things and archive them by subject matter and titles, rather than just seeing a month and year--and now I've written so much that there's no way to find old things, unless I happen to remember the time of year I wrote it. And I doubt anyone else cares, but I would kind of like to be able to find my old posts more easily, and to group them by themes.

And I'm wondering, if I did switch over, what exactly would I lose? And how long would it take me to go back and "tag" everything? And in the long run, would it really even matter?

I think I would have to switch the whole look, because if doing that meant that my blog would end up looking like JMT's, I just wouldn't want to look at it. Not that it's terrible; it's just not so pretty. Well, I just went to look at his and learned that it has been removed; I guess he's just relying on Facebook for communicating these days.

Oh, oh! And update: I just happened to find the blog of a distant friend while ago via Facebook, and he uses the same template with the new look. Somehow, looking at his, it doesn't seem quite as techno-uglified as the other way I had seen it....but it does lose a certain simplicity. (I had no idea this friend was a pen-lover. I would be too, if I could ever make enough money to indulge the habit.) Anyway, here it is, for comparison's sake:

http://austinspub.blogspot.com/

Well, I'm not about to make any major changes right now. Too many other things up in the air to add one more.

But for the future, I wonder if any of you can tell me how much trouble it is to switch over a blog from the old-fashioned way to the new way, or what I'm in danger of losing....

Anyone?

Happy Birthday!

I came across an article by a dad suggesting that the best two gifts you could give to your dad were 1) to live your own life well, and 2) to assemble a collage of pictures of the two of you together over the years.

Well, I'm doing the best I can with number one. And the truth is, I don't have that many pictures of my dad and myself together, so number two would be kind of hard to do.

Actually, I don't have many photographs of us together. But I do have pictures, lots of them. They're just in my mind, not on paper.

So here's a collage to celebrate Daddy's birthday today.

I remember Daddy climbing up the big sweetgum tree to help me down, the one time I climbed too high and couldn't figure it out on my own. He couldn't actually get me down because I was up where the branches weren't as strong. He talked me down. "Put your left foot on that branch over there....Now hold on to the branch on the right side, and let your right foot come down to that branch on the other side...." until soon I was safe again.

I remember him meeting me at the bottom of the stairs after Bible class at church, by the water fountain. And with both a smile and a little regret, I remember the time I asked him to stop calling me "Sheil-o-bean" there in front of my friends! I was five then, and that just didn't seem dignified enough to me.

I remember going to work with him, sitting in a college student desk, amazed at the carvings and drawings I saw on the desk. I doubt I understood a thing he was saying up there at the front of the room, but I thought it was neat that he was the teacher.

I remember him in the garden, often in the garden, telling me what he had planted where, and I amazed that he could remember, because they all looked so much alike when they were just little green shoots coming up.

I remember him in the front seat of the car, me in the back behind him, everyone else asleep as we drove all the way out to Gallup, New Mexico. I was astounded that he could find his way so far, having never even been there before, and never once getting lost! (I didn't understand then how the Interstate system worked.)

I remember going out with him to the Harding Farm, where he kept his beehives, and how he would get all dressed in the protective clothing and the safari-looking hat with the veil all around, and how we would watch from afar, admiring his courage as he walked right into the midst of a hive of bees, or smoked them out. He taught us to stay calm when bees were around. "If you can stay calm, they will, too, and you won't get stung." It wasn't always easy, but it was a lesson that applies to much more than bees.

I remember too many things, way too many things, to be able to write about it all here. He is one of the most intelligent, humblest, and gentlest people I have ever known. He knows the meaning of love and faithfulness as few people do. He can diagram complex sentences and used to read his Greek New Testament in church--and he can communicate just fine with the countriest people of rural Arkansas, as those of the churches where he used to preach.

He's my daddy. My sister and I asked if we would need to call him Pa when we moved from town out into the country. And when he got his doctorate, we sometimes called him Dr. Daddy. And it was strange in college to hear all my friends call him Dr. Underwood. But even when I was in his advanced grammar class, he was still Daddy to me. And always will be.

Happy Birthday, Daddy.