Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I am…
Reading some good books…
Walking to the park where sweet Katie held her ground and told another child to stay off her slide (!)…
And eating gourmet meals prepared by DN without tears…
When I turned off my light last night daughter #2 had been admitted at the hospital and things were moving ahead…so stay tuned for more updates!
Well, I made it to Baltimore without any delays (thanks for all those prayers and well wishes) and wonderful DN was waiting to pick me up at the airport and drive me to Silver Spring. Since then I have been enjoying lots of quality time with precious daughter #2 and sweet Katiebelle.
We are waiting patiently for baby #2 to arrive.
In the meantime, here’s a poem, a sonnet by Christina Rossetti (1830-94), “Sonnets Are Full of Love”:
Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.
*1 Peter 2:3
–“Amaryllis” by Connie Wanek
Also this (picturing Ronnie Howard):
This is how my brain (still) works.
Have a good weekend! Pray for traveling mercies for me as I head to Baltimore tomorrow morning.
We have been enjoying the January Thaw here in flyover country. And I must say, it is nice not to have to bundle up every time the pup needs to walk around the yard looking for gross things to dig up and munch. (I hate to think what he has ingested, but I can’t be held responsible. He heeds not his Mamu’s sharp words.) This warm weather will, of course, not last. The daffodils and iris and lilies etc seem to think otherwise.
In other news, I put up this bird feeder which was a Christmas gift from a BFF…
I can’t wait to see which birds find it!
Last week I mentioned that someone had suggested I read the entire Shakespeare canon since I had completed reading the Bible. Since I own an (incomplete) set of Shakespeare that belonged to my grandmother, I may dive in. Mira, it seems, was given a new play for birthdays and Christmas when she was a teenager.
I mean, why the heck not? (But who was Aunt Fannie?)
I just found out that our Women’s Bible Study group will be studying the book of Daniel this spring and I am happy we will be back in the Old Testament. I am glad I spent so much time last year reading Leviticus–twice! Here’s a great explanation of why that is so. “Our own age of diversity echoes the fickle relativity of the ancient gods.”
However, just like ancient Israel, believers now don’t have to live at the mercy of the fickle gods. We have God’s Law and his gospel, wondrously clear and accessible. It proved to be a solid rock in the churning sea of ancient polytheism. It is just as stable of a rock in the contemporary sea of progressive culture and globalization.
And Tim Challies really nails delineating what he wants in a church here: “The cure that these church leaders propose is actually indistinguishable from the disease. The cure they propose for this illness is to administer more of the illness! They are treating cancer with cancer, infection with infection, radiation poisoning with even greater doses of radiation.” Amen, brother.
Raise your hand if you think Stetson Bennett IV , the Georgia QB, is awesome. Okay, I am a sucker for a good (Christian) sports story. “Bennett III was asked how his son was able to reach his ultimate goal of playing at Georgia. ‘Everyone that asks that question,’ he said. ‘I tell ’em two things: One, how good the Lord is. And two, just the fact that he never gave up. I’ve told him his entire life that he can do anything in the world that he wants to do, but he can’t just want it, you got to go to work. That’s what he did.’”
But, what ho, Two Gentlemen of Verona calls…”Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers…” Have a good day!
Well, it’s Daughter #1 here. Life has been very busy for me lately! I started a new job, moved in with my parents, have a wild animal of a puppy to care for. I have to commute downtown everyday! It’s a lot of adjustments, but it’s going okay. Luckily, my sweet mother takes care of the puppy during the day. And makes dinner at night. I am very #blessed.
We’re all getting by. And it will probably be like this for a few months (hopefully not too many months). But I’ll try to come up with some good stuff for my weekly blog posts. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time for internet perusing or amusing anecdotes this week. I am trying to look like a professional for my new coworkers.
Well, we made it to Wednesday!
*The post title comes from Only Murders in the Building which we are rewatching and enjoying immensely.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the introduction of the hymn “Amazing Grace” by John Newton. It was written in the weeks leading up to the 1773 New Year’s Day service at Newton’s church in Olney. His sermon that day was based on 1 Chronicles 17:16-17:
Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said:
“Who am I, Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, my God, you have spoken about the future of the house of your servant. You, Lord God, have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men.
There are literally hundreds of versions recorded of this famous and much-loved hymn (and available to view on YouTube!), but honestly, this plain, straightforward version by Alan Jackson is one of my favorites. I’m sure John Newton would approve.
Sunday was the birthday of Elvis Presley and we watched Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970) on TCM in his memory. There was a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on in that movie, which documents the King’s Summer Festival in Las Vegas during August 1970.
Somehow I think Elvis must have frequently felt like old King David and may have prayed a similar prayer (see above) many times in his confusing life. Hopefully he is singing God’s praise in his heavenly choir, a sinner redeemed and joyful.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.
We took down the Christmas decorations at church on Friday, so we are “back to normal” all around I guess.
I had a busy weekend, which included putting together a portable coat rack so daughter #1 has somewhere to hang her clothes, a DAR meeting, lunch out at a new diner, grocery shopping, visiting a house for sale (for daughter #1), church, and celebrating daughter #3’s birthday with Presbyterian Soufflé and cake. (This is the last of our four birthdays between November 28 and January 6.)
All this was accomplished in between walking the puppy. Phew. I am tired just thinking about it.
This week will be slower. I just have to get ready to fly to Baltimore on Saturday to help daughter #2 as she is due to give birth very soon. (Another January birthday!)
In the meantime, here are some fascinating events and discoveries from 2022 that you might have missed–I know I did.
This is a good reminder to stop grumbling.
And here’s a word from our Katiebelle:
So many.
Great is thy faithfulness!
Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
All I have needed thy hand hath provided—
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
–Thomas O. Chisholm, 1923
Is it time for a walk?
Many things I might have said today.
And I kept my mouth shut.
So many times I was asked
To come and say the same things
Everybody was saying, no end
To the yes-yes, yes-yes,
me-too, me-too.The aprons of silence covered me.
A wire and hatch held my tongue.
I spit nails into an abyss and listened.
I shut off the gable of Jones, Johnson, Smith,
All whose names take pages in the city directory.I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around.
–Carl Sandburg
I locked myself in and nobody knew it.
Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow
Knew it–on the streets, in the post office,
On the cars, into the railroad station
Where the caller was calling, “All a-board,
All a-board for . . . Blaa-blaa . . . Blaa-blaa,
Blaa-blaa . . . and all points northwest . . .all a-board.”
Here I took along my own hoosegow
And did business with my own thoughts.
Do you see? It must be the aprons of silence.
Today is Carl Sandburg’s birthday. He lived from 1878 to 1967 and during his lifetime he was held in high regard, winning three Pulitzer Prizes for poetry and biography. When he died President Lyndon Johnson said, “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.” Seems like a bit of an overstatement.
Sandburg understood some things though. He said: “When a nation goes down or a society perishes, one condition may always be found–They forgot where they came from.”
I liked this remembrance of Sandburg by the son of the artist William A. Smith who painted his portrait which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
Tonight is Twelfth Night which is celebrated on the last night of the twelve days of Christmas. Tomorrow is Epiphany, which is the feast commemorating the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus. Usually we watch 3 Godfathers (1948), but we jumped the gun and watched it last Friday. We just couldn’t wait.
It’s a classic–don’t miss it.
Anyway, all the Christmas decorations are packed away and the tree is resting on the curb to be recycled. This is a major accomplishment and worthy of note.
Also worthy of note:
“I love you and you’re the best baby I ever seen.” I could watch this over and over.
Onward into the new year!
*Pedro ‘Pete’ Roca Fuerte in 3 Godfathers
In response to my statement that I had read the entire Bible in 2022, a college friend commented on her Christmas card to me: “Katie! You read the Bible! What’s next? All of Shakespeare?”
Well, that’s an idea.
No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
–Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke’s,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
*Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The painting is “The Plays of William Shakespeare” by Sir John Gilbert, 1849
dual personalities 