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Showing posts from September, 2016

the resistance

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I recently returned to a piece of music I've admired since Jr. High. There, among my cassettes of Nirvana and the Doors, was a recording of Carmina Burana. Now, years later, I've started listening to it and watching it with (son) Eli on YouTube . The lyrics are in Latin, so I found them with an English translation to read along with as we listen. Then I started reading about Carl Orff, the composer. He wrote Carmina during the second World War in Nazi Germany. There are some critics who question his association with the Nazi regime. Further reading led me to find he had contact with members of the White Rose Resistance and that one of the characters in his works may have been inspired by Sophie Scholl, an active member in that resistance group. I mentioned my rediscovery of Carmina to my analyst and he told me he was a fan, too. Then he relayed a story about Diedrich Bonhoeffer hearing Carmina Burana being played over a radio while he was a prisoner in a concentration camp,

religious imagination

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A cross of crosses kids made with found sticks. This summer, Eli and I had the opportunity to play on this neat little neighborhood playground when we were passing through Boulder, CO. I don't spend a lot of time on swings, but there I did get to spend time swinging with Eli. Trying to remember how to swing is one thing; pumping my legs, and then, the big pay-off: jumping at the peak for a short flight back to the mulch covered yard. I get dizzy easier now than when I was a little kid. Eli loves to spin and swing and shake his body up to TRY to make himself dizzy. I avoid merry-go-rounds. I thought it was just because I'm past my younger years. I've noticed though, as Eli experiments more and more, and sometimes drags me along for the ride (literally) I don't get dizzy quite as easily. I found jumping out of the swing a little fun. Practicing has helped my body relearn how to deal with being spun, swung, and tipped. Those balancing mechanisms in my ear aren't ol

clean out

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This week I did a bit of cleaning out. Ok, I actually did a lot. We have this closet. If you spend much time around the church, you know that with so many people, a lot gets crammed into closets, so I won't have to explain what it was like.  One of the treasures I found was this painting and six others. I had seen a few of the series, but this gave me an occasion to see all of them together. They are unique and beautiful. There were other things that have been stored in there, and were not as beautiful, or just hadn't been used for at least the four years since I've been there. Some of them went away.  The end goal was to straighten up a meeting room that, like the closet, is used by multiple people and groups, and had become a bit encumbered. It was usable, but now it's in much better shape. Now it's ready to be a space where people can connect with one another and with God.  The clutter, which just happens, has to be cleaned out from time to time, o