Hopefully it is true what they say when they say :: Better late than never. Because, this is late.
Gavin turned 8 over a month ago and I just got his video finished, for a whole slew of really valid and extremely interesting reasons. Yeah, right. It just took the Gav and I awhile to sync our schedules.
LOVE this boy. Wrote about his birthday HERE. And now, for the movie we made together using, yes, songs from the 60s and 70s because that is what I do (he wanted rock -n- roll, for sure). Gavin loves life and embraces it with abandoned fervor. That is what I hoped to capture in a few photos and a little video:
OK, yes, I would like to sing martini music. What of it?
After we checked in at Midway Airport on our way home from Chicago (btw, I am in love with Midway and was thrilled to avoid O’Hare!!), we grabbed lunch in the food court where we had the sweetest entertainment by a very gracious and beautiful, Greta Pope. She did standards and pop hits and oldies and jazz and I was enthralled.
Tredessa was not one bit surprised when I told her that this is the next direction I hope my life takes. And Dave knew the second he saw her that I would want to be her. Lovely.
We Pentecostals have this thoroughly unusual phenomenon sometimes called being “slain in the Spirit.”
Oh, it takes getting used to, this thing of seeing people being in a prayer line and when touched, they fall, usually backwards. And I have seen it “done” so badly, as an attempt to get the Holy Spirit moving. I feel sorry for evangelists and preachers who feel the need to push that, almost demand it.
The Bible doesn’t even use the term “slain in the Spirit,” that experience in which a believer senses such a strong Presence of God the Holy Spirit that they end up flat on the floor. But there are implied passages of scripture, here are a few
Numbers 22:31
Ezekiel 1:28; 3:23
Matthew 28:4
John 18:6
Romans 8:17,18; 10:17
Acts 22:7
Revelation 1:17
For pragmatic, non-Charismatic-types, wow, they love to hate this. And it is very ethereal and mysterious, to be sure. But I have been there, yes me, on the floor. I have actually been “pushed” by preachers who needed to prove they had power and even pulled backwards by a zealous “catcher,” whose name I would love to reveal, but will not, because that isn’t very Christlike. And I have also seriously been “caught up” so much in a nearness to Jesus that I somehow was on the floor in worship, the most rested possible state, I tell ya. And there is something there, in spite of those who get weird with it or take advantage of freedoms.
This morning in the beautiful sunshine, I saw my flat-leafed sedum, the variety of which I cannot recall, after a nighttime rain. Heavy with sparkly drops-like-diamonds, there it was, stretched out flat and wet. Usually quite upright and full, round and puffy, it was looking for all the world healthy and revived, and just blessed, so very blessed – and flattened, too. And we need that sometimes, ya know? We need a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus encounter that knocks us off our high-horse and a washing with the water of the Word, a rain like grace, to just flatten us, cover us, for our own good!
I am willing to pray for you to be flattened, knocked right down for a good dose of God’s life-changing Presence (it happened for Paul!). If you want. Let me know. 8)
That’s right. This is the centerpiece as of late. A crystal bowl full of sidewalk chalk. A container of every-SPF known to mankind. Bug spray and after-burn potions. And a basket full of left-behind swimsuits and trunks.
It’s what’s on the table and even flowers would not be more appropriate.
Another interesting part of the season is the bathroom just off the kitchen when everyone leaves. For there I usually find tiny pairs of underwear and little socks and flip-flops and shoes, hair ties and other misc. clothing…in very small sizes. If their mamas are looking for something, I may have it.
Nonna and Amelie. A Sunday afternoon nap. On the swing. In the shade. After a swim.
Good sign.
This is what I found when we arrived home from Chicago. The sweetest message ever!
We were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO sad our Kelley family didn’t go to Moslander Family Reunion with us this year (they are very busy and important people!), but they so kindly gave the dog room and board and took care of the house and garden for me. In fact – they took such good care of the garden it grew like a jungle and is so much more the blessed for me having been gone! THANK-YOU Steph and Tris and the 3 adorables! Love you so much and we want to tag along when you go to Chicago, soon! Pretty please?? We were thinking about you and missing you the whole time!
Gemma on a Saturday
cen·ter·piece, n.
1. Something in a central position, especially a decorative object or arrangement placed at the center of a table.
Thank-you for the delightful time in the garden this morning. I didn’t mean to frighten you, but you seem to have enjoyed a good mosquito meal. You’re full and happy and I was thoroughly unharrassed. It was a win-win! Thanks for hanging in the shrubbery!
For this week, July 3 – 9 :: Mark (yes, the whole book), all 16 chapters, and Psalms 47-58
I love the Word. I really needed to do this for the summer, or the busy-ness of life and family and Heaven Fest would swallow up my commitment. I look at it like a date: I have been invited to spend time in the Word, with the Word!
In the Psalms this week, you will read,
“You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, Each tear entered in Your ledger, each ache written in your book…”
Of course it will sound a bit different in your translation (the above is from The Message). But watch for it. Find it. He sees.
FACTOIDS about the Book of Mark: He was a youngster and a straight-to-the-point kind of guy. Mark gets it: Jesus has changed everything and Eugene Peterson notes that Mark communicates an “air of breathless excitement in nearly every sentence he writes.” Mark just believes it: Jesus came! God is here and He is for us! Yeah!! Mark, in a hurry to tell the story, will remind us, too, that God is zealous in His desire to be with us, to SAVE us!
Ready? Set. READ!
Looking back at 1 & 2 Corinthians and this past week’s Psalms 35-46
There are actually times I would like to argue with Paul. Ha-ha.
But overall-I would L O V E to be like Paul. He is absolutely one of my major Biblical heroes. I remember a song from the 70’s: “I wanna dance like David, preach like Paul…” and that is true. LOVE his strong words. Also the fact that he knows his written word is strong. He is a tough guy who writes – letters! Before the end, I hope to have re-written all of his letters for my family, to just shamelessly rip off his stuff in long letters to my family.
Here is what I am deeply pondering from the Corinthian letters (1 Cor. 7) about how to live in light of the time being short. “From now on…those who buy something [should live as if it were not theirs to keep….I want you to be free from concern…” I don’t know why that hit me so pointedly. Just made me realize that everything we buy comes with a pricetag of time and space and maintenance. Just pondering…
Psalm 37 was soooooo good
The whole thing basically says this: Don’t worry, don’t fret, don’t take stuff into your own hands. God has got you covered. A great Psalm to meditate on!
You are supposed to be eating all those baby grasshoppers so they don’t grow up and try to munch through all my garden goodness. Come one, come all, bring your family and friends. Eat grasshoppers. I must insist – Feast!
The basement apartment in Des Moines, Iowa (1959); the Washington Street Apartment (Joe and Tim show up 1961 and 1963); 1310 York Street, just two houses down from Grandma and Grandpa Baker; then the beloved 1723 York Street across the alley from Nancy Lydon (Tami and Danny are born, 1965 and 1966); the Jersey Ridge Road house in Davenport (1971); then the brand new house we built at 5506 North Howell (1972); the corner parsonage in Cedar Rapids (1973); a parsonage right next to the church in Robert, Louisiana (1975); Finally – 4995 ROOSEVELT PLACE IN GARY (1977) – the last of the houses where we all, Ross-the-Boss, Mrs. Moss and all the Little Landers, dwelled together before leaving the sweet (Glen Park C of G parsonage) nest my parents had provided the 7 of us…
“I’ve been around the world and as a matter of fact”*
Dave and I have lived in a few places (Minot, ND; Kokomo, IN; Sioux City, IA; Norfolk, NE; Denver-forever), different houses. And my parents have been all over since I left their home, too (Hobart, IN; Willard, OH; Richmond, IN; St Joe-MO; Butte, MT; Springfield, MO; back to St Joe-MO). I visited my parents in their current digs in Saint Joe early in the year. The house they are living in? Not home. No. But my parents? Wherever they land, is kinda home to parts of me. I always need to know where they are and what their house looks like so I will know the space my heart is rambling about in. Mom and dad are the fixed stars in my sky. LOVE them!
God, it seems you’ve been our home forever; long before the mountains were born,
Long before you brought earth itself to birth,
from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come”—you are God. Psalms
“Goin’ back to Indiana” ~ The Jackson 5
While we were at the Moslander Family Reunion last week in Chicago and Northwest Indiana, us old-timers took a late-afternoon, impromptu drive through the old neighborhoods; saw places we had worked and schools we’d attended and the house we called home. It is all the same, but so different. The huge mountain spruce in the fron yard at 4995 Roosevelt Place, trimmed to above roofline and barely clinging to life now, was once a full, thick, green privacy wall between the house and street. There are pictures there of my brothers in their graduation attire and even my babies running on the lawn from way back when. The juniper has all been removed in favor of more manageable potted flora. The dings Tim and my other brothers put into the side of the house playing baseball in the 70’s are still there, a testament to long summer days spent with a bat and ball in hand.
And we actually were just a few blocks from the Jackson family home in Gary, Indiana, btw!
The streets of Gary used to be positively frightening during business hours, the traffic heavier than the city had prepared for. The business district I used to drive is nearly a ghost town. Boarded up windows and abandoned buildings everywhere, yet minutes away, there are still quiet neighborhoods with established lawns and trees. You can buy a beautiful brick bungalow for $15,000 (the for sale signs made of cardboard and black marker) there on an empty street. The same would cost 1.3 million in Denver.
“Who says you can’t go home again?” ~ Bon Jovi*
Surprisingly, standing there in the old yard, looking at the house in conjunction with neighboring homes and recalling old times and people from the past, it didn’t seem smaller. Often you’ll return to a childhood haunt and you’ll just feel like, “Wow-this seems so small now.” But that wasn’t the case at the Roosevelt Street house, the last home we all shared under one roof, the place my kids remember going to see Grandma and Grandpa Moslander. It really didn’t seem smaller.
It just seemed like: wow-how did this house ever hold all the life and loud love and laughter and memory and family and patio swimming in a 12-foot pool and Uno, all the huge bags full of 19-cent White Castle burgers after church ball games, or Bronco’s Pizza with 5 pounds of melted, dripping, greasy cheese, and church friends and Lake-effect wind and graduations and marriages and teen-agers and letter writing and boyfriends and girlfriends and Lake-effect snow and family altar and family feuds and kids and toys and books and WGN afternoon movies with our first color TV, first jobs and rusted out cars and Tip Top and Bible study and early morning prayer and first grandchildren and the first few spouses and all the rest of living that the Moslander family brought to it?
How on earth did this modest house on this unicorporated county street handle all that?
And it yet stands as a testament.
The Moslanders were here June 1977 – Spring 1990. And again in June 27, 2011. We were here.
