Today is a cloudy, quiet Monday. I have the bedding in the wash, as is usual, and must clean the floors.
Yesterday, we went to church.
I have a hard time describing church. Or maybe what is more true, is that I have a hard time thinking about or experiencing church.
Certain things about church I love very much, and enjoy. This church has a chant that goes like this:
Leader: Who do we believe is the Christ?
People: We believe Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One of God, the firstborn of all creation, the firstborn from the dead, in whom all things hold together, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell by the power of the Spirit. Christ is the head of the body, the church, and by the blood of the cross reconciles all things to God. Amen.
I also love dressing up and walking across the church through a beautiful fall day. I love the joyful solemnity of the church service. I love hearing the hymns- the hymns were mind blowing to me. It's so real, I guess is why.
We sang: I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship You. O my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my King, in what You hear- may it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear.
And we sang: Jesus, draw me close, closer, Lord to You. Let the world around me fade away... for I desire to worship and obey.
They also sang Blessed Assurance and He Who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.
These songs knocked my socks off. Singing such things out loud filled me with wonder and shyness and joy. I felt dizzy. It awesome to have been doing that all week long and then get to sing about it out loud, with a whole group of people who know what the song is talking about, and also had experienced being close to and belonging to Him.
That's what I love about church. Other things confuse me and to be honest, I don't agree with some of what they say. But that's alright. I don't have to agree with them in order to worship God with them. We're all only human anyway, and I certainly don't think that I have it all put together. No way.
Keith's mother is having some serious health problems and we may be driving up to Indiana to pick her up and bring her down here, to stay for a couple weeks. This may not happen, but if it does, I will have to search for the guest bed under the mound of army gear that's currently and cleverly disguising it from the untrained eye.
My father's friend, the professional writer, is going to be calling me sometime this week about a book idea. I guess his friend, the publisher, is looking for a certain type of novel, and he thinks I could write just such a novel. I guess it would be based off my life, sort of autobiographical, but not completely.
I sort of started on such a thing, just to see what it would feel like. And the answer to that is- it feels painful and it's slow going.
I reread Torii and it captivated me. I didn't realize until then exactly how well I had done at capturing Christ's love in the person of Tenshio. That was my intent all along, but goodness. I remembered all those times I offered the story to Christ, over and over again, as I was writing it and as I was thinking about it.
But it needs such a dreadful amount of work.
Keith did so well running his training mission that his CO has made him mission commander of every single training mission from here on out, which is a very dubious honor. It will run the poor guy right into the gound, but he's already preparing for the next round of training missions.
Hopefully soon he will put in his packet for becoming a recruiter and we will be heading off in that direction. I guess everyone but Keith and fifteen other guys in his company have received orders, most of them to go to Korea for a year, so we are waiting to see if Keith won't come down on the same orders himself.
If he's accepted into the recruiter school, then he won't have to go to Korea- if indeed, the Army in all its wisdom is thinking of sending him there. If he did end up going there, I would move back to Colorado and we'd have to push back adoption plans for yet another year or more.
So, things are kind of up in the air. That's what's new over here at the Indiana household. Now the sun has come out again, and I'm going to go for a walk.
