My good days

I have been living my life hermit-like, away from people and away from crowds.  Cliff and I have kept to the same routine every day for a long time, and I have loved the sameness of our days.  I get out of bed in the morning thanking God that I can walk and see and hear (and I never forget to thank Him for coffee).   I can't even remember when I last had a bad day.  How many people can say that?  
Sitting in church yesterday, I saw what I've been missing without realizing it:  People!  
There's something about meeting with a group of people who have a common purpose.  I am once again part of something bigger than myself.
It is an awakening to hear the prayer requests and realize the world doesn't revolve around me, and that not everybody has had such a string of good days as I have.   
What's up with all the asthma these days?  How awful it must be to not be able to take a decent breath.  Several people at church are having problems with asthma, and this reminds me to also pray for Cliff's favorite aunt and his brother, Phil.
A six-year-old girl's cancer has returned.  Her grandmother also has been treated for cancer.   
In a small, local church I am surrounded by neighbors, some of whose frailties I know, and they know some of mine.  I am reminded that church is a place for faulty people like me.  A big church has better singing and often more powerful preaching, but if I sit in a pew feeling invisible, there is something valuable missing.  
I am once again part of the community, and it feels good!
After church yesterday Cliff, his sister, and I attended a fund-raiser dinner the boy scouts were hosting.  The meal was surprisingly delicious.  There was a huge turnout, over five hundred people (in a town with a population of 780). I saw on Facebook that they later ran out of food.  
To make a good day even better, in the afternoon my cousin Betty and her husband came to visit.  Betty and I reminisced about our childhood days, sharing memories of our grandma.  I wound up Grandma's old music box so she could hear it play, which of course brought a smile to her face.  We shared some quotes and sayings from Betty's dad, my Uncle Leo.  Examples:  "There are dumb people, but there are no dumb animals."  "Take the money from the rich people and give it to the poor, and in a year's time the money will be right back where it started."
Cliff and I were talking about how special those shared childhood memories can be, and it prompted him to call one of his cousins.  They were still talking when I went to bed an hour later.
See what I mean about good days?
    
   

Just keepin' it real

On one of our trips to Arkansas on the motorcycle, we made our usual stop at a scenic overlook to take in the Grand Canyon of the Ozarks.  I went into the little souvenir shop there and found a coffee cup I just had to have.  I'm a sucker for coffee cups.  
Unfortunately, the word "Arkansas" washed off within six months of buying the cup, but the other words are still there for the world to see. 

It just tickled my funny bone, you know?  

So, since we've attended the same church for three Sundays in a row, Pastor Tom came to call on us yesterday.  Cliff asked him if he wanted some coffee, and guess which cup Cliff chose?  

Yep.  

I noticed Pastor Tom discreetly turned the cup so it faced away from him, I think perhaps because he was going to crack up if he kept looking at it.  

We discussed our past church histories.  I told him I'm pretty comfortable in any church, but I haven't found any I agreed with 100%.  

He listed the points on which he felt people MUST agree, and those were fine with me.  

Then he asked if we had any questions.  

Well, you know me.  I had a question.

"Since this church is not associated with any denomination, if you croak, who would be the next preacher?"  

I think Cliff would gladly have crawled under a chair at this point, but hey... I don't want to hook up with a church that's based on one preacher.  Preachers die, preachers leave.  

So he explained what process would likely be used to find a new pastor, in the unfortunate event of his passing.  

Sounded good to me.
This church already passed the acid test last Sunday:  Cliff wore overalls to church, and they didn't kick us out.   

So Pastor Tom said a prayer with us and left.  So far, so good.

Back to Church

This is clip art, not the place we attended

This could get to be a habit.  We found the experience uplifting last week, so we went back to the same place, accompanied by Cliff's next-door sister.  I'm not looking for brownie points here, but I wanted my readers to know that by doing the series of entries on why I don't go to church much any more, I woke up to the fact that we had no good reason to NOT go.  That's just how it worked for me.  This is probably the last mention I'll make of church attendance, unless it's in passing.  
There were fifty-two present today, so it isn't a big place.  It seems to be an independent denomination; the preacher used to be Methodist.   It appears most of the members have come from the other churches in town.
Nobody invited me to this church.  I wanted to try it because it's nearby and I know some of the people there, so we weren't walking into a crowd of strangers.  
I have one neighbor down the road who sometimes invites me to another church for special events and such, but otherwise I've had no invitations to any local places of worship.  Would it have made a difference if I'd been invited someplace?  I don't think so, but I really don't know.  Since I've been a church-goer for a lot of my life, I am not uncomfortable walking into any church for the first time, as long as everybody isn't too fancy-looking.  
I had actually planned to visit the other local churches some more before we settled in, but I like this one really well.  Cliff does too (because it doesn't last long, he says), and I think his sister enjoyed it.  
Besides, I was asked if I'd play my guitar and sing sometime; this is the first time anybody's wanted to hear me sing in fifteen years.  Here's how the conversation went:  
"Don't you sing and play guitar?"  
"At home." 
"But I thought you sang and played sometimes for people."
"I used to."  
And then two neighbors from across the road turned around and joined in the arm-twisting.  
Maybe I'd better get to work on the finger-callouses.  

just rambling

About the thirty day challenge:  The purpose of the exercise is to make you aware of your surroundings and your feelings, to get you to live in the moment.  Somebody expressed surprise that I used a picture of the waffles we had for breakfast for my "favorite food".  Here's what you need to know:  I have at least fifty favorite foods.  I'm always talking about how much I love pizza, I know.  But there are other foods I love just as much.  
There is a reason why waffles won out yesterday:  Cliff and I usually have oatmeal or cream of wheat for breakfast.  I buy the generic brands, so it's cheap and yet nutritious.  I cook proper portions, so our calories are controlled.  But sometimes, probably a couple of times a month, I fix pancakes or waffles.  Cliff prefers pancakes, so that's the most frequent choice, but I love waffles best.  They're a big pain to make and we have to wait between servings for the next one to get done, but oh, I do love crispy waffles.  So on the rare occasion that I decide to make them, at that golden moment, waffles are my favorite food.  
Someone remarked about the plate my waffles were on:  Indeed, that is a really old Corelle pattern.  I've had that set of plates for at least twenty years, and I bought them at a garage sale from a lady who was tired of them, so they were old when I got them.  See, here's something that never happens to me:  I don't get tired of a plate or a pattern!  As long as it doesn't break, I'm delighted with it.  Now, if somebody wanted to bless me with a new set of Corelle Livingware, I wouldn't turn them down.  If you have a set you are tired of, especially if it has blue in it, I'll take it off your hands.  Why blue?  Because it's my favorite color.   

In the middle of the series of posts about how I don't go to church much, I was sitting in my recliner a week ago Sunday.  I looked at the clock and noticed it was 10:30, which is the time a lot of local churches begin their services.  Cliff was on the couch, surfing the Internet on the laptop and I was reading a book on the Nook.  I said to myself, "Look at us:  we're not doing anything productive; we may as well have gone to church."  
So yesterday we went.  We're sorta church-hopping right now.  We'll pick one before long.  It's going to be hard to choose, though, because the three local ones we've visited have all given us a positive experience.  Since we are keeping it local, we see familiar faces.  For instance, yesterday when we walked in the door, there sat the guy who had fixed our furnace twelve hours earlier.  The three churches we've visited are all smaller ones, which means we are noticed, and the people are glad to see us.
Heather says she would like to get back to going to church, so she and our grandson might attend with us.  If they want to make it a regular thing, they can help us decide where we'll be going.  I intend to stay in our immediate community, though.  I'm done with traveling fifteen or twenty miles to a attend a church where I'm invisible, just because they have good preaching and and an outstanding choir. 
 One thing I really like in all the churches we've attended is the casual atmosphere.  Cliff says next Sunday he's wearing his overalls, and he should!  He wouldn't feel a bit out of place, and he'd be comfortable.    

From slop to Sunday singings

In an entry the other day I mentioned slop buckets, which sent me on a sentimental journey back to my childhood.  I don't recall my parents ever having a slop bucket; Mother just carried all the tomato skins, sour milk, rotten fruit and other kitchen leavings directly out to the chickens, which were the only livestock my parents kept.  Did you know chickens will eat about anything?  They can't make use of potato peelings, although Mother always tossed those into the mix; the chickens seemed to have lots of fun scratching around through them, anyhow.  But I digress.
Most full-time farmers had a slop bucket sitting on the mud porch; whey from making cottage cheese went into it, as well as tidbits of any sort of leftover food.  It also served as a night-time chamber pot.  I know that sounds gross, but it was a different era, and neither pigs nor chickens are squeamish about such things.  In the early years of our marriage, back at our twenty acres, Cliff and I had a slop bucket on our back porch, although we never used it as a chamber pot; we had an inside bathroom.  I usually had lots of extra milk, plus of course the table scraps.  We bought burlap bags of a wheat by-product called "wheat shorts", and we'd mix that into the slop until it was thick like gravy.  The pigs would dive right in while I was pouring it into the trough, getting this "gravy" poured right on top of their heads as they ate.  It's so much fun to feed pigs!  
While I'm strolling through memories:  Mother did the driving for our family; Daddy just preferred not to drive if he could get out of it.  When mother pulled into a gas station, she'd always ask for "a dollar's worth" of gas.  I'm not sure she ever asked the attendant to "fill 'er up" like my brother-in-law did.  Not until we moved to the city, anyhow.  
The Churches of Christ used to have first-Sunday singings; several congregations would take turns hosting this event.  We'd go to church in Eagleville as always, then head to Gilman City or Davis City, Iowa, or Hamilton to gather with like-minded Christians from within a fifty-mile radius.  It seemed like we'd have a flat tire every time we got a little bit of distance between us and home.  Daddy tended to get noisy when he had to change a flat tire, and Mother would be reminding him not to get his suit dirty and not to lose his temper (too late), which only increased the volume of his tirades.  
In summertime back then, Mother would make me wear a hair-net in the car to keep my hair from blowing with the windows down.  My goodness, cars were HOT and DUSTY with no air conditioning.
We'd arrive at our destination, and there'd be food laid out on makeshift tables in the church, or in the case of Davis City, at the city park.  I liked going to the singings there, because we gathered in a shelter house to do our singing.  It just seemed like more fun, singing outside.  
Churches of Christ didn't (and still don't, for the most part) have instrumental music; everybody learned to sing their parts, and the harmony made up for the lack of instruments.  The little rural congregations were small, usually made up of fifty to seventy-five members.  When several of them got together on the first Sunday, the singing was wonderful.  
Each man who was willing took his turn leading a song or two.  Leading songs simply meant standing in front, calling out the page number of your song, and starting it off, hopefully at the right pitch.  Once in awhile there would be a real song leader in attendance:  He'd pull a pitch-pipe from his pocket, blow on it, hold the book in one hand, and direct the singing with his other.  Quite impressive, in my young mind.  It looked so professional!   
Sometimes the song leader would take requests.  I always asked for "On Jordan's Stormy Banks", my favorite song throughout my growing-up years.  Back then, I preferred the livelier songs, although it was also fun to sing the alto parts on "Whispering Hope" and "It Is Well With My Soul".  
Dinner was at 1 P.M., allowing people from the area time to get there after getting out of their own church; the actual singing started at 2:30 and ended around 4.  When it was over, people would stand around visiting for awhile and then be on their way home.  
Back home, I stayed in my Sunday dress and shoes because we'd be going to church again at 7 o'clock.  OK, scratch the shoes; I've never left my shoes on at home.  Still don't.  Besides, my Sunday shoes were always uncomfortable.  
We spent a lot of time at church.  After evening services, grownups chatted about crops and  caught up on the local news while we kids passed the time however we could, playing tag or just talking.  I was usually ready to go home long before my parents were.  
That's my meanderings for this morning.  How's that for an abrupt ending? 

We rode our motorcycle to church today

I took this picture in the parking lot this morning, before church.



Cliff and I have been intending to make it to Biker's Sunday for the past couple of years. Two years ago we really would have gone, but Cliff was in the hospital recovering from CABG surgery. Last year we ended up in Branson for that weekend.


That's Pastor Bob on the left. The service was SO cool! There was a blues band (with a harmonica player who was out-of-this-world). There was standing room only. They fed us all! There were more bikers than non-bikers in the crowd.


I often call this church "the biker church", but really it isn't; it's a church for all people. I love how casual everyone is, because I hate to dress up.


Oh, they fed us hot dogs with all the trimmings, pasta salad, cole slaw, and potato salad. Plus many choices of dessert.

I love Biker's Sunday at Heart of God Fellowship. I hope we can go again next year!

another Church-less Sunday

I like going to Church on Sunday. It just seems to make the rest of the week go better, as well as reminding me where my priorities ought to be.

But for the last two months, my Church attendance has been sporadic. Some Sundays, it's the severe weather that keeps me home. Other weeks, it's a coughing cold. Last Sunday, I was out of town.

I've had three colds this winter, which isn't unusual. Most winters I'll have two or three colds. This year, though, the coughing of one cold barely starts to let up before I start sneezing with a new one. Mighty peculiar. And frustrating.

I'm sure this third time will be the charm, especially since March is drawing nigh.

I could go to Church with this mild cold I have today, but a big proportion of the members are elderly. I don't want to be the one who infects them with a germ that could lead to pneumonia in a person ninety years old. Yes, I said ninety. I'm sixty-two, and I'm one of the younger attendees there.

I've baked a Texas sheet cake (recipe from Ree). I have roast to cook and taters to mash. If I can borrow a tiny bit of sugar from my daughter, I'll make yeast rolls... and hope somebody shows up to help us eat the stuff.