Five Minute Friday :: Phase

• Five Minute Friday :: Phase Linkup

We go through short phases and longer ones. Kate wrote about being a little kid as a phase in their lives and in a parent's life. Sometimes we decide it's time to phase out a certain behavior or activity. Sometimes we don't know we're in a particular phase until it's over. Does something else take its place? Sometimes. Does its exit leave an empty space? Sometimes. But every time-limited aspect of life isn't necessarily a phase, is it?

Today I'm thinking about the years I spent in the Intermountain West. I lived along the Wasatch front, but with Utah being such a beautiful state, I took day trips and half-day excursions to other locations. But I regret that I took next to zero photographs. How could that be? I was going through a phase of grief and loss but without anyone to admit it to, lacking someone else to acknowledge it, taking pictures didn't even occur to me.

And the times I spent in Boston. Although I was born in the deep south, I grew up in Boston in a family that was Midwestern and Southern. That first phase was long, with friends, schools, many activities, and plans for a future of service and participation.

My second Boston-Cambridge sojourn featured another phase of professional school—some would call it "grad school," but I reserve that expression for high-end academic programs and not so much for something like an MSW, MDiv or others with practical career content, even though they all include some heavy-duty academics.

My third Massachusetts layover was Boston and Cape Cod. Someday I might even write about that important phase.

All of those are long phases defined by a particular geography, and inside that longitude and latitude, defined by what I did and by what happened to me.

What kinds and lengths of phases has your life had?

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Five Minute Friday :: Outcome

• Five Minute Friday :: Outcome Linkup

Soccer and the World Cup isn't one of my preoccupations, but I love Major League Baseball (MLB); I've been known to get excited and despondent during the post-season. My first ever MLB game was at the old Tiger Stadium after I'd taken my first solo flight as a passenger. I was in grade 7 or 8. I've noticed parents and kids often make things complicated when a kid or a teen flies unaccompanied, but I went to Boston-Logan, got on the plane, flew to Detroit-Metro, got off the plane. No big deal, but that may have been because I'd been riding city buses and subways alone forever.

Fenway Park by Chris Devers, 2004
Although back then I had next to zero knowledge of the game, in retrospect the Tigers game with an opponent I don't remember was a watershed. A couple years later during high school the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Park started to become part of the narrative of my life. Later on when I served an inner city Boston church, senior pastor was able to get Red Sox tickets almost on a whim, and I went to many games that way. A few times I drove youth group kids to Fenway in the church van; other times we traveled there on the subway. For sure I considered myself On The Clock whenever I took on that responsibility.

Today's word is outcome. "I often remind myself" the best way to predict the future is to create it; that's what I knew I was doing with a series of schools, skills, and experiences. As of now, the outcome is far from the minimum I'd anticipated. But God's promises and God's faithfulness are outside of time as we humans measure time. Can I trust God for the outcome of all those years of preparation and expectation?

There's spring training and there's the fall post-season, but I love that baseball is mostly an icon of summer. Although baseball is country, suburban, and everywhere, there's something particularly urban about it, and cities are my jam. Did I already mention Detroit and Boston?

I love baseball's leisurely pace as if clocks and watches don't exist. I love that baseball is an American invention. I love those memories of Fenway Park. I love watching stellar defense and crazy offense. Baseball majorly qualifies as one of my major Life Stuff topics. As I wonder about hopes, dreams, and disappointments, "I often remind myself" baseball is a perfect model for life.

The outcome? You win some; you lose some. Tomorrow is another day, another game, another outcome.
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Five Minute Friday :: Longing

dreams from Summer 2000

The days and the summer nights
Berries from the brambles and the vines
Yearning for a future still not yet
Recalling how to dream…

• Five Minute Friday :: Longing Linkup and major congrats to Kate on another book!


From about a year ago, here's one place I wrote about:

• Home is Always the Place You Just Left: A Memoir of Restless Longing and Persistent Grace

Home, yearning, longing, belonging form a familiar and familial group. What can I say about longing today?

A person feels longing in their gut, in their heart, throughout their body. It's visceral. It's organic. It's powerful and it's often noticeable to outsiders.

As I explained:

Home is a spacious place. Space to breathe, to reach out, to grow, and to dream. A location and a people who take away my lostness, who help deliver me, because they delight in me.

My scripture reference was, "God brought me out into a spacious place; God delivered me because God delighted in me." Psalm 18:19

Finally I wondered,

Can home be in a place of blight, broken glass, fragile dreams, when there were any dreams at all? What name would we give that place? Is that the kind of situation we need to be rescued from? God would rescue us from?

Longing for Home is a buzz phrase—if ever there was one. Other longings and yearnings include hankering after lost connections with people, objects, experiences, and broader, larger places. Yet those individuals, those experiences and artifacts, that wider broader city or countryside all are components of home.

Longing is for something or someone you've had in the past but that's missing now. You can't long for what you haven't known or experienced. Or can you?

Longing and yearning can be visceral. Sometimes they're vascular. What happens if the longing ends because the object of our yearning has arrived? It's in the house!

As the phrase goes, "I'm so old" I remember everything about Tuesday 11 September 2001, a.k.a. 911. Even before then, I remember the hope many of us felt with the arrival of a new century called Y2K. My header collage illustrates the summer of 2000. I still love Y2K fashion. I remember the excitement of my first internet endeavor—an urban space in the old MSN groups. You can look back. I can reminisce. But yesterday's gone.

I remind myself, "Pray – remember – dream." Pray about now. Remember then. Dream about the future God is preparing to bring your longings home.

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Five Minute Friday :: Snow

My multimedia In Winters Past begins my snow blog
because it features piles of snow.

• Five Minute Friday :: Snow Linkup at Andrew's Place

I've been in southern California since early in this century; now that we've started Q2 of the twenty-first century, I think I'll stay in LA. An intro to admitting we don't get snow at this elevation, but I've experienced a lot of it at different times of my life.

You may have heard how people in regions that get a lot of snow have many many words to describe the different types of snow.

What does "snow" evoke in my imagination?

The hush during and immediately after a snowfall, before life has fully resumed and before the city has many of its snowplows out in motion.

It's a similar feeling when the snow stops falling and the sun decides to shine.

In a previous life I substitute taught for the Boston Public Schools for an academic year. Given that Boston is one of those cities with frequent weather, Boston schools sometimes call snow days when the driving is rough and dangerous and passenger cars, trucks, and buses would interfere with snow removal.

Though we got paid per diem, I still loved a snow day because (1) I could stay home and cozy in my small urban apartment and/or (2) when the snow stopped falling, I could go outside and play in the snow or maybe go to the mall if the roads were clear. Because New England snow tends to be the wet heavy kind that's back breaking and heart attack inducing to shovel, I'm grateful I never had to clear more than digging my vehicle out from any windrows the plows had created.

Later on when I lived in Utah with its many recreational ski resorts and The Greatest Snow on Earth, I managed the apartment building I lived in (and helped out with the owner's other properties). That meant if I woke up to snow I had to go out right away and shovel the sidewalk so it wouldn't ice over. The landlord bought me an ergonomic shovel and even though I'm not exactly big and heavy, clearing the sidewalk was easy because the snow was light and powdery.

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Five Minute Friday :: Mall

• Five Minute Friday :: Mall Linkup at Andrew's Place

Such a nostalgic topic! I've mentioned malls so many times in this blog, mall needs to be a keyword. Here's Last Call, Last Mall inspired by the title of a song by Steely Dan.

My header pic is the Dead Cottonwood Mall I wrote about in the three part reflection I linked to. I featured it because I really like my photoshopping on the picture.

What's on today's mall docket? Long gone are the days of active, buzzing malls where teens hung out, retirees power walked, and the whole family sometimes shopped and dreamed, sometimes shopped and bought. Southern California has many dead indoor and open air malls. Between online merchandising and purchasing and the fallout from Covid, it's an understatement to say some that still are open have taken a huge hit. Ya know what? As much as I enjoy shopping of all kinds, I no longer much care for those big malls that have a national anchor like JC Penney or Macy's. That also can read that had a major anchor.

We have open air shopping centers around here; I call them Shopping Sprawls. I think they may function more or less as successors to malls.

Is it because of my interests in economics, lifestyle, and culture that I see a dozen articles every day about changing consumer habits, stores closing, brands merging, or is because those interest everyone? People source home furnishings far differently than in those olden days. Fast fashion still is a thing, though the trend is slowing down for a plethora of mostly positive reasons. If too many dollars don't keep chasing too few products, goods, and bads, does that mean people want less stuff and crave more experiences?

Where do we go from here? I enjoy most kinds of shopping. At the supermarket or the dollar store, I like to choose what I need, and I like to see what's new, check out colors and styles and possibilities. But I can't think of a mall I'd be willing to frequent in its present state of decline and sometimes disrepair.

Two days ago on my day off Tuesday I went to The Grove open air mall to see the holiday decorations. Although I wouldn't call it crowded, it didn't lack for people, but there's no way to know how many were actual customers and consumers. However, regular people don't shop at any of those stores or eat at those restaurants. It has a GAP, but I'm a Gap Factory person. It has Barnes & Noble. Sigh.

The farmer's market is an all around exciting shopping option, sometimes even offering local crafts. Does the decline of The North American Mall signal the return of profitable small shops? Let's keep waiting and hoping.

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Fashion Valley, San Diego, California

The Grove, Los Angeles, California

Square One Saugus Massachusetts Mall by John Phelan,
who says we can edit if we give him credit, so I did.

Andrew's mall picture

Sylvia

Five Minute Friday :: Panic

• Five Minute Friday :: Panic Linkup

Intro

Did you know? Most people have had or will have a panic attach or something very close to it. It's diagnostic that the person thinks they're dying when the symptoms engulf them.

When in the course of everyday human activity someone becomes so overwhelmed, anxious, unsure, or insecure about the outcome of everything or a something, they may not quite achieve the heart rate, blood pressure, high anxiety, hyperventilation, chills or sweats of an actual panic event, but it's extremely uncomfortable and it may escalate.

Why did I write that intro?


Then and There – Here and Now

A friend mentioned that a mutual friend was very establishment, and that they are. We weren't making a value call on the person, who's a great friend and accomplishes a lot in the community. We simply were saying.

But then I said I'm still very Y2K. Am I really? And if so, why? Is that a value call? Does it affirm anything other than my love for mid-1990 through early aughts fashion? Maybe it does.

I spent more than a few minutes rifling through pictures of the place I lived the last year of my last sojourn on the east coast, specifically in Boston. Do I really want to return to that place? Probably not because I finally admitted I can't do the weather. Then there's what I describe as love-hate regarding the general area. But that's about place, about geography, and relates to overall culture.

Do I want to return to that time? I flew out of Logan into Lindbergh on Saturday 02 September 2000, one day after the earliest expected ambient temperatures allowed us to fly with with dogs or cats. A quarter century ago? Do I want to go back?

I've gotten fond of observing how the twenty-first century, southern California, and the wake of a global pandemic haven't helped my overall situation and my ongoing search for opportunities at all. I have a lot of intense anxieties about right now and about the unseen, unknown future. Panic? There have been a few times my body reacted so intensely I thought I might be dying and I was just fine with that fact.

Short answer is yes, in some ways I want to return to a quarter century ago. I get nostalgic about it. I remember my landlord and housemate Nick. Good meals, good though guarded conversations. Saturday evening Scrabble. Having a former boss and colleague over for lunch a few times.

Since then the world has experienced a long string of literal assaults on what used to be a normal way of living and being. No need to list them all because everyone knows them. I want to return to simpler times, to what feels like innocence from here, though I know it didn't feel innocent or naïve at the time.

I'm still very Y2K. I'm not making a value call. I'm just sayin'.

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Five Minute Friday :: Anymore

• Five Minute Friday :: Anymore Linkup

When do you quit? When does a person lose hope? How long does it take to know I don't live there anymore? I don't do that anymore? I'm not like that anymore? My dreams can't happen anymore?

My header picture is the house I lived in my last semester in seminary. Good times with classmates and housemates. Days mostly filled with hope, although of course I knew no one ever knows what the future will bring. I don't live in that part of the country anymore. And too many years have passed without those spacious expectations ever bearing fruit.

When do I quit? Do I even hope anymore? Am I still that person or not (anymore)? Would I return to those years, that house, those classrooms, those streets, those people? Surprisingly, I wouldn't, even if it were possible—though of course it's not anymore.

I remind myself:
• Pray
• Remember
• Dream

God's people Israel kept the past present with rituals, celebrations, and liturgies. They recited and reenacted their history with the God of the Exodus, God of the Covenants, "as if" those events still were happening.

Like God’s primal people Israel, in worship we remember who God is, who we are, how God has acted. We declare our dreams and announce our hopes for the future.

Israel's history with God gave Israel confidence about the future and willingness to continue in partnership with God. Because they never forgot God's saving deeds of redemption and homecoming, they faced the future with hope.

Especially when we celebrate the sacraments, we anticipate, celebrate, and commemorate. Does our history with God give us confidence about the future and resolve to never give up? Not to quit? Do we face an unknown future with hope?

My footer picture is a favorite I've created at least a dozen variations of and featured on this blog a few times. I love it because it evokes summer weeks I spent at a beach house on the sand facing the ocean. It was play time and fun time rather than work time. It reminds me to dream of what might be possible anymore.

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Five Minute Friday :: Extra

• Five Minute Friday :: Extra Linkup

My first ever job was working as an extra at a nearby branch of the public library. You probably know about part-time, often after school, usually teens who shelve books, often check out books and other materials customers / patrons / whatever local parlance calls it borrow. Back then audio-visuals (as they called them) were less sophisticated than they are these days—mostly compact discs and movies. Back in those days, we had actual card catalogs.

I began in the summer before my junior year or grade 11 with the maximum 30 hours a week the law allowed for someone my age. When school classes resumed in the fall, I started working about twenty hours a week, which included two evenings until closing at 9 pm and Saturdays from 9 am to 1 pm.

That's a long intro before I tell you although our job title was extras, I believe pages is more typically used to describe this essential library help. Besides, how cool to give those workers the same name we have for parts of the books they deal with?

At our location, some of the teenage extras helped with story hour. I learned to mend books, a skill some individuals, some libraries, and some other related entities could use these days. Because shelving books was an essential part of what we did, we learned quite a bit about the Dewey Decimal System used to organize them, though there are other ways to categorize reading material and from my understanding, the library system I worked for later switched all its branches to LC, or Library of Congress.

That concludes another chapter of Life Stuff on this blog. Thanks for reading!

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Five Minute Friday :: Vacant

• Five Minute Friday :: Vacant LInkup

For a time in a previous life I managed rental properties. Though I actually was responsible for one 17-unit building (my header photo), I had a lot to do with the owner's other six or eight properties, particularly cleaning apartments when tenants left them vacant of human occupants. That experience plus seeing so many real estate signs announcing a vacant office building, retail space, or residential dwelling has me constantly connecting "vacant" and "vacancy" with bricks and mortar.

Vacant of human occupants is the usual expectation when you see an commercial or condo or other property up for rent, lease, or sale. But have you noticed many houses and apartments seem to be vacant or devoid of life? I mean life as in connecting to other people in your family or maybe housemates who rent or lease and stay there with you. Connecting emotionally, spiritually, and practically, too.

• How was your day?

• Do you want to make dinner together this week?

• I got avocados on sale! Let's create something good with them!

• I'd love your opinion on this client project I've been working on.

It often feels easier and for sure it's less threatening simply to co-exist in a space, pass each other coming and going, sit at opposite ends of the table without a word or even a smile or acknowledgement. It's easier to be a vacant presence than a lively, nurturing one.

A house, condo, apartment, or palace may physically contain a human or two or three, maybe a family of eight or ten, but is it vacant or is it occupied with people fully engaging each other's lives and supporting one another?

How about your family? Your roommates-housemates-flatmates? Even your workplace, whether it's a school, a retail, or other commercial space, do those walls, floors, and ceilings hold life and hope within them or is it vacant?

Think about it!

My top footer image is a house a couple streets over from the place I shared with a friend during my last year in Boston. I don't know who lived in the triple-decker I photographed, but I do know my friend and I had an easy-going, friendly, helpful relationship and that place definitely wasn't vacant.

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Five Minute Friday :: Original

• Five Minute Friday :: Original Linkup

As a creative, I frequently say – I love to observe – nothing is original, everything is derivative, though we may not remember the source that in itself wasn't original, either. But how could the "source" of our project or initiative not be original? "Original" implies at the beginning, the very start of when the idea or product origin(!)ated or began. Was there even a first?

Over my lifetime I've produced a fair amount of art and design. Other people consider me a creative, and I identify as one. However, with about half of the art and design I do, I remember where I first saw a similar layout I wanted to try. A particular color palette that sang to me. A new to me style of sketching. I may or may not have taken a snapshot or saved a hard copy of the menu or flyer, or even done my own quick drawing onsite, but I know mine isn't original. Yet what I've done with that nascent concept does belong to me, so in a limited sense my finished expression is original.

An example like the one Kate gave us of intended scheduled conference plans being changed in some way is a common real-life example of original and an update. In that case, when attendees found out what was going on, they were fine no longer having that part of the original. Are there any or many of those in my everyday journey?

Yes. My breakfast plans happily change if someone offers me something different or asks if I want to go our for breakfast. Ditto lunch. Tasks I needed to do today? Upon revision, all of them don't need to be done for another two or three days. Etc. Many times we discover everything and every way that originally felt so urgent isn't as set in stone as we originally thought.

My header photo is books in what was supposed to be the dining room in the parsonage I lived in for a while in City of History: Someone else took the original that wasn't well focused, and the colors weren't too great. This is one of a couple dozen versions I've made; what you see combines an original picture and some creative photoshopping. The shelves were at least a little lean-to, and the room had no other furniture. All in all, this is one of my all-time favorite edits.

PS There's some of my original art on the two top right hand shelves.

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The First Sunday of Christmas

Here's a talk I gave on the first Sunday of Christmas 2021. I promised myself no edits or additions except for obvious errors, but I've added new illustrations. Because I used notes and not a script, this is approximately what I said. What would i say about Christmas music and food today, three years later? What would you say?

Intro

The pastor asked three of us to share our testimony of Christmas for the proclamation on the Sunday after Christmas: where do we find Jesus, the Christ child?

During this time of the year the northern hemisphere experiences more night than it does day, we first observe the advent season of waiting for, hoping for, and expecting the birth of Jesus, light of the world. We don't know the actual month or day of Jesus' birth, but the early church wisely calendared it at the winter solstice that also coincided with the Mithric Feast of the Unvanquished Sun. Jesus, Son of Righteousness spelled with an "o" also is the Sun of Righteousness spelled with a "u" who is Light of our Lives. After Advent and Nativity, the day and then the season of Epiphany continue with Jesus as light to all.

Martin Luther particularly loved the New Testament book of Titus. The anonymous author tells us, "The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all." [Titus 2:11a] Jesus is that light-filled grace, our grace-filled light.

Nativity Prayer

Root of Jesse, Son of Heaven, Mary's Child.
Cradle of Joy, Word in the Manger, Astonishing Gift.
Lord of Creation, Abundant Promise, Dayspring of Peace.
Be with us here in this place;
make us shepherds of your grace.
May our lives season the world with salt;
Nurture our neighbors with leaven;
Light a path to show your way.
In your name we pray—
Amen!

Valley Winter Song – excerpt

You know the summer's coming soon
Though the interstate chokes under salt and dirty sand
And it seems the sun is hiding from the moon
And late December can drag a person down

[While] the snow is falling down
In our New England town
What else is new?
What could I do?

I wrote a Valley Winter Song
To play for you.

by Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger

Christmas in this Valley 1

So sang Fountains of Wayne in a song LL Bean gave lots of airplay to in a commercial during 2008. In these days of endless pandemic in a different valley on the other coast, besides Jesus light of the world and the created lights of sun, moon, and stars, what brightens our days better than music?

Music in church and on the street is a huge part of December's identity and festivities. Even people with no experience of clinical depression typically have a lower mood during the winter months. Have you ever heard a song or a symphony that instantly gave you hope? Today I'll mention two major pieces of music and a recurring event that always bring the grace and hope of Jesus into my world.

Along with a few million others across the centuries, Handel's oratorio The Messiah is a December perennial for me. Especially the opening solo for tenor from Isaiah 40 with its announcement, "Comfort Ye, My People – Every Valley Shall be Exalted." Our God. God's people. My second concert-type composition that takes a trained university or professional choir is the Christmas Cantata by Daniel Pinkham, a Boston area composer and church musician who lived during the mid-twentieth century.

My recurring event is [Scripture] Lessons and Carols that can take many forms. We had a participatory Lessons and Carols here on Christmas Eve; this morning on the first Sunday of Christmas it's Lessons, Testimony, and Carols. When I lived on the east coast, as an undergrad at Boston University I sprung for the free tickets people needed to enjoy Lessons and Carols at Harvard's Memorial Church. I believe they presented it three times each year back then, but it was so popular you still needed a ticket.

Later on when I was a seminarian across the river from Boston University, at Lessons and Carols I often ran into classmates or friends I hadn't seen in a long time due to our schedules and because days and months pass so fast. That became a time we'd resolve to get together first of the new year, which always happened.

Christmas in this Valley 2

Besides music, as we celebrate the nativity with God born in Bethlehem as a baby formed out of created stuff from the earth, what is Christmas without all that special yummy food? What you enjoy depends somewhat on your current place on the planet along with traditional winter holiday foods of your home country or home region, or maybe what your grandparents and great grands considered necessary for Christmas feasts with friends and families.

Food also has got to be the best ever Christmas present because in itself it's a gift of creation. From my perspective, giftable foods ideally are things like home baked cookies or quick breads or homemade jam, preserves, or pickles. Maybe home brew, if there's a brewer in your household. These days supermarkets, specialty shops, and farmer's markets offer a whole lot of tasty food. They're a live option if you won't or don't bake or can or brew.

Outro

What else can we do but sing and play valley winter songs to brighten lives and remind us of Jesus in our midst? We can create and enjoy culinary gifts of creation. Grace has come to the entire world in Jesus; many of us know grace and glory and joy through music and because of edible gifts from the earth.

• What's your favorite Christmas music?

• What Christmas food is an absolute necessity?