Porch Stories :: December Events

Here's a second version of essentially the same post. Strange things happened with the original, including its not showing up on this blog! Too crazy to go into details, but I trust this will take and last a while.

On her Porch Story this week, Kristin Hill Taylor tells us she learned the biblical number of seven things in December. Oh, how I love summer, and it won't be long, because the 21^st graced the northern hemisphere with another winter solstice; on both psychological and physical levels I already sense days growing longer and lighter. If winter's here, can next summer be far behind? Meanwhile, let's visit on my porch overlooking the city and remember our Decembers—including this one!







• To open the new calendar month and the new liturgical year of grace Advent brings, a dozen of us attended a choral and orchestral concert in Thousand Oaks.




• Each year Current City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists gifts members with a holiday dinner and concert; not surprisingly, it's always in early December. This year featured another elegant classic turkey dinner served on the church patio {it's winter – and it's frequently balmy southern California}. I don't seriously follow any music scenes – not even radio top 40 – but I was delighted to experience the church's resident organist, Christoph Bull, who hosted the musical part of the evening.




• It had been sooooo long—since Suzanne left town! At last I made a way back to the world-renowned City College swap meet for a few hours of fun. Not going alone is funner, but the noise, energy, and possibilities always engage me.



• The church choir presented another astonishing Service of Lessons & Carols. Well, everything the choir and music director does is amazing... I'm breaking my policy of not including pictures that include people, but I doubt anyone can recognize anyone in this group {though I know who they are}.



• Here's a trilogy of church pictures from the ordination and installation of a friend I serve with on the judicatory's Green Faith Team. She'll be a wonderful pastor; she's already spent most of her life with a pastoral perspective.



• Although I have a {profound and probing} "life stuff" label on some blog posts from the past, I don't say much about what's happening with me. Despite staying functional enough to keep up with client design, I'd been majorly distressed not to get any design done for Advent or Christmas this year... {that's not quite true, since on Advent 3 I found some excellent candlelight photographs and added seasonal scriptures to them for my Facebook, and added three of the designs to the Advent prayers on this blog}. Our music director must have been inspired, because during an email exchange about music for the last Sunday of December when I'll be playing guest keyboards, he told me to update the Christmas Eve bulletin cover I designed for last year. I cannot describe how redemptive that was!

• I may have mentioned I'm seriously discerning what's next for me. I spend every day surrounded by a past that prepared me, a future ready to break wide open, so this day, right now, always is God's fullness of time, a year of light-filled grace {O day full of grace that now we see appearing on earth's horizon}, a day of redemption. So what's next? Follow this blog!