Christmas 2013

 

Grandpa Soule flew in from Macomb Illinois to be joined by David & Stephanie on Eve. We cut corners with an elegant Beef Wellington - pate & mushroom coated with puff pastry - this year from Whole Foods. And I only baked one batch of Russian teacakes, as well; all in all, it was a Trader Joe's affair.

Jack is collecting the quarter pieces of 50 states and territories, fitting them into this new map.

Carolyn and I still use her hand knit purple stockings, the pattern from a yarn store in Skaneateles, NY from grad school days.  Stockings and gifts in general seemed to fly by this year, due to the boys' older status; the gifts fewer and pricier.  Still a nice assortment of games and books. Elle back from Louisiana, joined us for maybe her third Christmas?  Christ Covenant had a lovely Lessons & Carols service with communion.

Edith Schaeffer's orange rolls have been our morning tradition, this year served on her own platter of hammered aluminum. 

 

Not sure how much longer we'll be in this beautiful space, but it does work quite well for Christmas.

Singing and The Tree

 

It was a nicely shaped noble from Underwood Farms - too big to haul ourselves...

like last year's, when the crew left their hammer - returned to its rightful owner.  This one has bigger lights which Michael strung all by himself, using the extra tall ladder. A small, but definite sense of a task passed on.

Jana and Carolyn are shaping a Christmas Program of sorts,

 while Beacon Hill celebrated easily over a hundred children now, causing a more streamlined set of selections compared with prior years.

 

Mrs. Loyd, the boys' piano teacher, has been teaching 4 part hymn singing during Sunday School for several months now, causing a noticeable change in at least Michael & Jack's willingness to sing out during church, owning the music in a new way.

 Finally decorated - the first tree big enough to handle ALL our ornaments, collected along the way...  Pastor Ben preached on the non-pagan origins of the Christmas tree, recalling Eden rather than the forests of Tannenbaum.  

Tentative conclusion: there may be more than one tree in our symbolic archive.

Meet Me in St Louis

 

Everything was normal until Swiss house guests made the mad rush from Thanksgiving to Advent even shorter;Then we flew to St Louis to spend an early Christmas with Beth, friend of Carolyn's from Grinnell College days, who moved there recently. 

The fresh snow transformed this tree lot into something magical, with church bells sounding and the distinct neighborhoods of a city still anchored by train stations and church cathedrals.

We met quite a few old L'abri friends who settled in the city, due to Covenant Seminary and a very large expat community of sorts. Jerram Barrs' Francis Schaeffer Institute and a number of English L'abri workers now teaching and ministering in the city's 22 or so PCA congregations. You could church shop for years and never leave the denomination! Felt like a home away from home.

Also visited Travis and Ariana & their 3 children at a dinner hosted by Beth, along with Ron Lutjens, the pastor of Old Orchard PCA and Chris Roberts, associate pastor of Covenant Presbyterian. Moores are doing well, busy raising a young brood. 

It was quite cold, even for locals, but we toughed it out and enjoyed the Arch,

enjoying the view from the very top:

 

St Louis was the end of America in post-Civil War 1800s, so you get a sense of the West beginning there and a country dividing in two, led by Lewis & Clark. 

 

After Sunday worship, we went to the City Museum, a reclaimed shoe factory renovated into an unusual kid play zone of industrial themed chutes & ladder type of environment, most extremely symbolized by a 10 story slide!

 

 

Jane Winters, formerly of the English L'abri, is a professional florist, whose wreath was on display at the Botanical Gardens, where we took in the colored light display in freezing temps. 

Beth is settled in church and thriving, although we normally reunite in Kauai under different circumstances.

Thanksgiving 2013

Had our first feast as a church, celebrating God's preservation in our town hall setting. Working off his Mayflower legacy - Carolyn, as well - Ben gave a history lesson of the colony after our supper. 

 

The spread was impressive, for our size, and invited guests and relatives filled out the tables, adding old GRC returnees, too.  Perhaps the original Thanksgiving's loss of 1/2 the colony was a little too close a parallel!

Church has been a rich experience for the boys, who relish food and social time.
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Later in the week, we enjoyed our own Thanksgiving, Carolyn's crafts for the table making things homey.

 

for ourselves and our Swiss guests, Julian, Ann, Leoni, and "Big" Jack, who flew in for the week. Julian is Scottish, Ann French, making Switzerland their home.

I cut corners with the food, with a hectic church feast days before, somewhat wondering the meaning of a repeat event, but it was great to tie some old threads together.

Aquatics

Seems a swimmer?  Snagged 1st in butterfly at a meet against older boys, so we were happy for him,  

 

and us. Michael's attentions are too divided at this point to head into any single area.

Out in the SoCal sun in mid November, if you can believe it.

Reformation Day - All Hallow's Eve - All Saints Day

October 31st has become layered with meaning, being the site of contested revelries, a tip-off to Luther's nailing 95 theses on the Wittenberg door &amp & All Saints Day. I taught two Reformation-themed Sunday School sessions, featuring music, visual art, and the concept of vocation.

Here's part of the gigantic murals in Neuchatel entitled, "The Second Coming of Christ," illustrating a dramatic change in pictorials of an otherwise ethereal topic; here, spiritual future meets Swiss farmland:

 'Agriculture' and 'Industry'

A renewed status for the everyday and crafts, juxtaposed with scenes of Judgment Day with the lake and hills of Neuchatel seen through the windows; the heavenly kingdom turns out to be a redeemed 'this world.'

Spoke of the failed reforms of Italian Savanarola, executed in Florence, against materialism. Imagine if Calvin - the Reformation's theorist - had studied art rather than law?

A bronze door replaces the original door of Wittenberg where purer doctrine linked to an economic practice. In sad contrast to the modern church's silence on the recent debt problem, where the institution with the language of debt, redemption and forgiveness has nothing to say.

The Sorbonne's Bibliotheque where Calvin and Viret studied marked a key trend as reformers went to the centers of cultural powerbroking, not the evangelical ghetto and fear of the city, partially explaining the former's impact and the latter's marginalization.

Prizes: Nutella for Savanarola's hometown, Ferrara, IT; Haribo for GMY; Toblerone for Switzerland.

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But we still do the pumpkin thing.

Michael dreams of living in his own house where he can grow pumpkins and tend a garden. After the corn maze and the haystack pyramind,

Then there're the other October 31st activities.

Although the jury is still out on how to best handle Oct 31 - ranging from early Christian mockery of the devil to skeletal reminders of death to general harvest celebrations.

Death remains the last enemy, thus still alive, real, not trivial, yet not a gospel of fear. Maybe parody, sadness, as we remember saints of old in All Saints Day.