Lift Up Your Hearts!

This Christmas, Heather and Jon gave me a collection of contemporary "praise and worship" CD's. This was a welcome gift, not because I like that form of music, but because I don't. Knownig that familiarity with a song often induces fondness, even when the style is one I dislike, I was determined to give this music a chance to grow in my heart. It is so pervasive in churches now that not to be able to worship in its presence is a distinct handicap. Therefore one of this year's Lenten disciplines was to listen daily to my new CD's. (More)

Recently we decided it was time to pick the remainder of the grapefruit from our tree, and yesterday I made several batches of juice, knowing we couldn't eat all of the fruit itself before it spoiled. Actually, that's fine with me, as I love grapefruit juice. Not the juice you can buy in the grocery store—although that's tolerable if you get the "not from concentrate" kind—but real, live, non-pasteurized, fresh grapefruit juice. It's unbeatable!

If I'd known how wonderful it would be to have our own tree, I'd have planted more than one when we moved here 20 years ago. This is truly one of Florida's great treasures. And yet if you drive around and look at homes with citrus trees on the property it seems that most people don't appreciate the gift, but let the fruit fall and rot.

I borrowed a cookbook from the library: the Beat That! Cookbook by Ann Hodgeman (Chapters Publishing, Ltd., Vermont, 1995). This is not a book review, nor a recipe review, but a brief comment on a remarkable coincidence. Flipping through the book, I came upong the entry for Sarah's Tomato Sandwiches, which begins with the following note: "Before she embarked on a church career, Sarah Gaede was a caterer. This hors d'oeuvre recipe was one of her most popular." The author lives in Connecticut, but who can doubt that this recipe is from the Sarah Gaede we knew at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando?

On Saturday we went to the Central Florida Fair, old-fashioned fun with rides, a midway, cotton candy, and hundreds of exhibits. I particularly enjoy the 4H and Future Farmers of America presentations. What I like best, perhaps, is that it is SO NOT DISNEY.

This year I again visited my favorite fair vendor, Our Vital Earth. I like them because they sell worm condominiums. That's Porter's term for the product, which I like better than the official name, Can-O-Worms. Whatever the appellation, it's a nifty system for dealing with home garbage. The tiered container (shown here expanded) takes up about as much room as a large kitchen garbage can. You put your organic garbage—scraps (except meat and bones), grass clippings, leaves, newspapers, dryer lint, old cotton socks—into one of the three trays (the bottom tier holds liquid) along with the garbage-eating worms. When that tray is full, put another on top; the worms migrate upward as they run out of food. After a while the worms are out of the bottom tray, leaving fine fertilizer behind. Water and worm urine collects in the bottom; the resulting liquid makes a good, natural insecticide as well as fertilizer. (They also say it's good for sunburn, but I don't think I'd try that one.) It's supposed to be a rapid, odorless process, big in Australia, where I'm told the device is often kept in the kitchen. I'd probably opt for the back porch, but the one I saw at the fair would not be out of place in a kitchen. It smelled better than most garbage cans.

We have no affiliation with Our Vital Earth, nor any other Can-O-Worms seller. We don't even own a worm condo; I just think it's a cool idea. And we may get one yet, once I figure out how to keep a straight face when arranging for a worm babysitter when we go on vacation. (More)

Recently I discovered Li’l Writer Guy living in my head.

That sentence is enough to make half the readers of this blog think I’m insane, and the other half think I’m possessed. Be that as it may, it’s the best way I know to explain the way I think. (More)

Having made so much of the Red Sox for their World Series win, I must also congratulate the Patriots for their Super Bowl performance. Not quite so heartily, however. For one thing, for the Patriots to win the big one is not quite so rare as for the Sox; for another, half my heart was also given to the Eagles. I care even less about professional football than about professional baseball, but I have pleasant associations with both teams' cities. (More)

Florida has been experiencing unseasonably warm weather recently, though here it is not as welcome as the 60 - 70 degree temperatures in the Northeast has been seeing. I'm not ready for shorts and temperatures in the 80's yet, and neither are our plants, which must have been dreaming of an early summer this week.

What a change this morning! Suddenly the air pouring through my open office window has a welcome chill, driving off the computer-generated warmth. Time to switch back to long pants, maybe even break out some soup and our Christmas hot chocolate. Alas that the cooler weather that brings blessing to us brings hardship to more northern climes!

I'm not unmindful that the new temperatures that are wonderfully cool to us are the same ones that were wonderfully warm to our loved ones just yesterday.

Lime Daley is the name of Jon Daley's Internet hosting and embedded hardware and software systems company. It is also the name Porter gave to a great drink Jon and Heather invented. For the curious, here is the recipe for a Lime Daley:

ice to taste
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 drops Boyajian lime oil
1 twelve-ounce bottle Blenheim “Old #3” (red cap) ginger ale

Put ice in a tall glass. Add lime juice and lime oil. Slowly pour in Blenheim. Stir well. Be prepared for the strongest kick a non-alcoholic drink can have. (To remember the proportions, think “3, 2, 1, blastoff!” It’s appropriate.)

(I predict LimeDaley.com will be a powerful business.)

Many churches have early evening "family services" on Christmas Eve, so that young children don't have to stay up for "Midnight Mass." That's a mistake, I think. Children who stay up past midnight are less likely to awaken before the dawn on Christmas Day. (More)

'Tis the final day of Advent, and family is gathered around. Tonight we hear the penultimate story from Jotham's Journey, which we have been reading each night while the Advent candles are lit. Soon we will travel to church, bracketing our worship with fondue: cheese before and chocolate after. A white Christmas is unlikely, for the snow has been washed away by yesterday's rain. Perhaps we will have some Mannheim Steamroller Christmas music instead, which is almost as good.

The Season of Waiting is almost over. It is hard to observe Advent in our culture, where "Christmas" begins in October and ends about noon on December 25, just as the Christmas Season is beginning. But our small attempts have succeeded in shutting out some of the clamor, and drawing our eyes to greater wonders.

Billy, age five, is greatly excited. He hung his stocking from the mantel, and moved the large airplane cockpit control panel toy from in front of the fireplace, so that Santa will find no obstruction tonight. Then he solemnly declared to his cousin, "It wouldn't matter if Santa doesn't come, because the important thing about Christmas is Jesus' birth."

One year ago today we were basking in the sun of an unusually warm November day, and in the healing joy of the birth of a beautiful, healthy baby boy. This has truly been a Year of Thanksgiving.

I know this will not impress you Northerners, but I'll tell the story anyway. When I jumped into the pool today, I thought that the water was a tad on the chilly side. After doing my 10 warm-up lengths, I checked the thermometer: 67 degrees, a drop of six degrees since Friday. It was actually quite pleasant, after a lap or two, though I'm sure it's colder than the Maggie P. in summer. Probably not colder than Lake Bomoseen, however. My goal is to keep swimming until Thanksgiving. This time it was easy, as I had no idea before I stepped in how cold the water was. The real test of my determination will be the next time I venture in.

We're watching the lunar eclipse. The first time I saw that beautiful phenomenon, my father awakened me in the early hours of the morning, and we drove to a place where we could see the moon well. I was cold and sleepy. But it was worth it: to see the moon, and to have that special time with my dad.

Tonight we have it easy. We step out of our front door into the warm Florida night, and there is the disappearing moon, clear and lovely and perfectly framed. It reminds me of watching space shuttle launches, which we also see from our front yard. Except that this time I have no lingering fears that the beauty will splinter and fall as I watch.

Being originally a New Englander, Porter has been a Boston Red Sox fan since before he learned that those things he put on under his shoes were actually spelled s-o-c-k-s. He loves the team so much that he usually refuses to watch them play. (We lived near Boston for nearly two years, and never went to Fenway Park.) Demonstrating that paganism can still lurk in the deep recesses of a Christian's life, he is (or pretends to be) superstitious enough to believe he can jinx them just by watching. And I must admit that the anecdotal evidence is pretty strong. He has the opposite effect on the Yankees, too. During the first round of the playoffs this year, he watched seven seconds of a Yankees-Twins game, with Minnesota well ahead—just in time to see Rubin Sierra hit a three-run homer to tie the game, which the Yankees went on to win. Chastened, he watched not one second of the Boston-New York playoffs. (More)

With the nonchalance of season passholders, we spent the day at EPCOT’s International Food and Wine Festival. The park was not crowded by their standards, but it was by ours; we prefer to go when time spent waiting in line is minimal. Today, however, we found ourselves in line again, and again, and again…each time at a small booth with a long queue, that featured a different country’s food and drink. Portions were appetizer-sized, and prices were Disney-sized, but the idea was great. If the portions had been any larger, we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy so many tastes. It helps to have a partner in this situation: you wait in this line, I’ll wait in that one, then we’ll meet and share the food. It was a strategy that worked well.

Waiting in line was a social event, too. Floridians seem to have made an easy transition from exchanging hurricane preparation tips while in line at Home Depot, to exchanging food recommendations while waiting at EPCOT. (More)