Praise ye him, sun and moon…

Psalm 148

I once heard an NPR feature about the sun. I know I won't remember all the scientific stuff they talked about, but what it all boiled down to is that the sun is humming. Interesting.

Anyway, since that's the moon you see up there, let's talk about moon photos. I was just commenting recently on how hard it is to get a good shot of the moon. The other night (the night before the eclipse, I think), I was leaving church and saw this amazing moon. Now, usually, I see the moon while I'm driving home, and though i can appreciate how stunning it is, I have no place to pull over and even try for a photo. This time, I had an unobstructed view...so I trekked all the way to the back of the parking lot, set my camera down on the base of a light post, and started playing with the settings. The moon rose quite a bit while I was playing, and lost most of it's red color, but it was still just gorgeous by the time I got a decently clear photo.

Can we say that things praise the Lord just by being beautiful? By doing what it's created to do—reflect the light of the sun—the moon is praising God…

the moon by night…

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Psalm 121

I so love the poetry of the King James version of the Bible. The cadence and the language are a part of who I am, born and raised listening to these words...I am so blessed.

dreams

I have very vivid dreams. Recently, I dreamed that a girl I know, whom I rarely ever see, was going to be the Mayor of Alaska. I know, I know...mayors are for cities, governors are for states. Not in my dreams. And I didn't just dream that she was in the running, but that she was surely going to be the Mayor of Alaska. Not sure how I knew that. Maybe no one else wanted the job. (I just looked it up, and Alaska does have a female governor. Named Sarah. But that's not the name of the girl in my dream).

Another one was that a guy at work was in the habit of washing his hair in the bathroom sink before he left work for the day. And he used the same kind of shampoo I use. And he was leaving work with his hair wet and taking the bottle of shampoo with him. Now, all I saw in the dream was him walking down the hall with the wet hair and shampoo bottle. But somehow I knew that this was something he did every day and I had only just now caught him at it.

I once dreamed that I was going to marry a redhead named Nigel. Are you out there, Nigel?

The other night, I dreamed up some really great waterslides. Tunnels, waterfalls, whirlpools...all orange. We were all going down them with all our clothes on. Very modest fun.

I wish I could draw the pictures I see in my mind, because there are these figures I've been dreaming about since I was little: really really thin people and really really fat people...but they're more like illustrations than real people. They are in dusky primary colors. And they run and I'm running with them, but very. very. slowly.

I've also had the classic "all my teeth fell out" dream. It's a bizarre feeling, being toothless.

Sometimes, I'll dream up a really great plot for a novel. I'll get so happy as I'm dreaming, because I know that I'm dreaming up the next New York Times bestseller. I review the plot in my dream as I'm dreaming it, tweaking where needed. And I'm convinced this is going to be a great book. It flows just right, the pieces and parts fit together like a puzzle; the characters are witty and wonderful. I will then wake up, and eventually recall the dream, and get all excited because of the great plot my brain cooked up while resting. And I'll start to review the pertinent details: character, plot, etc. And it will make NO. SENSE. WHATSOEVER. It's like puzzle pieces from different puzzles. Like Legos and Tinkertoys and Constructs all trying to fit together.

Those are the dreams that make me question my sanity.

As does the fact that I'm sharing this with the whole wide world.

some things i loved about Warren & Melissa's wedding

Caedmon's Call Table for Two during their slide show

the Vera bags for all the bridesmaids



the custom-written vows

the guys' boutonnieres



the amazing food at the reception (bring on the chicken french!)

the Wedding Princess and the Bearer of the Precious

the feet shots (thanks, Pastor!)



the car the groomsmen decorated, much to Warren's chagrin



Warren & Melissa were just really fun and flexible. We were pretty crunched for time, and that's always sure to make me forget something, but I think we got pretty good coverage of the whole evening, and a few really nice portraits of them as a couple. These are just some of the rough fun ones...now, on to the editing process!

and God created great whales…

First, I must confess that I took about 250 pictures of the 3 (yes, that's three) whales that we saw. 77 (yes, that's seventy-seven) were of the tail alone. It's an embarrassment of riches, this digital camera with really large memory cards and batteries that last forever. It also makes me long for a larger hard drive.

When we first made plans to go to Boston, I knew there were two things I really wanted to do. One was to visit the Holocaust Memorial again, and the other was to go whale-watching. We did some research and ended up making Monday morning reservations for a whale watch out of Gloucester, based on recommendations from friends. Sunday night, there was a message for us that the morning ride was canceled due to rough seas. The good news was we could go on the afternoon one and get ten bucks off.

So, never minding the fact that we had 7 hours of driving ahead of us still, we decided to go ahead with the afternoon whale watch. And was it ever worth it! Just the ride out into the ocean was worth the money, even if we hadn't seen whales. It was fast and exhilarating (it just took me 5 tries to spell that right) and bumpy and better than any roller coaster ride I've been on! We found seats outside so we could feel the wind whipping our hair, but we were still sheltered from the spray on the port side. They closed the bow off entirely for the ride out, as it was just too rough to let anyone up there.

Then the whale sightings began, and I was bracing myself against the rail with my feet, and shooting away like crazy. It was a blast, trying to keep track of where he was heading so we could know when & where he'd come up next. And we got some great jumps (called breaches) and a ton of tail-slapping (the kid next to me counted nine in a row), and some rolling and spouting.

I'm pretty sure all the whales we saw were humpbacks, and most of the shots I got were of two in particular: Soya and Pinpoint. They were young (did you know that humpbacks can live to be 60 years old?) and feeling pretty frisky with the rough seas.

It was great fun and a little awe-inspiring to see these creatures that were spoken into existence by the Lord God. Just the ocean itself makes me stand in awe of God, who has set a boundary for it: this far and no farther. And then He filled it with creatures beyond our imaginations. And He made them, along with all creation, to cry out in praise of the Creator.

Maybe that's what all that tail-slapping was about.

bridal shower design

Well, the wedding is over and done with, and the shower is a distant memory, but I wanted to get a post up about it, because it was really fun to do the design and planning for this shower. The bride was using red in her wedding as her primary color, so I wanted to tie that into the shower. Now, red is not a favorite color of mine, so it took me a while to figure out how to enjoy this color as I planned this shower.

A couple of us had talked about chocolate brown and teal blue as a great color combo to use, but that pretty much didn't tie into the wedding theme, and I like things to be coordinated. Along with the chocolate color theme, we decided to do an actual chocolate theme for the shower. So then we had red and brown. Not really such an appealing color combo.

There are a bunch of design/crafty blogs that I frequent, and a color combo that I kept seeing was red with a robin's egg blue. It wasn't anything I would have thought of, but the more I looked at it, the more I loved it.



Given that the wedding was planned for the 4th of July, a red white & blue theme seemed logical, but I really dislike red and blue together...when it's a dark blue. Sorry, I know it seems un-American and anti- all the multitudes of sports teams that use that pairing. But that's just the way it is. Red & blue are both strong colors, and they just fight when they're married.

But this pale, crisp blue with the red: it's lovely! Fresh & Springy...a great color scheme for a May shower.

So I played around with a logo/monogram of sorts...their first names both start with "J" so I kept it simple. Drew a simple flower and I had a launch pad for invitations, decorations and favors.

I wanted to do really nice invitations, so I splurged on some great paper. A really rich red and a metallic pale blue...with red envelopes...worth every penny!



Those Martha Stewart flattened marble magnets were really making the rounds in blogland, so I decided to make some of those for favors. A friend had some Kraft boxes we could use, so I packaged them up with custom stickers, a couple of magnets and a piece of chocolate in each. yummy fun.





I picked up a bunch of red stuff and chocolate at Valentines Day clearance sales, and ended up with just the right amount of stuff for decorating. Each table had its own fondue pot, so not everyone would steal chocolate from the bride's fountain. It only worked for so long.



And lastly, we have a blurry photo of the mantle with monograms & flowers hanging from bags full of geraniums and tulips. A smashing success all around.



Now, I must say I'm curious if anyone even made it to the end of this post…not really very interesting to people not into design or party planning...don't worry, the whales are next. I think.

the noise of the night

the leaves were noisy last night
anticipating a storm
knowing their days are numbered
they reveled in life

the morning found them spent and silent
chilled and resting
having escaped the final fall
so far

one ring to rule them all…

Warren & Melissa had a fun wedding. They're kinda big on superheroes, and I saw a similar shot to these recently, so I thought it would fit them quite nicely. Rather than a traditional ring bearer and flower girl, they had the Bearer of the Precious and a Wedding Princess.

I took a ridiculous number of pictures of them, so you can start looking for them soon in the gallery link to the right.

retreat

I have some dear friends who let me house sit for them now and then. It's really a great deal for both of us, because I get to get away from the chaos of my own apartment and stay in a nice, comfortable house "out in the country" and listen to their pet birds chatter inside and do my laundry and watch the wildlife gather in their backyard from the hammock strung by their pond, while they get someone to truck in the bucket-loads of mail they receive each day and to make sure their birds don't die of starvation. I think I really do get the better end of the deal.

They're growing some gorgeous roses now, so I thought I'd indulge in my love of photographing flowers. I'm kind of amazed I haven't shown any doors yet on this blog, because that's my other photography obsession. I'll have to remedy that soon. For now, here is the hammock.

adrenaline rush

I love roller coasters. So when my company decided to make our summer company picnic a day at a nearby amusement park, I was thrilled. Free tickets, free parking and free lunch...and all the time I wanted to ride roller coasters all day.

Then, two days in a row, I got a fortune cookie that said "THERE IS A PROSPECT OF A THRILLING TIME AHEAD FOR YOU." How perfect is that??

It's a little odd that I am so willing to spend 40 minutes waiting in line for 73 seconds of adrenaline rush. But I am. It's somehow worth it. The nonchalant ease with which I slipped into my seat and lowered the safety bar or buckled myself in after putting my hat & sunglasses in a cubby belied the giddiness inside as I looked forward to that crazy 200-foot-drop or whatever corkscrew dive or backwards loop was ahead. That was a really long sentence. Sorry. Try again, you'll get it.

Having a good friend along helps, as you can spend that 40 minutes in good conversation. And she can distract you on the ride up to the top of the roller coaster (always the part that reproduces the most butterflies for me). We covered evangelism techniques, praying before meals, favorite colors, what being "relevant" means, Italian fair rides (where they are encouraged to joust with one another on the swings!), job stresses, and various and sundry other random topics. We kept refilling my one water bottle at a drinking fountain, since the park wanted $3 for a drink, and we shared a $7 chicken dinner served by a guy named Hirushi...or something like that.

We tried to ride the huge Ferris wheel, which is truly the highlight of this park, especially at sunset, but the guy behind us in line was drunk and spitting and really pretty scary. And I don't scare easily. My friend cut to the front of the line and sicced the staff on him, so we decided to just ease on out of line at that point.

One order of very fresh fried dough covered in powdered sugar later, and we were on the road home...all in all another fantastic day. The Lord has been showering me with them lately :)

I was traveling camera-free, so no fun photos. Good thing, since we got 100% soaked on 2 of the first rides we rode!

so grown up

It was such a surprise to me to find this little girl talking and running and just waaay more grown-up than I was prepared for! I'm her "Aunt Jen" though there's no physical relation, and I hadn't seen her in more than a year, but she warmed right up to me and by the end of my time there she distinctly declared that "I want to keep you!"

Her mom is one of my dearest friends, and I always always am refreshed by my conversations with her. She encourages me and empathizes with me and listens and shares and I can tell her anything at all.

I had such a great time...getting away from my "normal" life for a few days, good conversation, lots of laughs and a fantastic whale-watching trip. "Oma" was my travel companion, and she's always good for those "make you think" kind of questions…and for keeping her granddaughter busy while I caught up with my friend!

Boston is a really great city...I lived half of my life about 4 hours away, and have no idea why I haven't been there more often!

A few years back, I went with a group of friends to Boston for the day. We walked the Freedom Trail, shopped at Quincy Market, climbed aboard the USS Constitution and ate in Little Italy.

The most powerful thing for me was the Holocaust Memorial. For some reason, this isn't something listed in the tour guides. It's just steps away from the freedom trail and when I started through it, I was speechless and moved and just blown away with how intense it was. there are no photos of emaciated people in the concentration camps, no statistics, no images of the barbed wire and the forced labor and the horrific living conditions. There are simply several square glass towers in a row, etched with the serial numbers of the victims of the killing spree. Quotes from survivors ranging from the mundane to the profound are etched inside the towers and on the sidewalk. As you walk through the towers, you are standing over an open grate with warm air blowing up at you, bringing to mind the gas chambers. Tiny white lights shine down under the grates.

I shot almost an entire roll of film when I went through...capturing some of the quotes and the numbers etched on glass. The textures and lighting combined with the content made for some really powerful images. I was thrilled and sobered at the same time.

Shortly after I came home, I was changing the film in my camera, and handed the used canister to a 4-year-old to hold for me. She thought that the little bit of film sticking out of the canister looked like it might be fun to pull. In less than a second, all but a couple of those photos were gone.

I have thought about those photos often in the past several years...missing them. When I look at photos of places I have been, especially when it's a place that had a powerful impact on me, I can be there again. I know that not everybody can feel this, because I've tried to explain it to people before and they don't get it. But I can smell the smells, feel the ground that I'm standing on, hear the sounds, feel the air.

I think it was the year after the Boston trip that I actually went to Poland and saw Auschwitz-Birkenau...one of the most famous of the death camps. I stood where the firing squad stood. I walked the halls and saw the communal toilets. I stood in the reconstructed gas chambers that the Nazis had destroyed, trying to hide the evidence of their cruelty. I walked through the gate and saw the barbed wire and the signs warning inmates they would be shot if they crossed this line.

Last weekend, I was able to go back to Boston and see the memorial there again. Still powerful, moving, sobering. I was able to recapture the images that had been lost years ago.




I've read the Old Testament through a few times. I shouldn't be surprised at how evil human beings can be. How completely merciless and cruel. It is in our nature, passed on from Adam, to sin.

I don't know that building memorials helps to solve the problem. But the Lord had His people build memorials to remember the things He had done for them.

I want to remember the dark times. And the light that I am brought into. The faithfulness my Jesus has shown me over and over again. The gifts and blessings he has brought my way. The victories he has over the sin in me. His mercy that endures forever.

happy birthday to my friend:

she got baptized in my church and her brief testimony caught my attention. i often saw her and her kids around church...always full of energy and excitement for whatever it was she was doing. i ran into her in the lobby once and told her I wanted to hear the rest of her story.

we kept passing each other in the hallway for months doing that “hey, gotta get together sometime” thing until one afternoon at a retreat. We had roomed together, and decided to lock ourselves in our room for the afternoon and tell each other our stories.

so we laughed and we cried and we drank bottled frappaccinos and we told each other about what the Lord had done to bring us to where we were then.

we told each other a lot. but kept a lot back, too. i’m still learning stuff about her, and she about me.

we often laugh about how strange it is that we are friends. We’re such polar opposites.

She thrives on being surrounded by people, i can do large groups in small doses.

She solves everything by talking it over with someone...sometimes several someones, while i tend to just mull things over in my mind until i reach some sort of conclusion.

She is continually on the go, i like to have lots of time alone to rest.

i love it that my friend is a good mom to her kids...and even to her friends on occasion.

i love it that she is so thirsty to make sense of who God is and how He works.

i love it that she challenges me to dig deeper into spiritual things.

i love it that i can run away to Canada with her if needed.

i love her spinach artichoke dip.

i love her availability and heart so open to ministering to people.

i love it that she knows someone everywhere we go, and can talk to anyone, including, but not limited to, strangers.

i love it that i can tell her exactly what I think, and she’s still my friend.

I love it that her trust in God is strong.

I hope she has a great day today.

happy birthday, my friend Christina.