Looking Forward to The Supper of the Lamb

Book Club Dinner of the above book
by Robert Capon on Thursday night.
I'm looking forward to it especially since
a dear friend is cooking for us! Last
Thursday was tragic. We had an accident
on the way to a class. Gordan (16) didn't see
a car coming through the intersection.
Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. My
eye is still colorful: shades of purple. God
was with us. Cars can be replaced. Ours
has to be. I'm still sore and sort of teary
today.It's rainy. March going out like a
Lion!

This comforted me last Thursday
by Charles Spurgeon:

"We shall not enter heaven, dear friends, as a
dismantled vessel is tugged into harbor, but
that the whole ship shall be floated safely into
the haven, body and soul being safe."

Back to Julius Caesar~~ have to teach
it tomorrow!

Pretty Cool.....True Story

Tonight was surreal. We got free tickets
today to see a premiere of Leatherheads.
My husband spent 8 days on the sideline
a year ago , playing the part of a photographer-
PR man. 1925 football film. George Clooney
and Renee Zellweger. We had no idea what tonight
was , with Press there and 500 free tickets
given away. Jake Delhomme, quarterback of the
Panthers came out to say Thanks to Charlotte,
etc... for hosting the filming and then he
introduced the two stars! Clooney and Renee
came out in Panther jerseys with their names
on the back and spoke! We had no idea. Thanks
Barb for calling this morning, Hans for holding
the tickets , Brad will always remember this
22nd birthday, AND my dear husband is in a bit
of the last scene, if you know where to look!
We were thrilled!

In the theaters next Friday!

The Hallelujah Chorus

It sang in my head as I left
Target today! My , what an un-
expected thing of God. We went
out to look for a skirt for Emma to
wear tomorrow under her choir
robe. It's Easter so something new
is always nice. She's SO hard to fit now
and in Junior sizes ~~ all sorts of sizes!
It's laborious to find clothes. I prayed
as we went in ( I don't do this on
Saturdays when the whole working force
is out) and on the sale rack we found shorts
and a skirt to fit. I could NOT believe it!

I told my dear husband who has tilled our
garden today about the Hallelujah Chorus.
We'll hear it tomorrow ~~ the choir is singing
it! The bookends of song are Christ the Lord is
Risen Today at the beginning of the service
to the end being the Hallelujah Chorus!
Gives me goose bumps. Tears of joy will flow!


manuscript --1741

'Messiah': autograph composition draft, 'Amen Chorus'
George Frideric Handel, London, 1741

Easter in your soul

From The White Witch by
Elizabeth Goudge:

"....she had long accepted the fact
that happiness is like swallows in
Spring. It may come and nest under
your eaves or it may not. You cannot
command it. When you expect to be
happy you are not, when you don't
expect to be happy there's suddenly
Easter in your soul, though it be
midwinter. Something, you don't know
what , has broken the seal upon the door
in the depth of your being that opens
eternity. It is not yet time for you yourself
to go out of it but what is beyond comes
in and passes into you and through you."

Catching up on Break

Spring Break is here this week
for our homeschool. We still have
some things going on ~~ choir for my
youngest who sang last Sunday and will
this Sunday. "We welcome Glad Easter"
She sings in the car so that has made
Holy Week special. Piano lesson, guitar,
and French lesson still happened, but now
a slower pace as we approach Maundy
Thursday and Good Friday.

I'm catching up on half finished books.
One being Home From Holly Springs
by Jan Karon. It took off. Wings, the
other night. I love Jan's beautiful
sentences. They seem to dance:

"How could he repay these good men who'd
been sent by the Almighty as surely as manna
had been sent for the tribes? Grace can't be
repaid , his wife was known to remind him."

and this: "It was convenient in any
circumstance to have an opinion,
a settled view of things. But he couldn't
get at how he felt about what he
learned today, or how it might change his life.
'Truth must dazzle gradually,' Emily Dickinson
had written, 'or every man be blind.'"


Caught up with bringing a dinner
for a dear friend who delivered her
5th boy! Yes , 5th boy!
He is precious as well as all the others.
I had forgotten how tiny newborns are.
She gave me a gift. Her husband makes
the most beautiful crochet hooks. He'll
be online soon and I'll post it!

Holy Week Approaches

Verses Turned...

by John Betjeman
1966

Lewknor, Oxfordshire OX49 5TP

Across the wet November night
The church is bright with candlelight
And waiting Evensong.
A single bell with plaintive strokes
Pleads louder than the stirring oaks
The leafless lanes along.

It calls the choirboys from their tea
And villagers, the two or three,
Damp down the kitchen fire,
Let out the cat, and up the lane
Go paddling through the gentle rain
Of misty Oxfordshire.

How warm the many candles shine
Of Samuel Dowbiggin's design
For this interior neat,
These high box pews of Georgian days
Which screen us from the public gaze
When we make answer meet;

How gracefully their shadow falls
On bold pilasters down the walls
And on the pulpit high.
The chandeliers would twinkle gold
As pre-Tractarian sermons roll'd
Doctrinal, sound and dry.

From that west gallery no doubt
The viol and serpent tooted out
The Tallis tune to Ken,
And firmly at the end of prayers
The clerk below the pulpit stairs
Would thunder out "Amen."

But every wand'ring thought will cease
Before the noble altarpiece
With carven swags array'd,
For there in letters all may read
The Lord's Commandments, Prayer and Creed,
And decently display'd.

On country mornings sharp and clear
The penitent in faith draw near
And kneeling here below
Partake the heavenly banquet spread
Of sacramental Wine and Bread
And Jesus' presence know.

And must that plaintive bell in vain
Plead loud along the dripping lane?
And must the building fall?
Not while we love the church and live
And of our charity will give
Our much, our more, our all.

Longings for Home

We went to a book signing last night
of Tim Keller, Senior Pastor of Redeemer,
NYC. His new book is : The Reason for God.
We have gotten his sermons for years and
visited Redeemer. What struck me later that
night was something God did in my soul.
Northerners wear wool. My dad wore a wool
sportscoat with khakis and a button-down
shirt and later I thought of this. Keller had
on a wool tweed jacket, just like my dad wore.
His first words were of being thankful
to be here where Spring has arrived. It takes
more time to come to NYC. My memories were
good and I thanked God. My parents separated
when I was 8 and divorced 5 years later. Those
"longings for home" were good. Almost back to
Eden.

CS Lewis wrote about "Sehnsucht":
man's longing for his eternal home.
He believed that myth contains truth and
that Christianity was the "true myth."
Tolkien was the one to tell Lewis that.
Aren't we thankful! And for me, a taste
of Sehnsucht with a wool coat.

Impressionist and Modern Masters

Evan, our third son, now on Spring
Break, is in the vicinity of Nashville
this week. He called yesterday with
great joy having seen a real Van Gogh
and Dali and Monet at the Frist Museum.
It's a special exhibit. He said " Mom,
it's awesome to see these painters real
paintings." All that picture study in
homeschooling created
a love for art! Again, better than a movie!
The real thing.

A taste of the exhibit:

The Red Kerchief: A Portrait of Mrs. Monet
Claude Monet, 1868



Poplars at Saint-Remy
Vincent Van Gogh,
1889



The Secret Life
Renee Magritte
1928




Fans, Salt Box, Melon
Pablo Picasso
1909

Squirrel Nutkin

My youngest and I studied "Squirrels"
today . We watched one go up
and down a tree in our front yard last
week with leaves in her mouth, up to
the well formed nest in the crook of the
branches. The door was midway in the
front where she popped in and out.
It was better than a movie.
So finally today, we read
Anna Comstock's The Handbook of Nature
Study about squirrels. You'd think we
knew about them since they are all around
us!

Some favorite quotes:

From Thoreau who lived at Walden Pond
in Concord, Mass on squirrels. We went
there for a day this past summer:

-- I never saw one walk -- and then suddenly,
before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of
a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all
imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the
universe at the same time...

"A squirrel always establishes certain
roads to and from his abiding place and
almost invariably follows them. Such
a path may be entirely in the treetops,
with air bridges from a certain branch of
one tree of another or it may be partially
on the ground between the trees. "

Air bridges and sililoquizing~~
Shakespeare in some respects!
But of course, Beatrix Potter did
the best in Squirrel Nutkin.

As Emma dry brushed the nest
in the tree in her Nature
Journal quietly
on the front porch,
a real Squirrel Nutkin came
right up the stairs and went in
between the slats ~~ giving her
the greatest exclamation of JOY as
she bounded inside to tell me.
One of those moments from
God!

Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis

High Winds today

WINSLOW HOMER American, 1836-1910 The Gale, 1883-93

Good , foggy Friday

Always good to have the whole
family together. Tonight we did
to celebrate Gordan's 16th birthday
yesterday. ( 4th son) We celebrated
last night too! Never too much
when it's a BIG birthday.
Gordan and I went up to Boone
in the rain and then fog up the mountain
to get Evan ( 3rd son) for Spring Break.
So thick as we climbed higher and
it wisped about the terrain.
Back in time to go out .
Good for my soul.

Morning by Spurgeon

Yesterday morning:

"God's grace is illustrated and magnified
in the poverty and trials of believers.
Saints bear up under every discouragement,
believing that all things work together for their
good, and that out of apparent evils a real
blessing shall ultimately spring ~~ that their
God will either work a deliverance for them
speedily, or most assuredly support them in
the trouble, as long as He is pleased to keep
them in it. The patience of the saint proves
the divine grace.

The master-works of God are those men who
stand in the midst of difficulties, steadfast,
unmovable ~~

'Calm mid the bewildering cry,
Confident of victory.'

He who would glorify his God must set his
account upon meeting with many trials... ..
If then yours, be a much-tried path, REJOICE
in it, because you will better show the all-
sufficient grace of the Lord. As for Him failing
you, never dream of it ~~ hate the thought."

Evening with Spurgeon

From yesterday "Evening" by Charles Spurgeon:
March 3rd.....

"Yet there is none of the hurry of the
earthly haste, for the wings of the dove
are as soft as they are swift.

"QUIETNESS" seems essential to many
spiritual operations; the Lord is in the
still small voice, and like the dew,
His grace is distilled in silence."


Mourning Dove...............one spotted in my backyard
since Spring has begun. I thought they were in pairs,
so I'm looking for his/her mate. A pair lived at
my mother's house for years and years.
It was very quiet there. Perhaps that's
why they liked it.

A New Look

GREEN didn't match this
favorite painting of mine.
I saw it about 3 years ago
at the National Gallery on a
fluke. We were in Maryland
for a funeral and after-
wards spent one day at the
Smithsonian. I had no idea
the Winslow Homer exhibit was
still there. Have you ever had
tears of joy about beauty? I
was taken with a Mary Cassatt
that day and this particular
painting. I marvelled and tears
of unbelief that I could SEE these
paintings. I do count those times
just like a sunset or a particular
bird on my deck AND viewing
a painting as those unannounced
times when beauty appears!
It is one of my absolute
favorites. Carl Larsson still is a
one of my art loves, but I have
never been blessed to see one
of his paintings. Just in books
and on the net.

It is called "Mending the Nets."
1882
It is based on the seaside fishing
village of Cullercoats, England.
It is in the northeast and near
New Castle, up towards Scotland.
This skill of the menders was
passed from generation to the next.
Families at work.

Good to know it works

That's what my son at Appalachian
State said tonight after a lock down
concerning a "gunman" on campus.
Everything is back to normal tonight
so prayers have been answered. Police
were called after a burglary in an apt.
when the thief fled onto campus late
this afternoon. All buildings were locked
down. My son was in the Student Union.
My friends prayed and God certainly
has answered. Noone was hurt.
The website kept us informed and of course,
cell phones. I'm praying for a revival on
campus!