oooh! update, update! i AM a festival!
i am at home in wonderful ol' e-town. mom came down and got me saturday morning. jeez, witt clears out super fast for breaks, and i was pretty much alone on the floor friday night. this was okay with me, because i felt like shit friday. actually left work early and skipped my first class... and went back and slept for hours. my roommate left friday evening, so i had the rest of the night to myself. the ride home was uneventful. when we got back to e-town, mom and i visited my grandmother for a while. she's so adorable... lately she's been sending articles related to music and arts from the Plain Dealer. just something small to find in my mailbox, because i hardly get any other mail. it's something nice to brighten my day.
yesterday was hella busy. my mom was the liturgist for church, so we had to be there at the ungodly (haha) hour of 8:30. lately i've been singing in the church choir since they badly need singers and the director is one of my friends. so i spent time rehearsing with them and learning (aka sightreading) the piece they'd be singing in church. i kind of like singing in the choir, since mom is doing now and otherwise i'd be sitting by myself! after church, my mom had this meeting with two other church members. it's part of a new program of prayer and discipleship that our pastor has started. so i sat in on that... and i had a minor revelation. for those of you that know me (and some that might not), i'm not necessarily a "religious" person. i'm still struggling with what i believe and where i stand in terms of formal religion, though i do enjoy going to our church. i feel comfortable there,and i agree with the church/denomination's wider philosophy. http://ucc.org/
i guess i just am still trying to figure out the whole god/jesus idea. i think church for me is more about the community we build. i always find something inspiring within the people or what they're doing as far as outreach and community service. yesterday morning, it was one of the kids that surprised me. every week, the children of the church have a small "children's message" before they go off to church school. it's just a small informal thing where they talk about the bible story of the day and then go downstairs. they always do a prayer, and the children's pastor asked if anyone would like to say a prayer. one boy, his name is matt, ended up doing it, and it was so graceful and simple and eloquent i literally had tears in my eyes. he said somethng along the line of "dear god, thank you for your grace, love and joy. amen". i thought it was so powerful that you don't need fancy words to pray or be a special person to worhip. and that's what leads me to my next point. do forgive me because this might be REALLY nerdy... but - i found that the feeling i get when i leave church is the same feeling i get when i play music or leave a rehearsal. so does that then mean that making music is my act of worship? i'm often happy, optimistic, and uplifted. and hey, in my humble opinion, isn't that what worship (of any kind) is all about? i really dislike those beliefs that say that god does bad things because people deserve it, or it's some kind of punishment. isn't god supposed to love everyone? aren't the teachings of jesus to love one another and to be kind and forgiving and full of grace? i know i'm not perfect, but i'd rather be judged by myself to my own standards than by someone else to standards that don't make sense to me. i've worn a ring on my middle finger of my left hand for at least two years - just a simple thing, silver, and inscribed on it is "God is Love." and i think that's really the only thing i stand by. god is love.
okay. religion rant is over. promise.
after church/meeting/lunch, my mom took me over to a friend's house so we could go to a meeting. this was a meeting for FOWL, or friends of wetlands. http://fowl.org/ it's a group my dad has been a part of since before i was born. it's basically a bunch of people who think the environment is important to protect and take care of... and yeah, there might be a few hippies. but since my dad has been involved with fowl, he brought me along to meetings and such since i was a little wee one. the group sent out a mailing four times a year of a newsletter with updates for members. i have memories of being in john katko's (the president of the group) basement late at night, collating and stapling and sticking and sealing those newsletters... and john katko swearing at the copy machine when it broke... and holding a salamander... and eating fresh string beans from his garden... and the music people made around fires...
i realized at this meeting yesterday that the members of fowl are like an extended part of my family. i've got my blood relatives that have seen me grow up, and i've also got the fowl family who have been around my entire life. they're really an eclectic group of people. a few are teachers; grandparents; musicians; librarians; writers; computer geeks... all of them were my parents' friends from way back. i cherish each of them in a unique way. i kind of lost touch with them because dad hasn't been as involved with fowl in recent years, and then of course i went off to school. i guess this meeting yesterday made me realize how lucky i am, because i feel like any of them would help me out if i called them up with a problem. anyway, what i guess i'm saying is that i feel very blessed to have a group of people who have been influential on my growing-up in a different way than family...i don't get to see any of them nearly enough.
wow. okay, this is a really long post. promise i'm almost done!!
today i went to great northern with stephanie and kelly. we got some food, went to platos closet and half priced books. i got two shirts (one of which is a REALLY cute button down shirt that actually doesn't cut off the circulation to my biceps) and a nice pair of khaki's. and then at half priced books i got a book of poetry by robert penn warren. -dies- he's my favorite poet... and here's my favorite poem: http://tinyurl.com/yborsnh
anyhoo... i'm going to see benford tomorrow!! yayyyyyy!!
other than that, i don't know what the rest of my week will consist of.
more to come, i'm sure!
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