gifts...

Much to my surprise, I received several gifts this Christmas, very thoughtful and personal ones.  The receiving of such and my outing last night has the notion of gifts for you on my mind.

Marie and Paul bought me a real whisk.  Of course, Marie chose one that collapses into a flat whisk and one that is GREEN.

When she came over to cook on Friday, Marie brought a very surprising and sweet gift from her mother:  a collection of cooking goodies in a GREEN container.  Inside were a bottle of white balsamic vinegar, a bottle of pecan oil, a can of Mediterranean Rosemary and Citrus spice blend, and a can of large flake smoked sea salt.  Of course, being Marie's mother, Susan knows that I have been cooking, but what she could not know is that I have been hankering deeply for some more spice rubs and I have had large flake smoked sea salt in my Amazon shopping cart (along with 31 other wishing-I-could-have items) for several weeks because I learned that this is part of what my best friend's husband used in his bloody fantastic smoked grill herb bag that I used as a rub.  In short, Susan could not have chosen more appropriate or more welcome cooking items for me.

Eric and Celia gave me the foot warmer for the bed and the electric blanket for the GREEN chair.  Of course, I truly savor the warmth, but more importantly those two gifts have greatly helped me with the Reynaud's in my feet.  Celia knows what a struggle it is having blue blocks of ice for feet.  It is weird, because they are numb, but they are also painful.  That pain is greatly magnified in the process of warming my feet back up.  With the foot warmer, I am sleeping better, and when I get up to fetch new ice packs, my cold feet do not tip over into becoming those blocks of ice.  The same is true when I go outside with Amos and have the external warmth awaiting me in the GREEN chair.

Gitte, well, she cracked me up and warmed the cockles of my heart.  She sent me bacon ... or rather funds for much bacon in my life.  She sent me some items for my new kitchen, but it was the bacon funds that made me laugh.  Of course, I am very willing to comply with the directive for how to spend my gift!

My dear friend Mary sent two very personal and welcome items:  stationary and a Taco Bell gift card.  She knows how much I like personal correspondence and gifted me with very, very, very beautiful and delicate floral stationary.  And she knows the deep and abiding satiation that comes with consuming my beloved Taco Bell.

And I have written about how my friend Wynne sent me two different means of having the scent of gardenia waft about me.  With Becky's encouragement, I have used both the gardenia scents and Becky's lavender lotion in times of distress to help me focus on something outside myself.

A woman I met back when I was on Facebook sent me this incredible Christmas card from Japan.  It is this very intricately die cut card that, when folded properly, becomes a decorated Christmas tree with a fancy skirt at the bottom.  Boy, do I ever want to live in a country where you find such art even in cards!

Finally, I received what I felt like was a hug.  You see, Emily wrote a letter on the back of a flyer that had been sitting in her car and was thus stained with things from her children.  As much as I adore beautifully crafted stationary, I also welcome and celebrate the stationary that is also a slice of the life from whom the letter was sent.  When I was a missionary in Africa, I had someone who would write me notes on scraps of paper that she came across during the day.  Then, after a week or two, she would stuff all those scraps of paper into an envelope and mail them to me.  When her letters arrived, I would spread the scraps of paper about my small house in Liberia.  Then, as the days passed,  I would pick one up and read it.  It was as if I were there in America with her and she was visiting with me in Africa.

Last night, I was thinking about those very personal, very thoughtful gifts last night whilst listening to the magnificent performance of the Fort Wayne orchestra.  Once again, I was truly amazed at the level of performance in such a small, middle of nowhere city.  It occurred to me during the first piece that the symphony tickets were really another gift of my Good Shepherd that came with moving here to this town, not just the incredible house I was given, a house so very personal to what I savor.

The first piece was Achille-Claude Debussy's Nocturnes.  All three movements were startling understated.  They were not boring, but rather quiet and sedated, a musical portrayal of contemplation.  Sitting there, it was as if the entire world fell away and there was just the beauty of the music, quiet and still, simple and complex.

The second piece of the first half was this wild and wonderful work for the violin: Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending: Romance for Violin and Orchestra.  My goodness!  I did not know it was possible for a violin to be played so beautifully and delicately at such high notes.  It really sounded like bird song.

Getting to the Embassy Theatre was, once again, easy since Sandra played chauffeur for me.  I told her that I thought I should call her James and come with a wad of ones in my purse!  I had forgotten what a tremendous work it is to get to my seat, climbing two mountains of stairs and walking for miles and miles before being able to collapse in those very, very, very small vintage chairs.  But all that work was worth it for the first half alone.  Yet there was so much more to come.

The second half opened with a teaser video about the composer for the next performance, Malcolm Arnold.  It was a British video, so the blunt talk had many laughing.  And then we battled our way through Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait.

Because of my faltering brain, I cannot remember who it was, but this past year or so, I met someone who really, really, really dislikes Abraham Lincoln.  I asked why, but never understood the reasons thereof.  Living in the DC Metropolitan Region, I often visited the Lincoln Memorial.  It is beautiful. Stark.  Sobering.

Before I left, I also visited both the new Lincoln museum that is beneath the memorial and Ford's Theatre, with all the history there.  One of my favorite of his speeches was Lincoln's second inaugural address.  Short.  Simple.  Standing before man and God.


Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that thecause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

It is one of those speeches that is so very full, with much to ponder.  It has always amazed me his thoughts about both sides of the war praying to the same God for victory.  And his conclusion about if God's will be is that the consequences of the ills of slavery be extended then it "still must be said 'the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

It is an extraordinary political speech, for it is not political.  It is real and it is honest.  And, of course, today it would never be written, much less given.  I do believe that few really understand the First Amendment, but I am not writing about that here.  I am writing about an extraordinary man who battled his own brokenness even as he worked to heal a broken nation.  How can you not respect that?

I know nothing about the performance, so I do not know if it is normal to have someone speaking about Lincoln as the music is played.  I found it wild and wonderful that Johnny Warren was given a standing ovation and brought back out for more effusive adulation over his contribution to the performance.  I also found it wild and wonderful the intimacy and kindness of the audience at the symphony, who all also enjoyed hearing Warren's comments on what had just happened when his microphone was accidentally left live after he walked off stage.

Thrice now, there have been gaffs.  And yet each time they are greeted with patience and kind humor.  I still remember the swell of chuckles that rose when the man who was setting up the piano in the first concert dashed back onstage because he had forgotten to open the cover to the keyboard.  That swell prompted him to stop and take a bow, which caused the audience to burst into applause.  It is as if those in the theatre know that life is too precious to take offense at such things or even mind their delay.  We are all human.  We all fail at one time or another.

During A Lincoln Portrait,  we had a three-screen, photographic essay of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement (at the very end).  I could not see them very well (yes, I wished I had my new glasses), but the images made me think that we have become utterly immune to the horrors and ravages of war.  I believe this because had we not, we would not be spilling so much American blood overseas, we would not waste that blood, and we would not abuse and neglect those wounded by war.  PTSD is not some gimmick, nor is it something that you can just order someone to get over.  SIGH.

The evening ended with this very, very, very strong piece:  George Anthell's Symphony No. 6 After Delacroix.  If I tell you that I am not a fan of Wagner, you might understand what I mean.  I do not like pop music at all.  I do not like chaos and clanging.  I do not like violence in my music.  So, I will say that Anthell skirted that fine line of what I do not like and left me feeling charged up for the long, long, long trek to the curb where "James" would be picking me up.

When the concerts are over, I wait for everyone in the loge to leave so that I do not become the hated bottleneck.  I usually read on my Kindle whilst waiting, but last night I listened to the cacophony around me.  Several times, I heard about what an eclectic selection of music it was.  It was.  And it wasn't.  The conductor told us all about it at the beginning.  Yet if you focused solely on the marque piece A Lincoln Portrait, you will realize that there is a time for contemplation and a time for recharging when it comes to remembering war.  Truly, those pieces were interesting and appropriate bookends for the evening.

And I thought about gifts.  Already I know I will be getting season tickets again next year, if I am here and here.  Lord, willing, I will have several years of immersing myself in the totally unexpected and surprising beauty and respite that is the incredibly talented corp of musicians of the Fort Wayne Orchestra.

I still have no one real answer for why it is here I moved.  Once I saw the photos of this house, I was hooked, though I pursued two others because I just couldn't believe that this one could be for me.   I was thinking the other day about how many years I have longed for my own hallway.  Always the places I lived were so small, no incomplete.  Yep, I'm the kind of girl who stares down her hallway and weeps at the gift of it.

I fit in this home.  I make sense in this house.  It truly is a great gift from God and His perfect timing to be on the market when I needed a home.  Amos fits me.  He makes sense with me as a puppy momma.  Friday, when Marie and I were chatting at the table after our meal, Amos came over and begged to be in my lap.  He believes puppy dogs are meant to be held and cuddled and curled up with, rather than laying at your feet.  I wonder if ever there was created a more oddly affectionate puppy dog ... or a puppy dog with so many issues.  Those who are broken are more tolerant of others who are broken as well.  It goes both ways with us.

So, I move to this small city in the back woods of no where (compared to all the places I have lived) and I learn that it has extremely fine offerings of the two things I love most:  botanical gardens and symphonies.  Is that not a gift from my Good Shepherd?  I believe so.  I know so.  It cannot be anything but.  And they are so very personal for me.

I think that is what I try to explain about the power and efficacy of the Living Word.  Those psalms Marie read on Friday morning were gifts so very personal for me.  They are the Living Word that fit me then and now.  Yes, Psalm 27 is one that fits Marie, too.  And millions others.  But it does not make it any less a personal gift crafted to serve and to save me.

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!