Happy 4th of July!

Happy 234th

Central City Opera July Calendar

Madama Butterfly

We'll be in attendance Sunday, the 11th of July.

Encouragement

I was thinking about words the other day (there’s a big surprise!), and the word “encourage” came to mind. It was a startlingly simple revelation yet profound. It was more on the level of “duh” than “aha” or “eureka”!

To me the word encourage always had a connotation of being positive and supportive, building up rather than tearing down, but the root of the word makes it much stronger than that. Encourage breaks down into en- (to put something into) and courage, at the heart of which is the word heart. When we encourage, we put courage into someone. We give them heart!

Courage is certainly expressed in bona fide life-threatening situations, such as wars, emergencies, disasters, etc., but for most of us, courage is needed in much more mundane circumstances in our everyday lives. It takes courage to meet life’s challenges. It takes courage to be one’s self in the face of tremendous pressure to conform. It takes courage to stand for truth and justice. It takes courage to hold unpopular views and take unpopular positions.

The word hearten is a good synonym, and it shows the breadth of meaning in that word—heart. To have heart can be to be brave, courageous. To lose one’s heart to another is to be smitten. To have the heart for something can mean to choose it, to will it. To have one’s heart broken is to be smashed emotionally by someone or something. The heart symbol has lately come to signify the word love, a concept that encompasses will, intellect, and emotion—and takes courage.

Why was I thinking of the word encourage? I think it’s because I was thinking of the encouragers in my life. Our daughter, Bonnie, is an encourager nonpareil. She never leaves a blog entry or a Facebook update uncommented. She answers her myriad of emails, calls regularly to encourage family and friends, speaks health and blessings over those she meets. She even writes actual letters and puts them into the snail mail!

Daughter Ellie is another great encourager. She always has a good word for anyone she interacts with. When we worked together, she gently helped me to be more sensitive in my dealings with others, and she did it in a very nonjudgmental, encouraging way. A pastor’s wife, she speaks and brings the blessings of peace and love to all within her sphere of influence.

Hannah is an encourager par excellence. She loves to tell people how nice they look, how much she likes their hair, and especially what a nice dog they have! As we walk around the neighborhood, she seems to know every dog, and those she doesn’t know soon become her friends. Everyone within hearing range becomes Hannah’s target for attention and encouragement. She loves to love people and to tell them she loves them.

Jimmy encourages his friends and family with his loyalty and friendship, as well as good words. He shares the things he loves with those around him. He takes people on hiking trips and visits to places that are his favorites. His encouragement is often playful, especially with his sisters, cousins, and parents. Yet this kind of joyfulness, playfulness is also important in giving us courage to be who we are, because it shows acceptance of who we are.

My wife is my ultimate encourager, without a doubt. My self-image was tiny and shriveled when we met. Her appreciation and encouragement gave me the courage to believe in myself and blossom to be the person I was meant to be.

The more I write, the more I see how spoiled we’ve been with all the encouragers in our lives. We’ve been surrounded by them. Parents, siblings, cousins, teachers, friends. A quick learner, I was immediately singled out and encouraged in school, and it made all the difference in my academic/intellectual life. Our voices made choir directors encourage us to sing, and that has enriched our lives immensely.

Space and time prevent me from mentioning all the encouragers in our lives, not the least our mentors, Bob and Vicki, pastors, chaplains, brothers and sisters in community in Spain and Italy, Navy leaders, choir directors and members, Japanese friends, language mentors in Yokohama and Boulder, coworkers, bosses, and many, many others.

The more I think of all the encouragement and encouragers in my life, the more thankful I am. This could well have been my annual overflow and outpouring of thanks in celebration of Thanksgiving.

En fin, my prayer for all of us, all of you, for everyone is that there should “never be heard a discouraging word.” May we all have put into us the courage, the heart we need to be all we were meant to be and to do all we were meant to do. Be encouraged to encourage, my friends, as you also have been encouraged.

Central City Opera June Calendar

Central City's Opera House, one of our favorite Colorado landmarks. We'll be attending this year's festival the weekend of July 9-11. Can't wait.

ANZAC Day 2010 - Atonement

Approaching our own Memorial Day weekend, I thought it worthwhile to highlight an analogous day set aside by our Allies in Australia and New Zealand. ANZAC Day is observed about a month earlier than Memorial Day in the U.S., and I had every intention of writing something in honor of ANZAC Day this year, but didn't get it done. Instead, I am including a link to a blog post by a friend in Australia at Tessa's Take, featuring the following painting. Check it out here. It's well worth the read.

ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.

Previous ANZAC Day posts:

ANZAC Day 2009

Remembering, Reminiscing, Revisiting 2008

ANZAC Day 2008

Wikipedia on ANZAC Day here

Central City Opera May Calendar

This year's offerings at the Central City Opera. Check them out here.

Cottonwood Hot Springs, Buena Vista, Colorado

Momentarily we'll be hitting the road for Buena Vista, Colorado, where we'll be spending two nights and enjoying the therapeutic waters at Cottonwood Hot Springs. You can check out our accommodations here and get more info about the resort here.

There are eight of us sharing a nice cabin (pictures here).

A Favorite Blog

Every now and again, I discover something so good, so moving, I just have to share it. Not too many months ago, I discovered this blog, and I've been addicted ever since.

It's not just the ideas, which are thought-provoking, novel, rich, and profound.

It's not just the raw emotion that sometimes jumps up and grabs you.

It's not just the creative use of words and poetic devices.

It's not just the life-as-lived, human interest, real-people realism.

It's not just the sense of wonder, sometime exhiliration, and frequent yearning.

It's not just the playfulness nor the seriousness nor the profundity.

No, it's all of these things and more, much more.

We briefly met the author at the airport as we were arriving and she was departing. If I had known then what I know now, I would have said, simply, "Kate, I love your blog."

Below I have excerpted small bits of various posts, some of my favorites, but you should really follow the links and read them in their entirety. They are well worth it.

(Click the title of each to read the entire post on Kate's blog.)

break-up, compliments of the letter H
Hold it...enough is enough, Harry! You had my heart, you huckster, and you fed it to the hamster and hid the hull under the Hamilton's house. Maybe I was hypnotized by your heavenly hips and healthy hamstrings, but both hell and high tide have hit and I'm not hearing harmony in your hymns from here on out.

Check out this huge, hearty, heavenly handful of h's here.

How I Make it Through the Night

My mood is pressurized as I walk the hall checking on my patients. We are all passengers tonight, flying through the night, hanging on the silver balance. Hoping to make it home safely to the comfort of our own beds.

A moving account of the overnight duty in a hospital...

Catherine Barkley would've cried too
She sets her bag on the floor and walks closer to her husband's bed, tucking the edges of the blankets deeper under his still body. Once she's satisfied, she walks to the head of the bed, leans in close, and cups his face with her hands. I'm here my darling and you're doing just fine. But these kind nurses must be confused, because they say that you're very cold. But that just can't be, can it? You can't be cold because you are the one who always keeps me warm at night. All these years you kept me warm. Show them how warm and good you are, my love.

Love, medicine, a lifetime of taking orders from his wife? I don't know. But our man got warm and got stable while I bawled into the pile of unneeded blankets.

Man or woman, I dare you to read this post without being moved to tears. Read the rest on the blog.

knowing
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how much living without going crazy or numb depends on our ability to walk the fine thin tension lines that run through our common experiences, marking out for us what it really means to be human. Individuals have infinite inherent worth yet our single lives are a mere drop in the bucket of human history. All the frailty, gravity, fleetingness held up against the body’s drive to survive, the brain’s ability to compensate, hearts that go on. I know my beginning, my undeserved resurrection, the ending. But it is the moments, days, years between that can drive me to distraction. Say it to yourself, Kate: There are things we can know and things we should not hope to know. Now mean it, believe it. Proclaim it.

This is what I know. Their baby was beautiful and loved by so many people. She looked like her dad. She could not have had a better mother. She changed all of our lives and now we are heartbroken & somehow still grateful. The rest? Why? When and if it will ever make sense? I don’t know.

That's just a taste of the entire piece. Check out the rest here.

Ash Wednesday

T. S. Eliot wrote a poem called Ash Wednesday and in it is a line I go back to again and again when I don't know how else to pray. Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still. Only a handful of words and yet they are strong and broad enough to hold all my questions & inadequacies. I need to be taught to care for my neighbor better - how to love that woman, how to love Tim, how to love people who hurt me. How to love like Christ, because of Christ's love for me. I need to stop caring about the things that don't matter, the voices who really won't have a say in the final count. Thank God for these 40 days to learn to sit still, to turn, to listen, to change. Thank God that His grace is not limited by merit, time nor space.
This is a Lenten meditation in which she uses the words of the following confession, breaking it up and interspersing it with life experiences. You really must read it to fully appreciate it. It can be found in its entirety here.

Most merciful God,

we confess that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed

by what we have done

and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and forgive us,

that we may delight in your will,

and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your Name. Amen.

Proposal
Please remind me that clouds

are a shaky foundation, of the danger of

drowning in a pool of my own whimsy

This is a larger composition. I just love the imagery here.

answer & some sentences
I was born in this small, scrubby town in the part of Washington that is never green. The air is very dry, the river is very wide, the sky is very big, and everything else comes in shades of very brown. The county fair is still a big deal. There are no good restaurants or traffic jams.

"There are no good restaurants or traffic jams." Brilliant.

absit iniuria verbis
Nursing school has made my hands useful and I am thankful for this. In college, I hopped around between disciplines, trying to find the right balance of poetic & practical, a way to meld an inclination toward language with a compulsion to make a tangible difference. Chemistry was too academic, English too indulgent, so I settled on politics and its implicit room for negotiation. After college, I slowly drifted back towards words, burying myself in paper. I could look beyond my computer screen and see how the sentences might rise off the page, walk up the Hill, and maybe someday change things for someone somewhere. It never seemed immediate enough, though, and left me fidgety and empty handed at the end of the day.

When you don't know what to say

how to string the words together

and then match them up

with your own roiled thoughts

if too much time has passed, sorry

sticks in your throat, or the nervous

syllables shrink and retreat

back down to the safety of your belly

sometimes it's best, the only

way really, to go with that

tried and true old standby

hello
As an inveterate lover of words and a sometime Latin scholar, the title alone of this post was guaranteed to get my attention. It's well worth reading in its fullness.

I know this now

Real things are not always simple.

Simple things are rarely easy.

Easy things are never real.

Poem #3

Tick tock

goes the clock

and here

I sit

with writers'

block

life, homonymically

WE are paired first by our eyes.

Buy me a pear, say aye.

You say bye and I am pared.

no doubt
Do you doubt that I love the things you think are funny?

Or that I think the things you love are funny?

Or that I doubt your love for funny things and thinking?

Or that I love your doubt and think you're funny?

No doubt, I love you and think most things are funny.

Love and Doubt...what funny things to think about.

Funny things indeed and wondrous and inspiring and beautiful.

Check it out.

Just do it!

You'll love it.

I Could be Wrong...

but I don't think so!

Apologies about the formatting. I tried to approximate the original formatting, since that is part of the beauty of the composition. Blogger didn't cooperate, despite my best efforts. As I have often stated, it is WYSINNWYG (what you see is not necessarily what you get)!!

Happy Birthday, Bonnie!

Our daughter, Bonnie, marks another milestone today. Living at the Antipodes, she is thousands of miles away from us, so we cannot wish her a happy birthday in person.

So it has become somewhat of a tradition to wish her a happy birthday in cyberspace by posting pictures of birthdays past. Here she is on our first tour in Spain, where she was born. The rug was a birthday gift that she still has.

We think this was her 7th birthday. It's in Maryland at our Severn house before moving on base Fort Meade. Her birthday was on Easter that year, and our neighbor made a cake in the shape of a cross because of the holiday.

This was Spain, our second tour. Likely Bonnie's 11th birthday, seen here with friends and her sister, Hannah.

Spain at the end of our second tour, just before we left for Canada.

Now her world travels have taken her to Australia. We love you, Bon. Happy Birthday, and in honor of the country of your birth we say...

Previous birthday posts:

2007, 2008, 2009

Central City Opera April Calendar

Lael Gallery & Studios

This blog is about our family and friends and our favorite things, and one of those favorite things is the artwork of our friend, Lael.

Last year, she opened her own gallery. If you missed it, you missed an exciting event.

We originally met Lael when she and her mother were trying to teach a bunch of us adults elementary modern Hebrew.

The class only lasted a few months, but our friendship with her family and participation in other educational opportunites have flourished over the years.

We later discovered Lael's tremendous talent for producing beautiful works of art like this one.

You can find more examples of her artwork and directions to her gallery by clicking here or on the logo below.

For more about Lael, click here.

Central City Opera March Calendar

The Osborne Bull

Osborne Bull
Grupo de Osborne

This symbol of Spain always makes me nostalgic for our home of 10 wondrous years.

Another favorite place.

Central City Opera February Calendar

The Upper Office

I have a lot of favorite places.

This is one.

Estes Park.

Beit Shalom.

The beauty of the mountains.

Altitude brings us closer to the heavens.

Loved ones sharing the space.

Recording the moment.

The Loft Office.

The Upper Office at our dear friends' house.

The serenity and completeness of Beit Shalom

and yet

The world at my fingertips via the globe and the Internet

and it feels

so much like home.

Mah-Jongg

Bonnie put up a great post about Mah Jongg over at Simple Beauty. Her daughter Mah-Jongged with the hand below, which is very unusual: four Kongs, with two hidden Kongs, not to mention no Winds or Dragons.

For more about Mah-Jongg, check out my previous post here.

Atomic Ale Brewpub and Eatery

If you ever find yourself in Richland, Washington, in the Tri-Cities area, check out the Atomic Ale Brewpub and Eatery.

They make some of the best pizza I've ever tasted, and the brew isn't bad either.

My favorite was the Cordon Blue: blue cheese sauce, Mozzarella, Swiss cheese, chicken, canadian bacon, mushrooms and scallions topped with blue cheese crumbles.

The potato soup was delicious, too.

For more info, check out their web site here.

Central City Opera January Calendar

Happy New Year!