Tonight I bypassed my regular congregation and went cruising over to East Hills. There used to be a sign on the building where you turn that said Denny's Motorsports. The building has a real estate sign on it (sold!) and the motorsport sign is gone. I missed the turn and was late. I hate that. But I have no reason to go that far down Scalp very often.
I walked in late and my wonderful sister Tammy saw me in the corner of her eye and right away is yanking her purse off the seat next to her so I can sit by her. It reminded me of the sister at the DC on Sunday. That smile of welcome and gladness to see me is a balm against all the hate and political backbiting of the people at school and in Wal-mart.
I just had a great time. I commented and the brother remembered my name after two years. I thanked him after the meeting and he said well, he saw me come in and thought there's Cherri, but it wasn't until he had his part that he remembered the Randall. I wouldn't have cared, but it was sweet. I figure his brain went to work on downloading my name from storage when I walked in because he laughed when he told me about it since he knew I was going to have my hand up.
I do like to comment. I grew up in that very tiny congregation where everyone had to comment or the conductor ended up giving a talk on the material. But I also just like it. On the other hand, I do not like giving talks. I am used to lecturing a classroom for 50 or 80 minutes at a time. Five minutes always feels like I can't get anything done.
I put my foot in my mouth (oh it stays waterlogged for weeks sometimes) when we were talking after the meeting about accents. There was a new couple in EH, he from North Carolina and she from somewhere around here. Everyone was laughing about this and that so I said two weeks ago the word apostolic was pronounced apostalick instead of app uh stolic. The two brothers looked at me and one said, "Wow, we thought it was apostalick too."
One time our conductor in Arkansas said hyper bowl for hyperbole. And none of it matters. I was so happy to see everyone. Aaron was there as beautifully bald as ever but I didn't get the chance to talk to him. I walked out with Sister Scully and we talked about collard greens, trips to Bethel, pioneer school and one dollar racks at the Galleria mall. I miss East Hills, but I know if I went there all the time, everyone would get used to me and then when I visited Windber, everyone would be glad to see me.
I don't know if everyone is glad to see me there now. That's just how imperfection works. We get on each other's nerves. That's the comment I made tonight in the part on compassion in the KM. The cited scripture of Galatians 6:10 says to work what is good toward all, but especially those related to us in the faith. Compassion clearly is necessary in our congregations.
I got to see Pam, another lovely friend, and Sandy, who studied with her. Sandy's husband is the one I mentioned last month in a blog about his memory device for pronouncing their last name: Pass the House Key. I had not seen her since he died. He battled cancer for seven years. I told her how much I loved him and what a great guy he was. He sure could kid us about our accents. And they were a beautiful couple together, like the bride and groom figures on a wedding cake. They just matched. On the way home I was second-guessing myself, thinking to bring him up might make her grieve more tonight, but I've always heard that it is worse for someone to lose a spouse and everyone acts like the person never existed. I would never want to act like that, especially to Sandy.
All in all, a good meeting but at the same time I missed my own hall. And I missed the one in Arkansas, which doesn't even have a Thursday night meeting, and I missed three congregations in Oklahoma. And I would miss all of them everywhere if I knew everybody. I could leave here and go somewhere else and it wouldn't be very long till it was my hall there too.
The moon just passed, in March I think, its perigee, which is the point in its orbit around the earth that it comes closest to earth, so it appears larger than ever. It's been four cycles since then, but it is still a big round moon, and when I circled around to Scalp Avenue, there it was rising and round and orange.
I've always been extremely fond of the moon. I don't know why it appeals to me so much. I like all of space, love Stargate and wonder if someday in the new world . . . well, I just wonder sometimes. I have to say despite all my complaints about Pennsylvania (especially snow) that the moon here, that Allegheny Moon from that old song I used to listen to as I pilfered through my mother's record collection, there is something to that. The moon was never this gorgeous in Oklahoma. Jupiter has 64 confirmed moons, the four largest discovered in 1610 by Galileo and hence are called the Galilean moons: Io, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. I've often thought how cool it would be to watch a moonrise on the shores of a Jupiter lake. The thing is, that would be difficult since life on earth is based on carbon and oxygen and Jupiter's atmosphere is sulfur/hydrogen.
Hard to breathe. But I would like to study astronomy in the new world. I told Kimberly that once and her eyes got big and she said, "Mother, we don't do zodiac and junk like that."
I said well look up the difference between astronomy and astrology my little dove.
Anyway, I guess I will go back to Windber and get on someone's nerves this Sunday, but tonight as I left East Hills, I looked up at the most beautiful luminary I have ever seen in the night sky and I was thankful for both congregations, for all of them all over the earth, for all my spiritual family looking at the glow of a perigee Moon.
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