What's in YOUR Freezer?

Can a 33-year-old woman survive on a diet comprised mostly of Lean Pockets and hot coffee?  

I'm well on my way to fiinding out.  

Please visit me when I'm in the hospital with scurvy.  

And please bring an orange. 

Wildlife in the .18 Acre Wood

There was an exciting siting on our in-town acreage this afternoon. 

 Living on less than 1/5 of an acre, we find that glimpses nature and wild creatures are few and far between.   (Conversely, we have the pleasure of not owning a lawn mower.  It's a trade-off.)  So anything that flies, creeps, or slithers into our little garden is something to be examined by the entire family. 

Here's what fascinated us today:

Hello Mr. or Mrs. Barred Owl

Side Note:  When my girls called me out to see our friend owl, my bookwormish second-grader said, "Mom!  This is like a thrice-in-a-lifetime sitage!"  I don't think "sitage" is a word, but "age" sounds like a suffix she picked up at Georgia Tech.   "Thrice" I will have to attribute to her nerdy heritage (she may or may not have grandmother who bought a VCR in 1985 for the sole purpose of taping "Jeopardy" episodes), and before she starts junior high, I'll give her the "using-Middle-English-probably-isn't-that-cool-anymore" talk.  But until then, we'll look at owls together, and I'll get a kick out of her using words like "thrice."

After we worked through our vocabulary issues, we were mesmerized as we watched the owl watch us, doing all of that owly head turning.  It was very poised and not threatened by us in the least.  Those city owls are bold, I've heard.  And they also eat rodents, which is very good for our pest control budget. 

But the best part was just how different it was from anything I would have designed.   God's creativity as displayed in nature is breathtaking.  

Psalm 19 puts it this way:    

The heavens declare the glory of God;

The skies proclaim the work of His hands. 

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (niv)

All we have to do is listen and respond.

On the Bookshelf: Christy

 Don't let the girly-sounding title fool you. 

This is not just some sappy coming-of-age Christian romance novel from the '60s.  For years I think I avoided reading Christy because the modern versions have Kellie Martin on the cover, and it looked a little bit cheezy. 

See?

 But a few years ago in a used book store, I picked up what I assume to be an original hardback edition, and I was not disappointed. 

Christy is a coming-of-age novel.

It is Christian. 

It is from the '60s (but set in 1912). 

But the book is honest and real.  Surprisingly so, I thought.  I'm sure it must have been censored by some Christians upon its initial publication.  

This is the author, Catherine Marshall. 

Does she look like she would write fluffy stuff?

Christy tells the story of an affluent young19-year-old school teacher from a prominent Asheville family who volunteers for a mountain mission and finds herself in charge of a one-room school house of 67 children.  The novel is largely biographical of the life of Catherine Marshall's mother, Leonora, but is set down in the form of fiction (akin to the Little House on the Prairie series). 

I am reading it for the third time in four years.   I can't help it -- when the weather turns cool and the leaves turn crunchy, I have to pick it up again.  

I find myself drawn to the mountains, their shadows, and their secrets.   Maybe it's because I grew up on the sun-baked plains of South Georgia, but I would take the mountains over the beach any day.  Add to that the history of the Scottish mountain settlers, preserved in a time capsule for lack of roads and technology, and I am hopelessly intrigued. 

What I like most about Christy, though, is the insight to both human and spiritual nature that Catherine Marshall brings to bear on this Appalachian tale.  Her voice is wise, provocative, and picturesque.

And to top it off, Catherine attended Agnes Scott, and her husband briefly pastored a church very dear to me, Westminster Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.  Nice little connection. 

You should be able to find this goody easily at the library or on the web -- on Amazon, it starts at $.01.  Pretty affordable.  Enjoy!

And if you want to take a little roadtrip to 'ChristyFest' next summer, you might get to tour the mission church in Tennessee where "Christy" taught school. Maybe you'll have a picnic lunch of pot likker and corn bread.  Just stay away from the white lightnin'. 

BOO!

Happy Halloween! 

I may be a little late. 

I had an overloaded week last week which included, but was not limited to the following "extras": 

A dance recital
A church banquet
A doctor's appointment

A school auction
A new Bible study
An extra meeting with a boss

A school chapel visit

A little hard for me to cram all of that into the "margins" and still blog.   So I took a little break, only to find out that my mom is not the only one who reads this blog.  Thanks to my two other loyal readers for wondering where I was!  

Last Friday night we continued the scariness of the week by having dinner in a cemetery.   This was not really Halloween-themed, but our friends happen to live right behind a large, historic cemetery on a hill that overlooks the city.  

Our view: 

Our vittles:

Oh -- and another thing that's keeping me busy:  potty training.   Couldn't get girlfriend to give up her pizza, as you can see.  She has her priorities. 

And I confess, I'm a little bit of a nerd.  (For my 16th birthday I invited friends over to watch Shadowlands, the biographical movie of C.S. Lewis -- need I say more?).  But I LOVED walking through this pre-Civil War cemetery at dusk and thinking of what has transpired in the last 150+ years.   At one point we heard some echoing "booms" (probably from the nearby rail yard), and we pretended that they were cannons being fired.  It wasn't too much of a stretch.....hundreds of Civil War soldiers are said to be buried in trenches right in the cemetery. 

One of the highlights of our dusky trek was seeing this wall engraved with the 23rd Psalm.  That psalm happened to be our family Bible reading assignment for the weekend (I assume because of All Saints Day).  

The engraved verses were accompanied by a detailed carving of Jesus as the Shepherd. 

The children were deeply moved, as you can see:  

Happy Halloween/All Saints/Reformation Day!  A week late...