Breaking winter's back

Everyone is probably sick of hearing the term "polar vortex".  I don't remember a winter like this since January 1985 when we were back here in IL on furlough from Germany and the temperature went down to -27.  That's what it was here last night.  But the mercury should climb back up to zero today and hopefully from here on out we'll have broken winter's back.  Even if it's cold, anything above zero will feel balmy after this stretch.  

It was -20 or below the last few mornings when we've gone out to do chores.  When there's no wind it isn't bad if you're dressed for it.  The vortex has given us gorgeous sunshine and blue skies so with appropriate clothing it has been invigorating to be out.  Here's what being "dressed for it" looks like.  The water hydrant by the barn has been frozen for a couple weeks so we're hand carrying jugs of water to the animals every time we go out.

Most appointments and activities have been cancelled so it's been cozy to stay at home.  I've tackled some projects that seem low priority during a normal schedule - deep cleaning and some sewing alterations.  Then in the long evenings Pete has been writing and I've been rug hooking.  This is my latest work-in-progress (WIP), rabbits dancing by the light of the moon.

On fresh snow in the mornings there are rabbit tracks all over the farm so I can tell they've been out leaping and scampering when no one is there to see them.

This winter I put up a bird feeder right outside a large window next to the loveseat in the living room.  It's a sheltered spot and has the added advantage that I can open the window and fill the feeders without trudging through the snow.  The cat and I can sit and watch the birds for hours.  I'm surprised they are surviving this weather but they come and gorge themselves all day at the feeder so I hope that is keeping them alive.  It's better than any movie just to sit and watch them.  Downy woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, juncoes, finches and house sparrows - we're an equal opportunity feeder.  Come one, come all.  Occasionally a hawk swoops in to try to capture a smaller bird but so far we haven't seen murder being done.  The hawk has bonked his head on the windows a couple of times, though.

I planted some seeds about 10 days ago and the parsley and one hollyhock have sprouted on the windowsill.  Seeing new green stirs my gardener's blood and reminds me spring will come, even when it's 20 below zero right now.  I am always deeply thrilled at the miracle of life springing from seeds.  Who but God could think of doing things that way?

My brother has come out lately to learn to hook rugs.  Hooking is definitely not just a woman's hobby.  Here Mark's taking a break from hooking, possibly because the cat is making it difficult for him to hook...???

He tends to hinder my hooking, too.

Speaking of Whit, he's loved having us home all day and having the woodstove going.  Here he is next to the fire last night.  It's a cat's life.

Winter can be brutal but we do love the seasons and the changing rhythms each one brings.  And we're so aware of God's care for us and his creatures through it all.  

  

The "sky is blue" is just a myth ...

I've been rereading Bruce Waltke's An Old Testament Theology. This book was recognized with the 'Christian Book of the Year Award' in 2008 in the category Bible Reference and Study. It is a wonderful book when it comes to understanding the Old Testament but at 1040 pages not for the faint of heart (or eyes).

Waltke has taken a lot of flak for being an evangelical who does not argue for interpreting Genesis 1 as simple history. He sees Genesis 1 more as a polemic against the polytheistic mythologies in the cultures surrounding the nation of Israel at the time that the Creator God YHWH led them out of Egypt into the land of Canaan. Through the creation story in Genesis 1 God provides a corrective for the false cosmogonies of both Mesopotamia, where Abraham and his family had originated, and Egypt, where they had been exposed to the mythologies of the dominant culture for 430 years.

So what does this have to do with blue skies? We're coming to that ... slowly.

Referring to the creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4A (page 189 of An introduction to Old Testament Theology) Waltke writes:

"I will argue below that Genesis 1 is an ancient Near Eastern cosmogony, but let me emphasize here that its content is essentially historical, not mythological."

Waltke points out that Rudolf Bultmann, a 20th century German theologian who became famous for insisting that we need to "demythologize the Bible", thought that biblical writers, in describing the world as consisting of 3 tiers (1: water above - i.e. clouds in the sky, 2: a flat earth and 3: water below - water in the seas) were not presenting the world as it really is. In Bultmann's view, they were subscribing to a mythological (i.e. non-scientific) view of the world, from which we need to distance ourselves. Waltke comments: 

"Is it not, however, just as plausible that the biblical writers invoked a three tiered vision of the world because that is the way it objectively appears, not because of mythological thinking?

Phenomenally we still invoke a vision of the stars as in the sky, of the sun as rising and setting, and the sky as blue. From a scientific perspective the sky is violet, not blue; it appears as blue because in the daytime, human vision is eight times less sensitive to violet than to blue light."

If you're still with me at this point, you probably hiccuped at the statement that "the sky is violet" like I did. I googled this to see the explanation and found an article in that (being facetious here) famous basic physics and theology journal known as Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/01/11/earths-skies-are-violet-we-just-see-them-as-blue/. Sure enough, strictly speaking the sky is violet (not violent - though that occurs occasionally, too).

Does describing the sky as blue mean that I am subscribing to some pre-scientific, mythological cosmogony? No, it simply means I am using commonly accepted, everyday language to denote the color of the sky. In fact, I am probably also expressing a number of positive connotations that are associated with the beauty of a bright sunny day in the midwestern United States or in western Germany, where we also lived for many years. (Having also lived in the L.A. basin for 8 years, I'm aware that people there might have some less enthusiastic associations with sunny days during the long dry summers!) And if I said, "What a lovely, bright violet sky!", people would think my Parkinson's had spread to other areas of my brain than just motor control.

So, whenever you look up at a bright blue sky and smile, say to yourself:

What were you just thinking, you poor deluded soul!

... and chuckle.

Nature's Generous Reprieve

Late last fall, when I should have been diligently cleaning out the garden, we were busy with Stephen and Becca's move.  Not to mention by that time in the gardening year I have totally lost my ambition and it's easy to put the whole issue off until spring.  Some early snows and freezing temps put the nail in the coffin of my resolve to leave the garden tidy for the winter.  

But some very mild temperatures and lovely sunshine (plus the arrival of the first seed catalogs of the year) got my gardener's blood stirring once again.  It really bugged me to look out the sunroom windows and see the messiness in the garden.  So today I went out and cleaned out the dead vegetation from the rest of the garden boxes, cut down all the dried tomato vines still tied to the trellises and swept out the paths between the boxes.  Pete came and helped with a rake for the heavy stuff.  Two trips with the wagon to the burn pile and things are tidy out there again.  Mother Nature doesn't often give us second chances to right our wrongs but I'm very thankful we were able to finish the job!

As always, My Hero.

The field north of the barn is tidy and resting, too.

Now when I look out the sunroom window I see the garden peacefully sleeping instead of reproaching me for not finishing the job.  The sun is very low and even at noon the shadows are long.  

We had a lovely and quiet Christmas.  It was special to have this little guy with us this year.

When you are worn out from opening presents and playing with toys, there's no place like Opa's lap in a comfy chair.

Oma's lap is also a pretty good place, especially at church when there are lots of people around.

We Need a Little Christmas

My kids think I don't like to decorate for Christmas.  There is an evolution to this idea.  When they were small Pete's approach to decorating was to drag every box into the house and let the three kids unpack everything and spread it all over.  I'm not the world's tidiest person but that amount of chaos just did me in.  Pete and the kids, however, had a wonderfully happy riot and I usually absented myself to the kitchen to do something like make Christmas cookies until the dust settled and I could start cleaning up and rearranging (just a little).  I can't excuse such Scrooge-like behavior but in my defense I will say I was a working-full-time-outside-the-home mother.  My capacity was stretched.  

So this year when Pete told one of the girls that I actually wanted to put the tree up BEFORE Thanksgiving she was astonished.  In fact, I do enjoy decorating.  Just slowly and quietly.  I enjoy it when someone helps me, too.  Just don't rush or overwhelm me with the stuff.  One small area at a time.

I usually have a big nativity display but I'm still struggling to find the right place for it in this house.  Otherwise I think I'm done decorating for the year and we'll just enjoy the lights and colors as we reflect on the Light of the World coming into the world to save us.  And as we look forward eagerly to His second coming.

Whit thinks this small tree is just for him.  He's been sleeping by it all afternoon.  Occasionally he'll get up and play with the ribbon or rip a couple ornaments off it.

Hey - who turned off my lights?

Side note:  there is almost always something drying on the wood stove.  Tonight it's onion skins.  Great for dying wool or adding color and depth to broth.

Advent wreath.  An old tradition from our years in Germany.  
"Advent, Advent, ein Lichtlein brennt..."

One Tough Parkie

Anne and Kenji gave Pete a couple of early Christmas gifts this week and he broke them in this morning at the gym.

Cool new shirt!

New boxing gloves with the Rock Steady motto:  FIGHT BACK against Parkinson's!

Pete's journey with Parkinson's disease has been such an adventure.  When he was diagnosed almost 6 years ago we thought we were facing a rapid downward progression.  What has actually happened, by God's grace and sovereign guidance, has been nothing short of miraculous.  

The first "coincidence" that started changing our lives was meeting a woman at a party who has PD and who said we should come to this amazing support group that met in a church not far from our house.  That support group opened the door to us in so many ways, especially in informing us about how critical exercise is for PD patients.  Exercise has been shown to be more effective than any of the current drug therapies.  We got on the band wagon and started exercising religiously by doing 4 mile run/walks three or four times a week.  This gave us the mindset that we CAN change the progression of this disease if we are willing to be aggressive in working against it.

Another "coincidence" was a YouTube link someone sent me showing an interview with a PD patient who was doing Rock Steady Boxing therapy.  I sent the link to my daughter and son-in-law.  Kenji was uniquely positioned through decades of boxing and martial arts experience to understand this concept.  He immediately embraced the idea, was able to take the Rock Steady certification training and by the time we moved back to the farm he was ready to take on his first Parkie.  We arrived home on a Sunday afternoon and Monday morning Anne and Kenji had us out in the garage, teaching us the basics of boxing and starting us on circuit training.

A third "coincidence" was a neighbor stopping in to drop something off but who ended up telling us about a gym in Minooka that had closed down and was available.  God opened the door for Anne and Kenji to rent the space and (after much investment of time and effort), K-Fit Minooka was opened for business.  In the almost two years it's been open it has been changing lives through the Rock Steady program but also through boxing classes for men and women who have never boxed or never been to a gym.  The classes have become invaluable support groups for so many people who thought they could never get fit.  

A fourth "coincidence" was a video link someone sent me that eventually started us down the path (well, actually, "catapulted us" would be more accurate) to switching to a totally whole foods plant-based diet.  Anne and Kenji joined us and we've never looked back, feeling better than we've felt in decades.  

These "coincidences" have clearly been the hand of God, graciously moving people like chess pieces into our lives at critical moments to supply our needs and give direction.  If I were making a movie of this PD journey I'd have to have some fancy special effects or music to signal LIFE CHANGING MOMENT AHEAD!!!! at certain of these junctures.  It's really fun to look back, reflect on how seemingly random things happened that caused a significant change in direction.  God is so creative in His ways and means and it's SUCH an adventure to be on the journey with Him.

An angel named "Dave"

Spoiler alert! Dave is actually a contractor, not an angel - but the point of this blog is that God used him to meet a need I had even before I had any idea that I needed it.

Yesterday morning about 10am Becky and I went to Menard's in Morris and bought some tile for a kitchen backsplash. I paid for it, put the credit card into my billfold, and my billfold into my coat pocket with my gloves. We walked to the car, loaded the tile in and then headed for home.

A little after noon yesterday I saw a pickup pull into our driveway. Now, in the country we generally recognize people by the vehicle they drive (which for guys is usualy a pickup). But I didn't recognize this pickup - so off to the backdoor to greet whomever ... "What can I do for you?"

The fellow smiled, held up a billfold and said, "Today's your lucky day!" And he was right - it wasn't just someone's billfold. It was my billfold. "I'll bet you don't even know where you lost it." I told him I suspected it was when I was going out of Menard's. I asked him what his name was and he said "Dave". Just Dave, nothing else. He said he found the address on my driver's license but no phone number. So, he decided to drive out here on his lunch break and see if I was home. I told him thanks several times, but I think I was kind of stunned by God's intervention on my behalf before I even knew the billfold was missing.

Becky, Anne and I talked over at home last night and decided that a nice gift card to Amazon would be appropriate. This morning I printed one out and went to Menard's to find Dave and thank him again. I found the manager at the front and explained I was looking for the employee named Dave who had found my billfold yesterday and returned it to me. She looked puzzled - and then explained that there wasn't any Dave who worked there that fit my description. She confirmed that with another of the employees. And suddenly finding Dave had become a lot more difficult.

I drove back home, thinking about what I should do next. I decided that waiting would only make finding Dave more difficult. I would do the only thing I could think of: drive around the north end of Morris for a couple hours, looking for a pickup like Dave had been driving ... and ask God to help me find him.

I spent 20 minutes checking out parking lots north of I80 without seeing anything like Dave's pickup. So I decided to begin going through parking lots south of I80. As I was going past Morris Diner I saw a pickup toward the back that reminded me of the one Dave had been driving. I went around the block, came back and pulled into the Diner's parking lot. Sure enough, it was a contractor's vehicle - I could tell from the tools inside. So what's next - I guess I go in and have a look around the restaurant - staring at each of the patrons and seeing if any match my increasingly fuzzy memory of the previous day.

This is WAAAAYYYY out of my comfort zone!

I went in and the manager was at the cash register inside the front door. I explained to him that I was looking for the guy who had returned my billfold the day before and I had seen a pickup outside that was similar to the one he had been driving. Would it be okay for me to look through his patrons? Somehow the manager really got into it. He had me look through those on the north first. I looked at one fellow and said, "Dave?", but he shook his head. A cursory glance into the south half wasn't promising, but the manager said I should go right in and take a good look at the people eating there.

Among the patrons in the south half of the restaurant were six contractors gathered around two tables - clearly they had come in together. The one furthest from me looked kind of like the guy I had seen yesterday, so I walked toward him and asked if his name was Dave. "No," he said, "that's my dad". Then from behind me I heard a voice say, "Peter?!"

Yup, that was Dave. "How did you find me?" I explained that I had asked God to help me find him, so I could say thanks appropriately and I gave him the Amazon gift card containing the gift certificate. I don't think Dave had told the others about the billfold, because he explained what had happened and how he happened to find me.

It was good Dave found it and not someone else. He saw it lying on the ground in the Menard's parking lot. There was a fellow getting into a car near it and he said to him, "Excuse me, I think you've dropped your wallet. " The guy felt his pocket and said, "No, I've got mine." Then seeing the billfold on the ground he said, "... but I think it's my wife's." However, before that fellow could respond, Dave stooped down and picked up the wallet, which was very cold - a sure sign that it had been there for some time and was certainly not "the wife's" wallet.

Later Dave looked through he billfold for a phone number he could call, but found none. Online searches only offered phone number results for money. Checking the address he discovered it was only 10 minutes away, so he decided to take his lunch break to drive out to our farm and return the wallet to a stunned Peter Meyer.

Why in the world did God orchestrate this whole adventure? I have no doubt that I'm getting increasingly clumsy and a little dense in my old age, so it's not as if this kind of behavior on my part is novel. But why would God arrange to have it brought back and then honor Himself by helping me find Dave? I don't know. But as I was getting ready to leave Dave and his coworkers to finish their lunch, he said to me, "You have no way of knowing how much this means to me."

Angels are literally "messengers of God". So in that sense, Dave was an angel. But it also seems like God not only blessed me through this angel, but blessed the angel as well.

Music for the next generation

Way back in the 1990's when the kids were elementary school age I did what most mothers do at some point:  sign their kids up for piano lessons and then coerced them into going.  The piano teacher lived just down the road and around a corner so that wasn't a problem.  The biggest hurdle was that we didn't own a piano.  I dragged the kids over to our country church to practice but long term that wasn't a good solution.  My mom, who miraculously still believed in the value of piano lessons after years of making me take them to no avail (I have no talent and only played under duress), decided that she would buy us a piano.  All I can say is, "hope springs eternal in the heart of a grandmother."  She went to the local music shop in Yorkville, IL and bought a nice used spinet piano.  The shop owner, a wiry little old man, duly delivered it to our house and (again miraculously) moved that piano into the house all by himself.  

I wish I could say that all three of the kids did brilliantly at piano and were eternally grateful for the lessons.  They stuck with it for a couple years but I let them quit when their interest waned, probably because I remembered my own indifference to playing the piano when I was their age.  At least it taught them to read music (maybe???).  HOWEVER, the piano remained with us after their musical careers ended.  It was a physical memory of Omi and I just couldn't get rid of it.  It moved to California when we did.  It was loaned to our pastor's children for a couple years (until they in turn lost interest).  It moved back to Del Mar Ave and then back to the farm with us.  And now it has moved on to the next generation.  And I must say, it's current prospects for actually being used are much the best that they've ever been.  The Golden family is musically way out of our league and hopefully Joshua has inherited all those music genes from Grandma and Grandpa Golden.  At any rate, they won't have to take him to the church to practice.

The big question was, how to move the piano?  I priced a couple piano moving services but then turned to YouTube U and watched a bunch of videos on how to do it ourselves.  We ended up doing it that way and it went flawlessly (except for the accident with the truck enroute but that had nothing to do with the piano).  It is now safely moved in and the piano era on the farm has ended.  I think my mom would be very happy to know that her gift is still giving to the next generation.

Partially wrapped, strapped and up-ended, all hands on deck.

After more wrapping and strapping it's out the door to the lift.

Up-ended, it fit into the lift which saved the guys having to take it down 8 steps.

Around the corner, down the ramp and over to the trailer.

MORE wrapping and strapping and tying down.

Then down the road towards Minooka!  it does look suspiciously like a sarcophagus at this point.

One more doorway then into place and unwrap.

It's getting the Joshie seal of approval.

Now we just have to wait for the talent to show through!