Have I mentioned that I moved to New York City for one year? When I packed up my small-town life and came up here on a hope and a prayer, I always thought I’d stick it out for at least one year, because anything less just isn’t giving it a proper shot. I didn’t know what would happen after that- if I would return to my comfortable North Carolina town or try a new place- but at least I would…
Hello my pineappley friends, It’s been a minute since we’ve had a chatty, catch-up sort of post, hasn’t it? I blinked and November was here, the most wonderful time of the year (sorry Andy Williams, but I’m right.), with the dry leaves skittering across the pavement, the nor’easters popping up out of nowhere and raining straight into my shoes and breaking my wonderful wind-proof umbrella, the trees turning almost garishly bright colors, and the radiators once again rattling away and…
Sometimes, there are no words. That’s how it feels when I consider Sunday, our first service back at church after sixteen months apart. Was it was only a dream, or was it the last sixteen months that were a bad dream from which I suddenly awoke? I find it a little hard to tell. If you’ve ever read “A Wrinkle In Time”, you might recall that in it, Madeleine L’Engle describes time as a fabric that can be wrinkled so…
Hello friends, Here’s the thing- a month ago or so I got to set foot in my beloved Brooklyn Tabernacle for the first time since March, as I’ve told you, oh, a dozen times or so. We went in little groups and recorded a choir song for the opening number of the virtual Christmas concert BT is putting on. I got to see a preview of the song this week, and guys, I was so impressed! I was expecting the…
Since so many of you are just dying to know what it’s like to sing in my lovely li’l choir (and by “so many of you”, I mean precisely one little cousin), I thought I might give you a bit of a rundown of what it’s like behind the scenes at the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. I like to think of myself as the Amish representation in this extremely diverse choir. Sometimes I think of my Amish grandmother, and how agog…
My decade began and ended with a miracle. Around the start of the decade I was living in Honduras, terribly burned out and sad from years of too much loneliness and a few too many griefs. I decided to ask God for the impossible, and asked Him to move us back home in the spring, and not only back to North Carolina, but back to our old house we had left there. This was ridiculous for a variety of reasons….
I didn’t grow up really celebrating Christmas- Thanksgiving was more our thing- so I don’t have a lot of nostalgic traditions around this holiday. However, we had one little tradition which I loved. Nearly every year we would find a free performance of Handel’s “Messiah” and pack ourselves into the balcony. We’d sit there with binoculars, (the homeschooler version of opera glasses, I guess) and pass them about, taking turns watching the faces in the choir and the orchestra with…
Good evening, ya fine folks. I am perched on my bed as I type this, gingerly leaning against the wall and hoping against hope that my somewhat broken bed does not come crashing down off its wobbly pedestal. It has been known to do that, you know. I had my fine friend the Little Kumquat come visit me and first thing, as soon as she sat on the bed and leaned against the wall, SMASH, the whole operation came crashing…