Elephants and Pluto and November....oh my!

It's been a crazy-busy few weeks of regular work and school with some new things coming down the pike in our schedules.

Last week the sweet girl finished up her fall Irish dance class and thoroughly enjoyed trick or treating, dressed up as our town (complete with clock tower hat). This week she's finishing up a paper on Pluto (to her great surprise, after doing all her reading and research, she discovered she agrees with its "demotion" to dwarf planet status).

I've been working on an article proposal for a children's magazine which has had me reading about the fascinating world of elephants, most specifically elephant intelligence. The books have intrigued S. to the point that she thinks elephants may be her next learning craze, the Apollo space mission craze having momentarily died down. Hooray for learning trails!

In writing life news: I'm continuing to do a lot of web content writing, and I'm grateful it's there, but I'm really excited because I've just been offered a contract as a youth curriculum writer with a Sunday School publishing company. I'll be contracted to write lesson plans for teaching various Bible passages to 7-12th graders. It's a neat looking approach to teaching the Scriptures (incorporating interactive and kinesthetic approaches) and I'm happy that the company has brought me on board to do some projects. Right now I am praying for the time and creativity to do the lesson planning justice -- my first two deadlines are in December.

And in teaching life news: I just started working with my Old Testament class (online, for an adult ed. institute I sometimes teach for) and have contracted to teach the Anglican Ethos course I used to teach online at the sem this spring. That last was a happy and unexpected surprise, as the course hasn't been offered in quite a while -- I've only taught it as an independent study for the past several years.

Throw in homeschooling, afterschool arts, church school, missions committee work, and several other things I'm not immediately remembering, and this has turned out to be one of the busiest autumns I can remember in years. It's all good, but sometimes tiring.

We're struggling mightily with an income shortfall this month (we've had months it's been tight, and things have finally caught up with us, most especially my lack of steady work this fall) so while I am praising God for new work opportunities in winter and spring, I know it's going to be a while (January - March) before most of my work outside of web content writing generates anything. We are trying to find ways to continue to pay down our debt without defaulting while still doing things like eating, keeping the lights on and gas in the car, and finding ways to pay for D's meds. All of this would be tremendously anxiety producing if I let myself stop and focus on it, but it's so much easier to keep opening my hands and looking up and saying thank you. Plus there's only so much you can do....when you really can't pay bills, you just can't pay them, and you move on and keep working as best you can. You keep your eyes on Jesus and trust him for what you lack. You also trust that you will meet patience and understanding and kindness even in places where you don't expect it, and that somehow there will be enough for the day. And not just "enough" materially, but "enough" in all the ways that matter.

Two Movements: Into and Out of the Sanctuary

This week I have my students thinking and writing about the different ways the Anglican church engaged the culture in the 19th century. The Oxford Movement, with its emphasis on the "church gathered" and the importance of gathering in worship to "be the church," sometimes had reservations about the Evangelical movement and its commitment to social action, the way it was "being the church" within the world. (This would be the second generation of the Evangelical revival, folks like Wilberforce and his Clapham friends.)

The distinction drawn, for the sake of the question, is purposefully overdrawn for the sake of compelling thought and discussion. Of course the higher church folk often engaged the culture "in the world" in specific ways, and of course the Evangelicals didn't cease to gather in worship to remember who they were. It's more a matter of emphasis, of looking at where each found its firmest understanding of who they were and where they stood. But it's a good question and a perennial one: what does it mean to be church, and how do we best relate to the world around us with fresh gospel energy?

So during my morning quiet time, when I came across this passage in Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book, I just had to chuckle:
 

 "The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus.

Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving, ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God.  There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation."

Two movements. Into the sanctuary, out of the sanctuary. Both involving the same kinds of actions: listening, loving, obeying, believing, ordering, giving God glory. Both involving all parts of us. Amen. Yes.

Kindergarten and Graduate School

Deep breath. I've spent the past hour working on setting up my online course shell as my class, the Episcopal Ethos, will be made accessible for students on Monday. Monday is also the sweet girl's first day of kindergarten here at home.

You can see why I'm taking deep breaths, I think! The school year is really and truly about to start, in a big way. And for the first time ever, I will be teaching both kindergarten and graduate school in the same semester. A unique privilege and perhaps a bit of a challenge. I hope I'm up to it!

D. is actually out right now buying us a desk. This is a purchase we've agonized over...it was one of those things we really felt we couldn't do without as we try to organize our space for fall, but it's also something we can't afford. We looked at some used furniture but couldn't find just the thing we needed to fit the back corner of the living room, which is where the desk (and the computer) will be going, thus freeing up my dining room table once more for school projects by day and for dinners (if we so choose) by night. We finally found a desk that's being discontinued at Staples. And I really like it. Most office furniture you buy on the cheap *looks* cheap -- like plastic sort of coating over plywood -- but this is real varnished wood. It's a wider grain than I might have chosen, but I'd rather have a real, rougher looking wood than a fake sort of smooth plastic. The size is right; it has some good storage overhead, and it will fit in the corner. And it only costs $80 -- I say that with gritted teeth and the awareness that $80 to us right now feels more like $800. But it has to be done, and this seems to be the most painless way to do it.

So I'll be spending the rest of the weekend, when not in church or hosting our youth fellowship group, either cooking; revising, posting and re-arranging documents for my online course; readying the sweet girl's school supplies in her new purple pencil box; or cleaning out the living room corner for the new desk.

Here comes Monday!