Wow, it’s been a while.
We went to the Fairfax area for Thanksgiving to visit Tom’s extended family. Never been that far south for Thanksgiving. I really wanted stuffing cooked in the bird (not this silly “dressing” stuff), but other than that it was fairly uneventful. Lots of watching the boys play video games.
On Friday Tom and I headed DC-ward, where we traipsed from the Library of Congress to the National Gallery of Art to the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, and all the way to Mr. Lincoln’s feet. It’s been a few years since I’ve been to DC, so it was great to see it at night, without a large crowd of people to keep together. We have pictures - they are coming soon, I hope.
We unexpectedly stumbled upon a display at the Library of Congress of the St. John’s Bible project. I’m completely amazed that I haven’t heard about this yet; it’s been going on for many years already. The Benedictine monks at St. John’s monastery/college commissioned a modern-day illuminated Bible from a scriptorium in Wales. So far, they’ve finished the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Gospels & Acts, and they’ve got a few more years to go on the rest of the Bible.
They had several of the originals there, including the first pages of Matthew, Luke, and John, the Creation, the Ten Commandments, and the Parable of the Sower. This is not your run-of-the-mill Christian bookstore cheese illustrated Bible. This is beautifully handcrafted/painted/gilded/collaged reverential interpretation of the Scriptures. The frontispiece for Matthew is a menorah that acts as a family tree for Jesus, including an acknowledgment of the common ancestry of the Jews and the Muslims (both descended from Abraham, one by Hagar, one by Sarah), with names in Hebrew, Aramaic, and English. All rendered with dignity and artistic integrity.
Sadly, it looks like the New York exhibition (at MOBIA) ended two days ago, but there are upcoming exhibitions in the US, so if you’re near one, you should go see it.
We traveled back on Saturday and got home late. I’d been feeling under the weather all week with a sore throat, and by Saturday I knew it had developed into something worse. I stuck a Maglite in my mouth and saw a big sore on the right side of my throat. Mmm. I felt too lousy to go to church on Sunday, so I stayed home and rested, and yesterday I called in sick to work and went to the doctor. The sore is still there, and it’s making it hard to swallow (i.e., eat), and the residual pain is going up into my right ear and making it painful, but the doctor says it’s a virus and not an ear infection, so I kind of just have to let it run its course. I had something similar last year, but it was concurrent with the mono, so at least it’s not THAT bad this time. I am at work today, trying not to swallow too much, and counting the minutes till I can go home and rest in comfy clothes.
Last night I helped Tom pile all our furniture into the middle of our miniscule apartment (as a reminder, we have a “two-room studio”, consisting of two 9′x12′ rooms stuck together with an archway, and a teensy kitchen and bathroom) and tape it all up in preparation for painting. He’s home priming the walls now, and we hope to paint tomorrow and Thursday and hopefully be done by the weekend so we can decorate for Christmas (hurrah!). The apartment will be blue, so I think our Christmas decorations are going to tend to the blue/silver/darkdeepmauve scheme. Red does not work so well in a blue apartment. We’re not going for “patriotic Christmas” here.
I finished Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller (the Blue Like Jazz guy) on our trip, and I have to say, I thought it was really great. He spends much of the book helping us to examine our motives in our promotion of morality/politics/justice/religion - is it borne out of love and a desire to see others find Christ, or is it because we need to feel superior? As he says, a reading of Romans reveals a Paul who would say difficult truths about people’s actions, and then in the next breath say how desperately he wished he could give up his own place in heaven to save them. I don’t know a lot of people with that attitude. A grace-full and incredibly true premise, in a well-written book.
Nota Bene: I am known for becoming slowly obsessed with all things Christmas-y during this season, so I apologize if you’re sick of Christmas already. I find joy in the season.
That said, the Rockefeller tree lighting is tomorrow night, and I beg you, don’t try to go. It gets more crowded than Times Square on New Years’ Eve. The tree is, however, bigger than it will even appear on your TV screen.
Confession: I’m kind of hoping we get some snow before Christmas. I used to hate snow, but now I don’t have to drive in it.
