The Most Wonderful Time of the Year To Be Lucy and Ethel

Mama always says, "Don't wear your bedroom slippers to the shopping mall."

But Mama's wisdom doesn't necessarily apply during Christmas. Especially when you've got some brand new jingling elf slippers:

And you're on your way with Ethel to get your annual Santa picture taken:

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we had to have lunch and exchange gifts. And nothing quite sets the tone for a Christmas gift exchange like a retro diner which serves 26-inch hotdogs:

Over the years, Ethel and I have adorned ourselves for our photos with some fairly ridiculous accessories: reindeer antlers, elf hats, feather boas. This year, after reading an ebook about practicing Advent, we decided to deck ourselves in purple. Yep, all day I was a long, cool, walking Advent pillar, and so was Ethel (although she's not nearly as long). All day we engaged in our own little secret Advent conspiracy.

Because writer Anne Lamott said, "You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. Sometimes you can point with it, too."

So we walked around all day bearing witness to the Source of ridiculous joy. And the amazing thing we discovered was: Once you know what you're looking for, you start seeing evidence of it everywhere:

Ethel gave me the most fantastically amazing handmade gift of love:

She saw a picture in a catalog of a sweater beaded in peacock feather patterns and thought to herself, "I can do that." And so she did. God has gifted my friend with amazing creativity and mad art skills.

I gave Ethel ice cube molds in the shape of false teeth. Because I'm classy like that. And because I know that someday, when we live next door to one another in a nursing home, she's the kind who's always going to be stealing my teeth. And I look forward to growing old and ever more ridiculous with my friend.

Then she opened the elf slippers. And we were on our way:

We like to believe we add a little joy to Santa's life, making the season more merry and bright for everyone:

For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Happy Advent and Merry Christmas from Lucy and Ethel!

Linking our Advent playdate with Laura @ The Wellspring:

And, even though this may not have been what she had in mind, with Charity @ Wide Open Spaces who is hosting an Advent community writing project for The High Calling:

Chesterton, Lucy, Ethel, and Santa: The story of how our tradition began

Discovering Advent: E-book by Mark D. Roberts

How to Grow Old, If You Really Must--Unbirthday Playdate

Linking with Laura, sharing a Playdate with God:



The plan for my birthday had been to spend the day giving things away. I've lived long and well, and there are few things I really need to make me happy. Besides, I figured handing gifts out to strangers would provide me with some good stories to tell.

Handing out presents was fun, and I had some laughs, but I found the real stories were elsewhere.

Ethel and Rock Star Diva arrived at my house early to begin our day at the beach. Along the way we stopped at Rock Star's childhood home, and the first gift of the day was getting to see the house that built her.

Our next stop was The Art Cafe.

There was coffee, and there was art.

We chose to skip the coffee and start the day with champagne instead. Then we looked around in the gallery and enjoyed the gift of watching little ones learning to make art, clipping their masterpieces to a clothesline to dry in the summer breeze.

The big project for the day was using making prints using real fish:

So grateful for the beauty of this place and all I had witnessed there, I left a favorite quote by Evelyn Underhill on the outdoor chalkboard:

Our next stop was the trailer owned by Rock Star Diva's sister. She calls it her tin can on the beach. For the joy of listening to the waves wash ashore each night, and in order to wake each morning to a view like this:

I would gladly spend my summer in a tin can, a shoebox--heck, even a port-a-john. The view was just that lovely, reaching all the way to Martha's Vineyard. On the beach, Ethel and I were introduced to many lovely people, one of whom had given the gift of a kidney to the sister who sat next to her on the sand.

I thought about how my friend had been blessed last summer, soaking up salt air, summer sun, love and prayer as she sat on her sister's deck overlooking the ocean while recovering from cancer treatment. This year I received the gift of sitting with her on that same deck, breathing in gratitude for God's healing work in her life.

The day ended at a local Rhode Island vineyard where we listened to a Beatles cover band named Abbey Rhode. Get it? Beatles cover band? Rhode Island? Their music was every bit as good as that joke.

But we raised our glasses and toasted our friendship, celebrating a day none of us wanted to see reach its end.

The celebration ended, or so I thought. As it turned out, my friends had taken me to the beach and to a Rhode Island vineyard merely as a ruse to distract me from finding out what they were really planning:

The next evening, at a local Connecticut vineyard, there was food, there was music; there were balloons, bubbles, and laughter. There were friends ranging in age from two to sixty:

There were friends I've watched grow from children into young adults, and I realized that one of the gifts of getting older is the joy of seeing God's faithfulness throughout the years in the lives of those whom I love:

Ethel made cupcakes and made magic, because that's just what she does. I encouraged all the little ones to be sure to eat at least three cupcakes. It was definitely a three-cupcake kind of night.

At the end of the evening, I gave away my last unbirthday gift to Lauri, who blogs at Living to Die Well.:

Lauri had left me a comment on my blog, telling me a story about an unbirthday gift she had given. And, as I've always said, tell me a story and I'll love your forever. (Okay, I've never actually said that but, to steal a line from Harrison Ford in Sabrina, it sounds like something I would say)

Lauri is a huge fan of the noble giraffe, and since I'd found this giraffe dress in a thrift store the day before I decided to declare her the first runner-up in my unbirthday give-away. I figured it was my contest so I could do whatever I wanted.

At the end of another perfect summer evening, (How many perfect summer evenings is one old, gray-haired woman entitled to enjoy?) I received a final gift from the hand of my loving Father:

Praise the LORD, my soul;
   all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul,
   and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins
   and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
   and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
   so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

 Psalm 103:1-5, NIV

Tell Me About . . .

It began with a simple question: Mom, how did we get the farm?

My mom started telling the story and, as memories started trickling out, they gained momentum and built to a flood. One memory spurred another and soon I found myself reaching for scraps up paper, scribbling madly just to keep up.  I wrote my mom’s story about the farm and her brother Floyd last week but, really, all I did was rearrange a few sentences and add some punctuation. When my mom started remembering, the story came out almost as a complete narrative.

After posting my piece, I heard from several family members who added more detail. This, from my cousin, is one of my favorites:

Interestingly Great Aunt Jesse was the first nurse in the family, the one who was midwife for my mother. She was also quite the force to be reckoned with. Rumor has it she kept a small loaded derringer in her nurse’s cap which also covered her long silver hair that she tucked up under it. One of my 90-year old patients told me when she was second shift supervisor, "Old Kinch" as he called her put an end to the gurney races he and his buddies were having.

You just can’t make stuff like that up.

After reading my post, my mom called her sister and together they began sharing more stories. In his book, Telling Secrets, theologian Frederick Buechner said:

My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours… it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.

Listening to my mother’s stories last week was a beautiful gift I gave myself, quite by accident. Writing them and sharing them with family members was a privilege. Wherever you are this weekend, whomever you are with, do yourself a favor:  Ask someone to tell you a story.

Begin with:  Tell me about . . .

(My friend Laura has a beautiful post about a sixty-four year love story she had the privilege to hear. Do go visit her and check out her story.)

C. S. Lewis On Friendship

From The Four Loves

In reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart.  But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances.  A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work.  Christ, who said to the disciples "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another."  The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out.  It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.  They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them.  They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing.  At this feast it is he who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests.  It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside.  Let us not reckon without our Host.

Posted with thanksgiving for you who have become friends through the accident of our having clicked on one another's blog links.  I am grateful for you, for your words.  Let us, indeed, not reckon without our Host.

A Thought For The Weekend And a Bleg*

Last week I said I was going to start a short, sweet, weekly Friday Five kind of feature so I could spend more focused time actually writing on Fridays.  Then I noticed how many people in blog world do Friday Five kinds of things and I realized how profoundly unoriginal I was being.  And, while I may be completely unoriginal, I have no need to expose how completely unoriginal I am on the internet.

So I took last Friday's post down.  Today, I leave you with this short, sweet thought from my Bible study leader.  Speaking about the hope and comfort found in Isaiah's prophecy, the promise that God's people would be restored after wandering in exile, she said,

Sometimes it's okay just because it's going to be okay.

May those words encourage your hearts this weekend, dear friends.

And now, a request--I've been trying to track down the link to a post that I loved, but can't remember where I read it.  It was a story about a woman who saw a young girl dressed all in black, wearing an "I hate the world" attitutde.  She saw herself in that young girl and remembered the kindness of a woman who saw her, smiled, and said, "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"

I have told that story a number of times lately.  It challenged me to ask for eyes to see those to whom I might speak a few words of kindness and blessing.  I just wish I knew who wrote it so I could give credit for it.  I know many of you who stop by here stalk the same bloggers I do.  So...if any of you remember the story, or if you are the writer, could you send me the link?  Thanks muchly!

*Bleg = Blog + Beg.  No it is not original to me.  I am profoundly unoriginal.  See above.