All the Feels

 

I wasn’t sure what to title this or how to start. Right now I am typing on my chromebook as I listen to a virtual concert on my laptop.  I have been a subscriber to Garden and Gun for a number of years. Today as I read their email I found out there was going to be a virtual concert live tonight. I was able to pass the word along to people I thought might be interested, and then I settled in to listen and I’m having a grand time!

http://luckreunion.com/tilfurthernotice

 

This whole COVID-19 thing has brought with it a lot of different emotions.

Joy in the way people have pulled together for the good of all – like this free concert. I did donate a little because I was grateful for the entertainment and generosity of the musicians.

Disgust in the way people have gone crazy hoarding toilet paper, and more importantly, meat and potatoes. What are they thinking?

Gratitude for all who have been kind and offered help to others. Including advice on how to schedule the kids at home and stuff like that.

4:00, wallow in self-pity. 4:30, stare into the abyss. 5:00, solve world hunger, tell no one. 5:30, jazzercize; 6:30, dinner with me. I can’t cancel that again. 7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing. I’m booked. Of course, if I bump the loathing to 9, I could still be done in time to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and slip slowly into madness.” — The Grinch 

Community in the conversations I’ve had when I did venture out.  Like the woman in Aldi who was clearly trusting in Christ and we shared Bible verses with each other.  And the couple in Sprouts – the woman told her husband she was buying “Stress flowers” so I just started a conversation with them. Turns out they were from New Orleans and we agreed that this was worse than how people act when a hurricane is coming. Then there was the lady in the Dollar Tree who told me all about the psychic who predicted all this and then told me all about her bladder infection. I just listened and nodded until I could politely get away. I figured she’d been quarantined a bit and just need to talk.

Doubt about how all this has gone down. Something just doesn’t seem right.

Claude Lacombe:
Mr. Neary, what do you want?

Roy Neary:
I just want to know that it’s really happening.

From Close Encounters of the Third Kind

 

Avetts in October #25: Today’s the Day

Redwoods- 2018

Today is The Avett Brothers concert in Pelham, Alabama. As hard as it is to listen to sometimes, I sure hope they play No Hard Feelings.

 

“Why does it seem so often to be a human quality to forget those who have done good things for us, and to remember those who have hurt us?” – from Sold Into Egypt by Madeleine L’Engle. 

 

“Even as a tiny girl, she would just absorb the meanness of people around her, and as that strange girl slapped her,  Margaret literally turned the other cheek. ‘I just took it,’ she said sixty years later. ” – from Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg

 

Avetts in October #19: Winter In My Heart

Asheville, 2009

 

In anticipation of The Avett Brothers concert on October 25th, I’ve been writing  a series of blog posts connecting some of their lyrics to words of some of my favorite authors.

I’d tell myself to stop judging others. And then thirty seconds later, I’d do it again. This, I realized, is why I don’t like going to crowded parks. It’s not just that I don’t like all the other people. I don’t like the person I become.  – Lassoing the Sun – Mark Woods

I think there are times for many of us that we don’t care for the person we’ve become. There can be many reasons, such as  grief, loneliness, stress, or other reasons, that cause us to act like someone that we wouldn’t want to be friends with.  In Winter In My Heart, I feel the sadness and helplessness. I’ve been there. And the line, “I don’t know what the reasons are” is gripping. But, winter is a season, though it can sometimes a long one.

 

It must be winter in my heart

There’s nothing warm in there at all

I missed the summer and the spring

The floating yellow leaves of fall

 

 

Avetts in October #12: Say Love

Living of Love – TAB

“You  can drive a man into devilry by contempt. If you want to melt him into goodness, try love.”  – Alexander Maclaren

Note: Maclaren was born in 1826 in Glasgow, Scotland. He received his BA from the University of London before he was 20, then began his ministry at Portland Chapel, Southampton, England. After 12 years he went to Union Chapel in Manchester where he remained until 1903. His words have been a great help and comfort to me for the past year.

In anticipation of The Avett Brothers concert on October 25th, I have been writing a series of blog posts connecting some of their lyrics to words of some of my favorite authors. Back in August and September many educators all across the US were going back to school with the goal of connecting with their students. As a former full-time teacher and current substitute teacher this idea rings so very true.  Just last week I was in a fifth grade classroom and inevitably a few students felt they needed to guide me in the ways of their teacher’s discipline plan. They felt I needed to put some of their classmates names on a list. I refrained. I know they were only trying to be good and wanted to be sure I knew it. I made so many mistakes in my classroom discipline back in the day. Just as in parenting. So, I now approach subbing just like I do grandparenting. I “Say Love”.

If the days aren’t easy and the nights are rough
When they ask you what you’re thinking of
Say love, say for me love
Say love, say for me love…

And yes we live in desperate times…

Say love, say for me love…   – Living of Love

 

I love how the audience sings along in this video. Can’t wait for the 25th! 

 

 

Avetts in October #4: Swept Away – One

In anticipation of The Avett Brothers concert on October 25th, I am attempting a series of blog posts connecting some of their lyrics to words of some of my favorite authors.

I didn’t discover Eudora Welty until  around 2015. There is a lot that can be learned from her writing, especially One Writer’s Beginnings.  She talks about how we change as we move through life, bumping up against others.

“Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others.  As we discover, we remember, remembering, we discover and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge.”

Sometimes it’s life that changes around us and the special people in our lives help us to stay grounded. I hear this in Swept Away.

 

“Life is ever changing but I will always

find a constant and comfort in your love