Gatherings
Sunday, January 14, 2007
When Collette woke up that morning, she was still recovering from dreams where odd things occurred in a great club-like building out among rolling hills in the late afternoon near sun-drenched forests. And Kitts and Carrie were practicing Kuk Sool Won on each other.
At around perhaps four in the morning, Collette heard the electricity go out when she heard a crack coming from the direction of the computer monitor. But she was too soundly asleep to remember to reset the alarm clock, which would already be flashing 12:00 again. Thankfully, however, she awoke at 6:10 which still gave her enough time to get ready for church… and to eat another orange from the monster box of oranges on the counter.
The second round of ice seemed to have done little more than had the first. Although more was expected before midnight that Sunday night.
Although the skies stayed misted the rest of the day, through church across the fields, in the woods, and all about, with a little rain here and there.
OLeif and Collette joined the Coca-Cola boys, Joe and Rose, Ben-Hur, Wallace, and Bob B. at Pizza Street following the service. Joe and Wallace soon took off to meet up with Tor at the movies.
Afternoon came with a viewing of Luther while Collette helped Mom prepare the enchiladas and set out chips, guacamole, and salsa in bowls, Mom made a salad, and Carrie improvised a salad dressing recipe. This was finished just in time for Diana and Eve to arrive early.
In the middle of looking through Carrie and Rose’s Egypt slideshow, Jashub arrived – long blond hair and all, in time to catch the tale-end of the pictures.
The next several hours they split between more picture slideshows in the basement and dinner. Jashub had quite a collection of shots: Sydney and its parks, harbors, and beaches, wooded vast lands south of Sydney, snow-covered peaks and valleys of New Zealand, death-drop cliffs, even a number of underwater snapshots, (although in most of them his thumb was covering a corner of the lens because he couldn’t see through his goggles to adjust the position of the camera). Carrie took notes for her and Eve as they planned their own trips. And they peppered Jashub with every question imaginable, for most of which he had answers.
There were dingoes and kangaroos and eye-popping colors on the wild parrots.
“So are kangaroos like deer over here?” Carrie was asking. “Do they just run around in packs or something?”
“Yup,” Jashub nodded, as they all laughed.
It was a rather comical thought. A good deal of laughing was carried on throughout the evening over various Australian oddities and other things.
Then Carrie and Eve cut up the pies and passed around slices to everyone while they chatted around the fire.
And the rain came a tumblin’ down.
“…the way we honor Christ in death is to treasure Jesus above the gift of life, and the way we honor Christ in life is to treasure Jesus above life’s gifts.” – J. Piper