after mooching off my parents for most of the last 5 years and scoring sweet house-sitting gigs here and there along the way, i have finally secured a little studio in oakland to call my own. for a year, anyway. i look forward to using my car less, getting a bike, and not feeling like a loser mooching off my parents. and so on. thankful for having a roof over my head for the last few years, and wondering what this next season will look like.

i have been super obsessed with Over the Rhine lately (i'm late to the game, but hey better late than never). saw them live about a month ago and they blew me away. the long surrender, their latest album, is pretty amazing. for this christmas season, i recommend snow angels their second christmas album. and i love that they put this song on there. this is a great prayer.  

New Redemption Song
(Words and Music: Detweiler)

Lord we need a new redemption song
Lord we’ve tried
It just seems to come out wrong
Won’t you help us please
Help us just to sing along
A new redemption song

Lord we need
A new redemption day
All our worries
Keep getting in the way

Won’t you help us please
Help us find the words to pray
To bring redemption day

oh hey, it's december tomorrow.  what the heck? i'm always surprised at how time passes in the blink of an eye.
and it's advent. i just got published again, this time in my grad school's advent reader. was lucky enough to be invited to write one of the entries. not too shabby.
so for the first sunday of advent, it seems that it's de rigueur to preach about waiting and anticipating and preparing. since that's what the period of advent is really for, yes? and lent, too.
and thinking lately about what i want and hope for my life, i kind of rolled my eyes at this. because i'm not good at any of those things really. i am impatient, and pessimitic and short sighted. how is it that sometimes what i think god is saying to me simultaneously the thing i need to hear the most and the last thing i want to hear? scratching my head about this.

apple-licious

i know my last entry was a bit of a downer. if you are a friend that might have been worried about me, sorry 'bout that. things aint that bad. i'd say that they are pretty okay. it's more than i could say for other recent times, so that's something.

went apple picking over the past weekend with the youth group. i've taken a step back from being a volunteer this year. couldn't quit cold turkey, but i'm around mostly just on sundays. it feels right to be less involved, i've needed a bit of a break. i mean, this is the fifth year of being with the youthies. i haven't managed to be employed at one place for that long. ever.

it's been an interesting shift too. it's easy to define yourself by what you do/who you spend time with, and so on. so i find myself in a new space. not sure what kind of shape it is taking. it's disorienting and exciting at the same time. i'm not really sure what else to say about that.

back to my original story - we went apple picking, to get apples to make pies for family and neighbors to learn the practice of hospitality. i ended up with some freshmen boys in my car. as you might guess hilarity then ensued. how can it not with 14 year old boys? i know, other people might not feel this way. don't get me wrong, sometimes i want to punch them in the back of the head, but most of the time they are endearing in a overgrown puppy kind of way. they were balanced out with a junior guy and another advisor.

once we actually got to the orchard, we split up in pairs to fill boxes. me and the junior set off. after about 20 minutes, we had filled about half the box when the 2 freshmen romped into view. they were all, "heck yeah, we're almost done!" and the junior looked into their box they had set on the ground. i did too. while i tried really hard not to laugh, he said, "those aren't apples. those are really unripe persimmons." yep. they had a box full of bright green persimmons. "what? no. they taste like apples!" they insisted. yeeeeah... i have no idea where they found the persimmon trees. and persimmons only remotely resemble apples when you are comparing them to, say, pineapples. and i imagine that the taste is same comparably. i can only sigh and shake my head at this. and laugh, of course. chuckleheads.

wondering when birthdays became less awesome to celebrate and more markers of failed expectations. sorry. not to be a downer. but this past birthday was probably the first one that i was excited about, mostly because i had a freakin' awesome hamburger cake and 2 pinatas. and i really did want all my friends to be there to enjoy that with me.
i'm just thinking this way because a friend has her birthday coming up and she simply said, "i thought i'd be pregnant by now." she and her husband have been trying for a while. i said, "i thought i'd not be living with my parents and maybe in a relationship by now." darn society/culture for imposing schedules on life when hardly anything really ever happens the way we had planned.

passing the peace

so last sunday i went to st. andrew presbyterian church in marin city. for those not in the know, that's where anne lamott goes to church. yeah. it was kinda stalker-y. whatever.

the church i usually attend is on the medium to large side, so it was good to be in a smaller community. it's pretty much as she described in her writing. only the regular pastor was on study leave; i'd like to hear her preach sometime. my friend lauren and i went last summer in hopes of seeing both anne and pastor veronica. so cross anne off the list. it's getting to be an annual trip to for me and lauren.

we kept our groupie status under our hats, tried not to stare and paid attention to the service. lauren and i even went so far as to introduce ourselves when they invited the new people to do so, which was out of character for both of us. we got a hearty, "hello lauren, hello audrey. " then came the greeting and passing of the peace part of the service. you know: shaking hands and saying, "the peace of christ be with you." and responding "and also with you". since we were trying not to act like adoring fans, we did not approach anne. but she popped up behind me in the center aisle and gave me a strong handshake and "welcome." awesome.

sidebar: the church i attend doesn't do the passing of the peace of christ during the contemporary services (it's been a while since i've been to the more traditional one, but i don't think they do it there either). instead it's called community time. like go say hi to someone new or someone you don't know time. as a fervent introvert, i HATE community time, and usually force whatever friend i sat with to talk to me until the 3-5 minutes are over. seriously. i think i have even resorted to going to the restroom during that time, maybe just once or twice. okay. back to story.

but the pastor encouraged us to extend christ's blessing to each other in this time, and knowing that he works in us to be a blessing to each other. or something to that effect. now, THAT is something i can get behind. because then that time of greeting is more than just small talk. Jesus is in that interaction and it gets me out of my own little comfort zone. plus church is so small, that you really can greet everyone at church. (the same thing happened when i went to another friend's episcopal church a few weeks ago - that's something else i'll probably write about soon) it just went on for like 10-15 minutes. hard to do that when there's like 100 people in a service. or not i guess if you want to shape a service that way. i digress.

anyway, that's what i've been thinking about since church yesterday. peace of christ be with you.

the happiest place on earth for some people

i'm on a non-profit organization mailing list and i got this today.

Beau Bonneau Casting is immediately seeking fun and fit, real families of 4 or more (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic and ethnically ambiguous) that are SF Bay Area local and enjoy amusement park rides for a Non Union Disneyland Commercial.

Only traditional nuclear families consisting of a married Mom and Dad, ages 30 – 50, with at least 2 biological kids aged 5 – 14yrs can be considered. If Grandparents are local that is a plus but not required. Must be related, camera friendly and in good physical shape. No cousins, aunts/uncles or family friends, etc.

let's start with "ethnically ambiguous" - what? i'm sorry disneyland, do you not approve of interracial marriage?
and "traditional nuclear families with a married mom and dad" - does that rule out, say, the brady bunch? seeing as how they were a blended family and all. i don't know that they ever actually admitted to being divorced on the show though. what about single parent families? never mind gay or lesbian couples with children - the horror! i bet gay or lesbian money is welcomed at the disney gates. but don't make them feel any more welcome beyond that.
"camera friendly" - no ugly people.
"in good physical shape" - no fat people.
"no cousins, aunts/uncles or family friends, etc." - it ain't the 1950's anymore. we're a ways from traditional upper middle class nuclear families these days.