Little Henrietta

Today in church I found out that an acquaintance of mine (and a friend of Neal and Blake) gave birth to her baby prematurely.  There were a lot of medical complications that indicated that the baby would not make it and doctors had previously recommended that she terminate the pregnancy; she didn't.  The baby lived for only a short time and was able to be baptized before she was taken to heaven.  It's simultaneously a very sad and very happy story.  What a blessing for the parents to be able to hold their little girl and baptize her, even if only for such a short time.

What I Learned: Henrietta was born alive and was baptized, thanks to the grace of God, before she was taken to forever home in heaven :)

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel

Today, the choir that I am in, the Lutheran Acappella Choir of Milwaukee, sang at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago for their Sunday service.  The experience was really wonderful as I had never sung in a venue of that size and stature before.  However, the service itself was quite weird.  While the church is technically an Episcopal church, the church has an interreligious center and prides itself on its openness to all religions.  While that in and of itself is perfectly fine and wonderful, it doesn't really make sense that the church is Episcopal as it really seemed to mean nothing.  Besides that, the guest "preacher" was a theology professor at the college who basically just read his dissertation about Christian witnessing, or more appropriately, what he called Christian witnessing.  It was so hard to follow and was very scholarly and had no place as a sermon in a church service.  If anyone had come to that church to learn about Christianity, they would never come back.  To make the service even more weird, the service followed a very traditional layout with liturgy, scripture readings and hymns.  It was an odd mix of a very traditional Christian service with a much more secular sermon (if you can call it that) and communion practices.

Despite the oddities of the church service, we had a really good time and I really enjoyed walking around the church with Jared and noting all the cool architectural features and engravings.  The church was the size of cathedrals in Europe, so of course I loved it!

What I Learned: While the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel says it is an Episcopal Church, it only is so in name.

My smart cousin

Tonight I had practice for LAC and remembered that this coming Sunday is when we are going to Chicago to sing at the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago for their Sunday morning worship service. When I first found out about this performance, I called my cousin Laura who goes to school there to see if she could come for the service. She didn't know at the time if she would be able to come because it was a few months in advance. Well I just remembered that I hadn't talked to her about it since, and now it's in a few days! So I called her on the way home from choir and found out that of course, her department is having a conference this weekend that she's presenting at and won't be around at all :( It's funny that we finally are making it down to Chicago and of course Laura is busy being smart and awesome :) Oh well. Now we just have another reason to go to Chicago this summer to visit her!

What I Learned: Laura can't come to my choir performance on Sunday because she's presenting at a conference for her department.

Continuous Distribution

Today at the Maundy Thursday service at Grace, they did continuous distribution for Holy Communion. I found this rather strange seeing as to me, continuous distribution takes away some of the significance of communion in the first place, and then they decide to do this on the one day of the church year where we are celebrating the institution of the Lord's Supper? And it's not like there were way more people there than on Sunday and they needed to get through everyone quickly. I just don't understand why they would use this practice at all. I really didn't like it and am glad that they only use this method of distribution during the early service at Grace. Let's hope it stays that way.

What I Learned: I do not like continuous distribution for Holy Communion.

Volunteer Data Entry

A few years ago I signed up to volunteer at Grace for data entry but the positions were always full. Then last week I got a call saying that there was a position open on the Evangelism Data Entry team, so I accepted. It's only for an hour or two a month and you can do your hour of service whenever you are available during your assigned week. That's great because then I can come on my own time.

Tonight I went to church before choir for training. The basic duties are entering visitors from the Friendship Registers into a database and printing off and mailing some mailers for visitors. It was pretty easy and basic to do. The problem is that there is a five-week rotating schedule, so you almost have to relearn how to do everything each time you go in because you never do it often enough!

What I Learned: How to enter visitor information into the database at Grace.

LAC at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel

The choir that I'm in, The Lutheran Acappella Choir of Milwaukee, is performing in Chicago on April 15th at the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. Apparently, the church puts out a brochure every season detailing all the performances that they have, so we made it into the brochure (we are listed on page 2 and 8).

http://rockefeller.uchicago.edu/pdf/Arts%20Rock%20Spring%202012%20Web.pdf

It's pretty cool because as you can see from the brochure, they have some pretty impressive performances there. If I lived close to the church, I would go to so many of those concerts!

What I Learned: LAC is in the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel brochure.

Feeling Faint

This morning in church, I couldn't sing for choir because I started to feel so faint that I had to go lie down in the nursery. This happened a few times when I was pregnant with Avery and this is the second or third time this has happened with this pregnancy. It's odd that it always happens at church but I realized it's most likely because a) I'm constantly standing up and sitting down (which makes it even more difficult than it already is for my blood to circulate throughout my body) and b) I guess I'm getting out of breath when I sing because I'm not taking deep enough breaths. Luckily, I was able to make it through the late service and sing. I hope this stops happening though because Easter is just around the corner and I don't want to miss out!

What I Learned: I feel faint in church easily when I'm pregnant.

Jewish Baptism

Today I learned something both interesting, disturbing and weird. Apparently, the Mormon church has a  practice where they baptize posthumously. More specifically, they are adamant about performing them for Jewish Holocaust victims. They have apparently baptized Anne Frank 9 times. Well known Jewish author Elie Wiesel found out that he was on a list of living Jews whom the Mormon church planned on baptizing once they died. Elie Wiesel, rightly revolted and astonished at this practice, has called on Mitt Romney, being a notable Mormon now in the public eye, to condemn this practice. I did a little bit of research and found that Jews (and others) have been fighting the Mormon church about this for decades. Obviously it is reemerging because of the campaign, but also apparently because as much as the Mormon church claims it is taking Holocaust victims out of their genealogical database to be baptized, it was found this month that the parents of Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish rights activist and Holocaust survivor, were added to the database. This is also when it was discovered that Anne Frank had been baptized for the ninth time by the church.

What I learned: Mormons practice Baptism for the Dead.

Tahitian Dancers

Tonight, Jared and I went to the Volunteer Recognition Night at our church. It was luau themed so they had great decorations and yummy food that corresponded to this. While we were eating, they also had a dance group perform to a few songs (Who knew that Milwaukee had a Polynesian dance troupe?). Before one of the dances, the group's leader informed us that in Tahiti, the dancers only dance to drums. The music never has any singing or other musical instruments. They proceeded to dance wildly with their hips (I'm sure you all have seen this kind of dancing before on TV) which was really impressive because most of the people I would say were over age 50. They also danced some traditional Hawaiian dances as well. Overall it was really cool and I am still surprised this dance troupe exists in Milwaukee!

What I learned: Traditional Tahitian dancers dance only to drums.

Ephod

I was doing my daily Bible reading today (in Exodus) and I came across the term ephod a number of times. I don't know if it's because I was tired or not reading carefully, but I couldn't grasp from the reading what exactly an ephod was or what it looked like, other than the fact that it was an article of clothing worn by the priests. So I looked it up here. It most likely looked something like this:

What I learned: That an ephod is like a priestly apron.

Chronology of the Bible

So I am reading the Bible chronologically this year with the help of the Bible app on my phone which reminds me to read every day but also has a daily plan so that I can read it in one year. I chose the chronological plan because I have never done it and thought I would enjoy the historical aspect of this type of Bible reading.

So the first few days I read Genesis (obviously) and then after Genesis 11, it suddenly went to the book of Job. I had no idea that Job happened so early! So basically Job comes right before everything with Abram. I wonder how many more times this will happen, leaving me surprised.

What I learned: Job's story happens chronologically before Abram's.

Side Effect of Pregnancy?

Tonight I attended Advent by Candlelight at my church. It was a beautiful event that included desserts, finger foods, wine, singing and a short program. In the program, we watched a "music video" of a song that Amy Grant wrote about how Mary felt being the mother of Jesus. The video however was just scenes from the movie The Nativity Story with the song playing over it. The scene specifically was when Mary and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem, Mary is on the verge of giving birth, Joseph has to find a place for her, they find a stable as a last resort and she then gives birth to Jesus.

I don't know if I can blame this on the fact that I'm pregnant or the fact that I am now a mother and have experienced childbirth and the joys of motherhood, but it took every ounce of self control I could find to not break out sobbing while watching this. It's pathetic, I know. But seriously, I don't know how I held up. I think this might be the first time I've seen a movie or anything with a scene like that in it since I gave birth and so it's hard to tell what the cause of my emotions really was (although truthfully, I'm sure it was a little of both). But in the end I saved my dignity (not because I would have lost it had I cried, but I would have lost it had I burst out audibly sobbing, which is what would have happened had I not been successful in containing this welling up of emotions).

What I learned: Being a mother/being pregnant makes me appreciate/empathize/remember when I watch things with other mothers/pregnant women, which apparently leads me to gush with almost uncontrollable emotion. Great?! (<-- insert interrobang here)

Choir

Tonight at choir rehearsal, we were asked to sing at all three services on Sunday when the schedule clearly states that we are only singing at two of them. This might seem like an odd thing to complain about but seriously, it's hard to get out the door at 7:15 to make it to church for warm up at 7:30 when your child doesn't usually get up for the day until 7:30 or 8:00. Luckily for us, my mom can get him ready and take him to church once he wakes up so that we don't have to wake him up to feed him and get him dressed when he is still tired and trying to sleep. But then I feel bad not getting my own kid ready for church or even bringing him to church. With that being said, I am excited for the services as it is Christ the King Sunday and we are singing some great music and best of all, there will be brass!

What I learned: I have to sing for all three services on Sunday; it'll be a long morning.

Witches and Orgies...in the Bible

While attending a Reforween party (yes, that's Reformation/Halloween), my friend Brett, dressed as a devout monk, lectured my friend Angela, dressed as Professor Trelawney, that witchcraft and orgies are in the same sentence in the Bible and she should be ashamed of herself!  This was all said in character of course, but I found this to be such a weird statement for some reason and decided that I had never heard this fact before and that I needed to look into it.  Sure enough, Galatians 5:19-21 reads as follows:

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions  21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

What I learned: Witchcraft and orgies are indeed in the same sentence in the Bible.