I’m Not Sure We Deserve This Much Fun!

This is the deal: in our marriage, we spent about 15 years at home most weekends with babies and little kids and another 15 years watching teenagers surging in and out of our house most weekends (including trying to keep the teenagers quiet enough for the little kids to sleep). Although we did have a lot of fun with that, we are now true empty nesters and some weekends we are living the “someday” part of our dream. 

This week we were invited to sit in the Lexus seats with our new friends, Bill and Caprice Benz. He represents Energy Solutions and he and his wife have seats on the front row at the Jazz games that they share with friends. We were so happy to be their new friends! We were right behind the announcers and within spitting distance of the team (not that I would). The evening came with a delicious dinner before the game and delectable desserts during half time. 

It was a heart-stopping game. The second in a row that the Jazz lost by one point because of a basket at the buzzer that didn’t count. How can that happen?  Still a great game and we were within a stones-throw of Steve Nash (not that we would….we love the guy, even though he was the reason we lost!)

 

 

Usually at Jazz games you have to put up with the people behind you shouting crude remarks at the referees and hearing nasty comments when things aren’t going our way, but not this night. These good people were right behind us which cut down considerably on negative comments.

 

And we had fun watching Craig Boulderjack and Matt Harpering commentating the game in front of us. Boulderjack was so directly in front of me that I didn’t see him until he stood up until after the game.

This lovely Benz couple had a fun life-story and were the perfect hosts. Fun night!

On Friday night we went to Symphony Hall. We walked across the street to hear Mahler’s incredible 4th symphony along with a Haydn symphony and a fabulous soprano singing Strauss. The symphony never disappoints!  It was a terrific performance.

 

Then this Easter morning we walked across the street to the Tabernacle and literally drank in the beauties of the earth on the grounds, the gorgeous architecture and of course the awe-inspiring music of the choir on Easter which included Handel’s Halleluiah Chorus.  What a way to celebrate Easter!

 

 

 

 

This afternoon we had fun peeking into the lives of some of our kids on Google+. Perfect ending to a perfect week!

There are definitely some advantages to progressing in age!  The main advantage being flexibility!  We’re headed out again on Thursday to St. George, Saskatoon, (Canada), Phoenix, London, back to Phoenix, on to Las Vegas, then back to St. George and Home. I’ll be writing from the road. I’m not sure we deserve all this fun, but we’ll take it!

On this Easter Day here is a poem that Saydi’s Mother-in-law passed on from a friend (thanks Saydi and Nedra).  Beautiful thoughts for this season of rebirth, especially as we go all go back to the real world tomorrow. Happy Easter! 

The Line and the Branch
by Jana Rains

We love a line.
We love its decisiveness,
its directness.
We love its clean predictability,
  its efficiency
   its elegant simplicity.
We stack a thousand messy efforts
to find a bottom line, a plot line, a time line.
We stripe our fields and fence our ground.
We read our own brambly stories
into lines upon our palms.
Because, you see,
a line is the symbol of control.
and so
We pin our God to crossed lines
The God who was never the lover of a line.

But rather He
who instead
prefers the branch--
in river delta, in synapse, in leaf,
in artery, in lightening bolt, in crack.
All things branchy bear His Almighty thumbprint
in their tangle of thwarts and twists
and opportunistic spurts.
The branch--
the structure of agency and choice,
of generation and providence.
Energy dodging round obstacles,
sprawling through ease
and finding at last, its windy way home,
  ministering as it makes its path.

He, the lover of the branch,
Draws no pickety line round our days.
  nor does he knot them together
like a string of pearls,
  or cue them up before His grace--
but rather He casts them wide
on the vast and brutal plane
and trusts the hunger
  of the wormy root,
   the zeal of the bud.
And so we are unfettered,
yet bidden--
  "Here is sun--turn to it
  Here is water--yearn for it
  Here is manna scattered
   like seed in storm
                      find it.
    Come."