Edit, Add, Appreciate

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Edit- It is August and only this weekend did it hit me. I’ve been less than satisfied with my yard this summer, and mostly thought it was just because I haven’t given it the time it deserved. This weekend I realized that there is nothing out there that gives me great delight. It has been my tradition to always have a yard full of whimsy- croquet mallots and sticks as stakes for plants, my old bottle tree, old suitcases and cowboy boots with plants growing out of them, pieces of junk off piles all over Louisville “growing” everywhere. Sure, I do still have a bust of a man with the inscription, “He got the whole refrigeration thing going” but it’s grown worn and is fairly hidden. From the street, this looks like the house of some pretty traditional folks (who don’t spend nearly enough time on their yard.)

My friend Terri Farless once told about a house that she passed every day that had a wreath on the door that said, “Love grows here” and that she thought it was pretty cheesy….until one day it hit her that that wreath was that family’s manifesto for all the world to see. I want something that says to all who pass, “some pretty fun folks must live in that house”, something that stakes our claim to be less than traditional. So, I”m on the lookout. Suggestions?

Add- The days are starting to get a little shorter and there has been a hint of fall in the air this weekend. From fall to summer hardly a night passes without a candle being lit in this house. I don’t know if it means anything to my family or if they even notice, but for me it has this whole complex meaning- it adds a certain cheer and sense of home on a dark night, it says that we are under roof and hunkering down for the night. And so last night, pulled along by the earlier darkness and a premature coolness in the air, I lit the first candle of fall.

Appreciate- Tonight I am appreciating my little church. Our pastor talked to us today about being a peculiar people, which indeed we are. She started with the Flannery O’Connor quote, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd”, she told the story of the wife of a man who came to interview for a position with the church being overheard saying, “they kind of look funny” and that only at Jeff Street would we see that as a compliment. Probably not many churches in town worrying that they are might be leaning too close to normal, worrying that the neighborhood is getting too nice for them. Thanks be to God for our great and generous eccentricity.