Ten on Tuesday

Some stuff that’s been going on around here lately…

1. Adam and I went white water rafting with his dad and brother last month. I was nervous that it would be terrifying, but it was actually easy and kind of lovely. You kind of bounce along, have fun,  get wet and see lots of beautiful scenery. Or maybe that’s just because I sat in the back of the raft? This is Royal Gorge Rafting, near Canon City (“canyon”), Colorado. We highly recommend them – it was a wonderful, seamless experience. Although I jumped in that water and thought I might pass out, it was SO COLD!

See the tiny cabin in the background? Left from a gold rush, 100 years ago.

2. On a quieter note, I spent a retreat day at St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle not long ago. It’s a beautiful place, designed by the architect Edward Dart. Who I looove. Someday I’ll devote a whole post to him. This is their stark but light-filled abbey church. For a sense of scale look at the presider’s chair, to the right and behind the altar, against the brick wall (which is like four stories high?).

There is an almost spooky statue of St. Benedict (or Procopius?) in the front courtyard. I mean, he looks a little like a zombie.

The other fun thing about St. Procopius is that when you join the monks for lunch (the ones who aren’t out working in the community or at Benedictine University, anyway), you go through the buffet line… and they serve dessert first.

3. When we went down to Lafayette, where I preached at my friend Brad’s installation, we stayed overnight and saw the kids off to school the next morning. Here’s Brad’s wife Katie and their son, J. (not old enough for school yet), coming back from the bus.

Here’s Brad and me, solving the problems of the Church Universal in their driveway, and (not shone) stopping to wave to the kids walking down the block with their backpacks whenever his daughter would turn around yet again and call out, longingly “Goodbye!!!” We miss them.

4. Here’s the side of our house, where all the stonecrop is blooming:

5. A local church sign I like:

6. A sunny, windy day in the park…

7. In my collar at PetSmart in an attempt to counter this post. Nobody said anything, although the woman behind the counter kind of looked at me twice.

8. Some pics I took of my church on a pretty afternoon. Here a shot looking under portico  –  cheery flowers! – toward a classroom wing.

The other direction. You can barely make out other neighbor, a water park (see the waterslides in the distance?). Seems like we should have a Eucharist for the Baptism of Our Lord there sometime, but I have a feeling the logistics would too annoying.

9. A “butcher plate” of cheese, meats, and bruschetta with a friend and her mom, who was in town, at our favorite wine bar, D.O.C.

10. We’ve been exploring the variations on falafel around here (first stop: Naf Naf Grill – like Panera for falafel!) and discovered a Mediterranean grocery just ten minutes from our house, in one of those mini strip malls hidden in the middle of a residential area (a mysterious suburban phenomenon). There’s a Polish equivalent about 2 minutes from our house and Pakistani equivalent about 7 minutes. Hooray for immigrants who long for a suburban American life!

Anyway, Mediterranean Oasis Mart serves not only great falafel, but gave us tiny glass cups of hot herbal tea while we waited. Yum!  I walked around, gawking at the wares, while we waited for our take-out lunch (schwarma, hummus, imam biyaldi, falafel).

I recently bought a copy of Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottalenghi. He suggests lots of local, Israeli/Palestinian ingredients and I remember thinking – darn, will the middle eastern section at Meijer have stuff like.. sumac??? Not at Meijer, but lo and behold…