Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday: that Spouse o' Mine and I decided, instead of driving into town and joining hundreds of other Lutherans at our church for one of two services, to walk - yes, walk down our road to the tiny little neighborhood church for Easter service.   Beecher Bible and Rifle Church was at near capacity itself: between 30 and 40 people joined in our tiny community for worship.  I think we sang six hymns, all verses and in 4-part harmony.  The 85-year old pastor was good.  I liked how he summed things up:  "Well, God gave us life, and when we made a mess of that, he sent us Jesus to make things right."  There was also an old fellow spending time both at the piano and the little organ up front.  He was pretty good, too.  There was one lily up at the tiny altar.  After church we all filed out of the Civil War era church, and someone was ringing the church bells as we walked back down the road to home.

It was a good Easter morning.

On another subject: Memory.  Memorization.
Sometimes I do very, very well at memorization.  Sometimes I do fairly poorly on memory.  I tend to memorize phone numbers instead of putting them in my phone.  I memorize things like Schedule B numbers (if you have to ship something internationally), and credit card numbers. I forget to stop by the gas station on my way home, I forget my sunglasses, I forget THINGS and have to make daily lists on index cards to remind me of what I am forgetting.  Sometimes I don't mean to memorize something but it happens anyway.  I sang with the church choir for Good Friday service.  We sang one song.  All day Saturday, "'Tis Finished" ran through my mind, over and over and over again.  It is a very dreary song, (Good Friday and all...), and that's NOT what I wanted playing in my head all day.  But it was stuck there.

And here's a memory:  Our Armstrong Easter Egg hunts were always great fun.  Now the kids are grown and gone.  In our backyard we have an overlooked, plastic Easter egg growing in the crook of one of our oak trees.  We would line our kids up at the door, youngest to oldest.  Now, our kids are only four years apart, but College Boy Graham was really slow to cotton to the concept of hunting Easter Eggs.  He walked.  And gazed.  And meandered.  So Slow Boy was allowed 60 seconds of hunting before his wild and competitive older sisters were allowed out the door. The Easter eggs were real, and plastic ones filled with candy or pennies.  Maybe a dollar bill in a few.  As the kids got older, the Easter Egg hunts became more challenging.  No mowing the lawns before Easter.  (That Spouse o' Mine really disliked that rule.)  The Easter Egg hunt in the dark, with flashlights.  It was forecast to snow this weekend.  I thought to myself, If the kids were home and it snowed on Easter, I would throw white duck eggs out in the snow for the annual Easter Egg hunt.  Ha!  What fun!

But no kids, and no snow, either.