amoiso's blog

Airline travel makes me philosophical. While waiting for a recent flight, I found myself analyzing the shoes people choose to wear on planes. Business travelers often sport shiny oxfords. Practical travelers might wear tennis shoes for comfort, or whatever their largest shoe happens to be – boots, for example – to save room in their suitcase. On the other hand, some practical travelers choose simple shoes that are easy to slip on and off in the security line.

For ease in shopping, nothing beats the internet. In recent months, shopping online saved me what would have been hours of zipping around to different stores to find random items I wanted or needed, including: a particular brand of non-toxic sunscreen, a specific-sized watch battery, an out-of-print book on apparel design, and some hard-to-find sewing notions.

So this isn't exactly a blog post, but since I've been remiss in doing much blogging recently I thought I'd put up my sermon from yesterday. To get in the right frame of mind, you might go to your CD player or iPod and put on the music from Godspell or Handel's Messiah. Got it playing? Good.

Just about the only sport I ever learned to play well was ultimate frisbee. I did play on the junior high girls’ basketball B-team, but – let’s be honest – that was really more slapstick than sport. So it was something of a surprise to find out in college that I could both throw and catch a frisbee, occasionally while running.

Every flight I take seems to be an adventure of sorts. As I boarded a Southwest plane to L.A. last week I saw a nun in full religious habit sitting on the aisle of an otherwise unoccupied row. Thinking this might be a good moment for ecumenical dialogue, I took the window seat. Just as I was about to strike up a conversation, another woman claimed the middle seat. I leaned back in my chair, deciding to await a future moment to chat with the sister.

Throughout its history, in times of turmoil and change and especially challenge, the church has come together to write and speak what it believes, and we call them confessions. These aren’t confessions in the sense of admitting to a crime, but confessions of faith in which we remember and say why and how we are followers of Jesus in a new time and under different circumstances than we have been before.

I really don’t like junk mail. I’ve done all I can to get off every mailing list that delivers unwanted mail to my mailbox. Just two weeks ago I contacted my bank to ask them to stop sending me new credit card announcements (I had gotten three for the same card in less than a month, even though I’m on the “do not mail” lists). 

I’ve been traveling and on vacation, which is why I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for a while. I think, dear readers, you can expect the next several entries to be reflections on my comings and goings, so bear with me.

Early last Saturday morning, my siblings and I dragged card tables and boxes of household paraphernalia out to my dad’s lawn to set up shop for a summer yard sale. As any of you who have done a yard sale know, our work started days (and, for my dad, weeks) before – deciding what to take back to the attic or price for the sale, post on Ebay, take to an antique store or toss in the garbage. 

Tonight, for the first time in my life, I called 911. I was on the freeway and found myself behind a white Mercedes that was drifting in and out of its lane. I followed it for a while to make sure the drift wasn’t a random occurrence, and when I’d seen enough repeats to believe the swerving to be chronic, I dialed (with a safe, hands-free device, of course).