Our week this week was all about connections, soul sharing and generally discovering the beauty of people.
Candles
On Wednesday, the three of us attended a Party Lite (a little company that sells nifty candles) party at our neighbor Tina's house. It was a fun little gathering of women brought together by a common love of a wax, flame and pleasant smells. More importantly though, Tina made amazing Christmas goodies and one fantastic cheese ball.
When You Least Expect It
On Saturday afternoon, the three of us plus our friend Joyclyn decided to go visit the history museum together. On the way we stopped at a restaurant that we heard was having free pictures with Frosti the Snowman. One fabulously festive/mildly embarrassing picture later, we
were off to the museum. There we discovered little known facts about American history and the 1904 World's Fair in St.Louis.
Saturday evening we went to our friend
Melissa Roth's house for a ladies-only dinner party. Melissa is a brilliant and sensational 44-year-old who lives with a couple of poets and Rodney, a decorator. Melissa invited several of her friends over and the group of us had a grand old time eating amazing food, solving one another's problems and vigorously discussing the frustration and beauty of the "adult world." As the night became later, Melissa's housemate, Rodney, came home. As it turns out, Rodney had just closed his decor shop that day and had lots of stuff to get rid of. We VSers jumped at the opportunity and, in a flurry of activity, found ourselves at Rodney's store, waist-deep in free decorations. At about 1 AM, we loaded an entire car with everything from baskets, to plastic poinsettas , to unreasonably large bolts of fabric. And by 1:30 Rodney was gone, leaving in his wake a whole new decor in the VS house. Sometimes you're not sure why you end up somewhere, or what the point was. And sometimes it's as obvious as the giant gold bow now resting on your front porch. And while the new look was cool, it was the new shimmer and shine we all felt, the refreshed and refined outlook on the world, that made the evening a succulent surprise.
Curry and Caroling
Sunday we invited Clay, Katie, Natalie and Elizabeth over for lunch. Clay has been coming to St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship for several weeks and attends St. Louis Bible College. We invited Clay to come visit and bring some of his friends from college if he wanted. Those friends turned out to be Katie and Natalie. Elizabeth, of course , attends our church and is just plain cool. The seven of us had a great curry meal (compliments of Amanda) and some fabulously enthusiastic discussion.
At about 4 o'clock, the three of us went Christmas Caroling with the church to two retirement homes. There was a great turnout and we all had so much fun singing timeless songs and sharing smiles with the energetic residents.
It's so easy sometimes to get into a really cozy pattern: go to work, come home, eat, talk with your housemates and go to bed. It's very easy to stay with a few people that you know and like and are so comfortable with. It's easy to not make connections. But there's something electric, something essential, about those new connections. A person is a vastly complex thing, overflowing with absolutely individual views, thoughts, feelings. And as we connect to those great complexities, we have each become deeper, fuller. Shared experiences become bridges and differences, gifts as we are allowed to see the world through a different set of eyes. Maybe visiting Frosti and sharing some curry isn't as big as all of that, but we think that's what VS is all about.
