As Gomer Pyle Would Say . . .

Surpise, surprise, surprise!

My friend Judy up and moved to New England a few years back. Sure miss her! Lately she's been adding to my mid-life crisis, because every time she calls it seems that it's to tell me that someone is dead. It reminds me that we're getting older, our parents are getting older, people we know are struck with unbelievable tragedies. We talk of the fact that in our twenties and early thirties that we went to many weddings and bridal showers and baby showers, but now in our forties we find ourselves attending many more funerals, and we only look forward to our children being a little older to start celebrating their happy milestones.

But tonight Judy threw me for a loop. At 41 years old, with two boys aged 12 and 7, she is expecting a baby in October. Wow. She's a great mom and will do very well with another child. I hope she will have the girl she has long wanted, but even if it's another boy it will certainly be a cherished child. I am very happy for her, and positively giddy that it's her and not me, haha.

And if she calls Tuesday and tells me this is all an elaborate April Fool's Day joke, I'll kill her.

EASTER IN MESA

After many years of talking about attending the Mormon Easter Pageant, and one year even going (too late to get a seat, so we returned home), tonight my friend Bec invited me, we took a picnic dinner, and I actually saw the show!

It is a production. I'm talking about a HUGE production, a cast of a hundred or more, horses, lambs, donkeys, doves, angels, Romans, Apostles, Adam, Eve . . . everything but the kitchen sink, and had their been indoor plumbing in those days I'm pretty sure it would have been thrown in there somewhere. Ok, that sounds a little more critical than I intended. I had some gripes with the staging of the play, but it was well done, and VERY well attended. I asked one of the several missionaries who approached us after the show what he thought the attendance was, and he replied that there were TEN THOUSAND chairs set up. TEN THOUSAND, and from what I could see, every one of them was filled, and many more families had brought blankets and were sitting on the grassy lawn surrounding all the chairs.

I realized a couple of things tonight. One is that religion is intensely personal. What moves one person has little or no effect on another. Visually the pageant was gorgeous, from the set, to the costumes, the dancing . . . amazing. But spiritually, for me, it was too much. The dialogue was completely pre-recorded and the actors lip-sync throughout the play . . . one of the things that I find moving about going to church is the emotion in people's voices when they discuss their love of God. Canned soundtrack, while well enunciated and easily heard and understood, lacked all the emotion, and for me fell short of communicating the love of God that was professed.

The other thing I realized tonight is how much I enjoy the company of my friend Bec. I don't see her much since my job transfer, and we are both busy and frustrated at work. But it is her friendship, and her open and honest and pure faith that inspires me much more than any pageant drawing ten thousand or ten million could ever do. She's a fellow rock in this stream, and may her God shine all his light on her, and grant her all those dreams that she so richly deserves to come true. Thanks for the invite tonight.