2022, Gatherings, home, Stories, Uncategorized

Inspiration

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Sunday has never been a day of rest for us, Yesterday was particularly busy, and we ended up in very odd but very affirming encounters with other people.

We started out the morning at 7:30 with a run-through of our choir anthem “Hear me, Redeemer” which is written in a gospel style that has a soprano soloist belting out a solo/descant with the choir echoing her lyrics. The soloist was a terrific singer who is a member of the local LDS church but who sings with us on occasion. People in the congregation loved the song, and said it was “inspirational”, something we consider a real success given this is a pretty traditional Lutheran congregation. They even clapped.

We then spent a couple of hours doing a fall clean up the church garden with other congregation members, and it was during this that a woman drove up in a car with Florida plates, a missing driver side window, a grown daughter, and four chihuahuas. She asked Husband for help, as they were homeless. Husband found a hotel that would take dogs, gave her the number for the homeless coordinator at my agency, and our pastor found some funds for a night at the hotel and gave her a bag of leftover food from the church brunch we had earlier after our service.

We then went home and vacuumed and dusted the house, dropped some kohlrabi off at a friend’s house, and headed to the liquor store for a well deserved bottle of wine. It was there we encountered the clerk who had worked at the store several years ago, quit due to health problems, and started working again. She said she remembered us, and told us she had married, quit drinking, and was really happy in her sobriety. We congratulated her. I don’t know if working in a liquor store is the best work environment for her, but it was inspiring to hear her success. She teased us that if we stopped drinking, she would be our sponsor.

What or who inspires you? How do you spend your Sundays? What are your favorite choir songs?

63 thoughts on “Inspiration”

  2. Well OK. Here it is then. I spend my Sundays doing what I do most days. Trying to combat/not bothering to combat- the mild/medium depression I’ve suffered since I was about fourteen. Doesn’t seem to be getting any better, and I should do as my sister Chris says and tell the doctor.

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  3. Friends and friendship inspire me. When I retired and moved to the USA 4 years ago (after 39 years in Taiwan), I had to begin making friends, and learned that in Taiwan, though I’d had co-worders and colleagues, I had no friends. I’ve been making them here, and am a better person for it.
    Like you, I’m “churchy” so Sunday mornings are full. Yesterday I was the reader for the Epistle lesson. The afternoon included a wonderful nap and a pleasant walk in the sun.
    I went to an outdoor choir concert at the nearby college last night and really enjoyed the South African song, sung in Shona.
    I write a lot of songs for church use, but few see them, and nobody that I know uses them. Something new goes up on my blog every day, and the Advent blog will appear on November 15th (and end on January 8th) with another boatload of stuff. http://www.aboksu.wordpress.com

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  4. Wow, interesting day, Renee!

    My Sundays start out with some role at our UU service – today setting up the coffee table, making sure the announcements get to the right person, and going over last-minute details with new musicians. (our guitar “band” wasn’t playing today).

    We often visit our friend W, but this Sunday I headed over a few blocks to the Polish Museum to the Polish festival apple fest, Smaczne Jubilka… where our folk dancers were dancing in the street.

    One of my favorite songs our choir sang is Peter Mayle’s Blue Boat Home. Will think of more, I hope.

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  5. As for inspiration – it’s everywhere, if my head is in the right place! I am regularly inspired by things I read about, or see happening around me. I wish the news had more of the amazing things that people do for each other.

    This is on a good day. There are other days when I am not able to see all that, and I wish I knew what it is that makes the difference on those days.

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  6. What is the opposite of inspire? De-spire? Un-spire? Out-spire? Whatever it is my church does it to me right now. Too long a tale. Too sad a tale about human nature. Besides why tread on Renee’s inspiration. Another tale:
    Yesterday it spat on me as I drove over. My car does not turn off the lights like all sane cars. 4 1/2 hours later I went to go home but battery was dead. So I thought I will let battery recycle for a bit. Still dead. Later realized I still had not turned off headlights. Love being old and dumb. One of the aides saw me out with my car. I had jumpers. She got the aide with car next to mine to come out and pull over closer so my jumper cables would reach.
    They are my constant inspiration. They do an often dirty job which could be unrewarding but they make it rewarding. I know they are not like this everywhere but here they are. Most are studying, mostly nursing. They will spend their careers having to find inspiration because the world is not going to give them any. They treat Sandra, and me, so well. What can I say.

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    1. Caregivers can be inspiring, can’t they? Sorry about the dead battery. We have all done that. Even if you have a car with the auto turn off of headlights, you can still leave on an interior light that drains the battery. How would I know that?

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      1. Or you can try backing out of your driveway with your driver‘s door open, catch it in a snow drift and wrench it just enough that when you park the car at at the mall where you work, the interior light stays on. Then you come out at the end of your shift, after the mall is closed, to discover that your car won’t start and this is before cell phones so you have to walk all the way around to the other side of the mall where the security entrance is located to get back in to get to a phone. Don’t ask me how I know.

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  7. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I get inspiration from artists and crafters who do such beautiful work. I was looking at knitting pictures last night. That makes me want to get busy again making earwarmers with polymer clay embellishments. Music is also a great inspiration. I will use it today to start clearing out the Autumn garden. Meeting with a group of other artists to have a potluck and to sit and work together is also something I love.

    Unfortunately, church does not inspire me anymore. The behavior of “Christian’s” over the past 6-8 years is so appalling, leaving me feeling like I do not want to identify with that particular group. I have gone from being a weekly, devoted church goer, to abandoning it completely. It leaves me cold. The values that are important to me are not represented there anymore. I do wish this was different, but here we are. The separation of church and state is essential to healthy government and healthy religious institutions.

    Soapbox sermon is officially ended.

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        1. I use only my MacBook Air for posting, but even so it’s pretty inconsistent what may or may not happen when I make a comment. Sometimes there’s a delay in the comment showing up, sometimes not. I have tried all of BiR’s tips, and none of them work for me.

          Husband and I are both sick with flu-like symptoms, but so far, testing negative for COVID. I’m more grumpy and irritable than I normally am, so I’m laying low for the time being.

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  8. Usually on Sunday mornings I walk down to the local coffeehouse to study Esperanto and let my roommate have the place to herself for a while–she often uses that time to vacuum or use cleaning chemicals, so she won’t give me an allergy attack. I very much enjoyed hanging out in coffeehouses to study and write poetry during my student and young-adult days, so it’s a pleasantly nostalgic activity, plus the coffee is pretty good (they have an extremely limited menu, but I hope they’ll add some vegan goodies after their planned remodel. And lots more lighting. And better art on the walls, may it please the Muses!).

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    1. This reminds me. On the way to your house from my house last week, I passed a bakery called “The Baker’s Wife”. Is it a nice place?

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      1. People in this neighborhood adore the Baker’s Wife! Our opinion is that the original owners were better bakers and the place was cuter and more homey when they owned it, but for a small neighborhood shop it’s good. They just started serving ice cream this summer, fwiw.

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      2. It’s a very popular bakery. I used to be sent there by Robin and her friends to procure doughnuts, especially the cinnamon sugar ones. I can’t personally speak to the relative quality of their product, however, not being a doughnut consumer.

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      1. Northern Coffeeworks, or as we prefer to call it, Catfish Coffee (it used to be part of the Angry Catfish bike shop, which moved a couple blocks away). My heart belongs to Dunn Brothers, but this place is too convenient to resist…

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  10. Lots of errands for me yesterday. And then the thing that had to be done at the top of my list was to put the screens out over the bulbs that I had planted Saturday so that the squirrels don’t get to them. I don’t quite understand why the squirrels only dig when there are new bulbs. I never have squirrel problems digging unless there are new bulbs.

    I left my church and choir at the same time. It’s quite a long story, but I’m a nutshell the clergy decided to focus on one issue for over a year and songs that the choir was doing reflected that. I didn’t have any problem with the issue at all but I found that I needed more spiritual variety, and I certainly needed more musical variety. When I left choir, I decided to take a break from the services as well, and to start going back when the spirit moved me. The spirit has not moved me. And then, after almost 8 years, I got a letter from the church last April, a form letter, and before they said “we miss you, would like to reconnect, is there any thing that you need”, they asked for money. That was the end of that.

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    1. Wow. That letter should be an exhibit in some kind of training video on how not to encourage people to return to your organization! But then, if you ask people why they left and what you could change to get them back, they’re likely to give you answers you don’t want to hear.

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      1. Our neighbors down the street, had been going to the same church here on the West Side for over forty years. Their youngest child, a daughter, was sickly from the get-go, and was diagnosed with leukemia when she was eleven. She lived to be in her mid thirties, but when she died their minister refused to have a funeral service for her because she lived with a man to whom she was not married. Warren and Lois were devastated.

        I can’t imagine what kind of Christian minister would compound her parents’ grief by sending them “shopping” for a minister and church that would bury her. Needless to say, they never went back, and when Warren passed away two years ago, he was laid to rest from another church. Several other parishioners migrated with them to their new church as well.

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    1. It is inspiring that Mozart heard this once as a child, and was able to copy it from memory right after he heard it. The Pope had forbade its printing for some odd reason..

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  12. I realized that what I wrote before was about beingamazed, not necessarily inspired. Merriam-Webaster for “inspire”: fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
    The things I read or see that truly inspire make ME want to do those things, too, and that is much rarer.

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  13. My Sundays are chores outside when I can take my time and talk to all the animals and just watch the world for a while. Followed by a leisurely breakfast and a nap. Then I go visit Mom for the afternoon at her senior place. Clyde, you’re right, the majority of the aides are so good there. They’re all working 16 hour shifts. It’s ridiculous this is what it’s come too.
    A couple of mom’s lunch mates cheer me up. Shirley, Bette, and Ideal… they’re just so cute.

    Does this count as a choir?

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  15. I can’t think of a specific thing that inspires me to strive for a specific goal or start a specific project. I’ll just say I’m inspired by excellence in all facets of life. Sports, music, art, writing, cooking, speaking, teaching, acting, or anything else that someone may excel at.

    Nature also inspires me but in a different way–more personally, to not take life or myself so seriously, to think of the meaning of the universe and why we’re on this planet at this moment, and how truly insignificant humans are in the grand scheme of things.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  17. Sundays? Now they’re kind of lazy. That’s the day of the week that I make an omelette with broccoli and feta cheese. I like to go for a drive somewhere and go hiking. I’m not a church goer, haven’t been since 1978. I had the same kind of experience as Jacque. I didn’t have much money then and the experience kind of offended me. I took two disabled men to a church service once and they pushed the plate into one of the men’s chest. He only had his “pop money” and I hadn’t brought any cash at all. I actually had to tell the usher, “No.” I didn’t think that was thoughtful at all.

    I would like to have more of a routine or ritual though. I know I can create my own but I think they’re reinforced by being a member of a group. If I did go to a church it would be for the choral music. I miss choral music so much. Such beautiful selections today!

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  19. I was in choir when I was a teenager, in a Lutheran church. A lot of the music was somewhat dirgelike, but I always looked forward to Palm Sunday, when we would sing The Palms. The arrangement our choir sang was particularly upbeat and joyful. This version is close, but a little more subdued than the arrangement I knew from then.

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  20. I have motivation particularly on Sunday comes from CBS Sunday morning and also a new show on channel for CBS that runs for an hour before CBS Sunday morning which is called Sunday morning but it’s the Twin Cities version run by susan elizabeth Ash wonderful

    yeah option of listening to good news positive news happy news in a full-blown presentation but just a blip of the current events talking about the every day crap show that you’re doing justice to the news but not focusing on what you’re focusing on people who are doing their best during the weekdays at 10 to listen to radio with Ted talks or Tim Ferriss podcasts I also listen to on being although they are in the midst of restructuring after I gather shutting down their weekly radio hour I hope that they can figure out a way to make it work because I love that motivation the other things I do for positive motivation are to go to art galleries plays music as well as reading biographical or autobiographical stuff to keep me cranked up
    m call Guire Favorites I guess you asked what church tunes or favorites I guess I have to hero nothing comes to mind I do love choir music how much for a couple years since I’ve been able to go thanks for your help heal up quick I will talk to you soonp

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  22. I just read the post on “Inspiration” and I found it to be very uplifting and thought-provoking. The idea that we can find inspiration in the ordinary and mundane aspects of life is something that really resonated with me. It’s easy to get caught up in the search for grand, extraordinary experiences, but this post serves as a reminder that inspiration can be found all around us, if we just take the time to look. The quotes and examples shared in the post were also very inspiring and gave me a lot to think about. Thank you for sharing such a positive and encouraging message.

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