A Day of Rest

This changeable beach weather has turned a page once again, and after a clear day yesterday we awoke this Sabbath morning to strong wind and rain beating against the windows.  I opened the front door and could hear the wind literally whistling down the long partially-open corridor, big puddles of water up on the carpet, and a peculiar vibrating sound that echoes constantly in the background in this kind of wind - up to 35 mph this afternoon, with gusts that surge higher - which I have decided is the rattling of the many steel railings in this building.  It is an eerie sound, a low apprehensive rumbling continually in the background.  The outdoor swimming pool glows bright blue after dark when the lights come on, but this morning it looks like much of the water is in danger of flying out, and the little palm trees surrounding it are flopping wildly from side to side in the gale, in danger of loosing all of their loose fronds.

We did get out this morning to attend for the second time the First United Methodist Church in Morehead City, perhaps the friendliest church we have every visited (and we enjoy visiting many different churches while on vacation).  We were even given, as first time visitors last week, a little bag of welcoming information containing also a small loaf of sweet bread, made in my imagination by the skilled hands of some lovely little bespectacled lady in her home kitchen.  We also heard a very good choir and perhaps the most interesting bell ringers I have ever heard - "Bells of Praise" - which included, at times, tapping some of the bells with little drumsticks, and inverting them and running a little wooden mallet around the rims so that they hummed like Tibetan singing bowls. 

Today the Senior Pastor, Powell Osteen, delivered an excellent sermon on that especially difficult portion of scripture, the Transfiguration, and talked to us about our gradual, day-to-day transfiguration into servants of Christ - very thoughtful.  The 80-year old organist played the Bach postlude "Christe Eleison" particularly well.

After braving the powerful wind and rain, which threatened to keep the exit doors to the church closed as if to lock us up in this warm, friendly sanctuary which we for some reason wished to leave, we were glad to return through the whistling corridor and the rattling handrails and the humming Tibetan wind to our warm, dry little place here on the beach, the ocean wild with whitecaps out the window and across the wind-whipped grasses on the sand dunes.  A good day to rest on our laurels, get comfy, and prepare to watch the game tonight.