Movie Week?

     So I ended up going to 3 movies in 8 days, which is a lot for me I guess. Beth and I saw a sneak preview of "We Bought a Zoo" last Saturday which I thought was okay but Beth felt was poorly acted. They had some problems with the projection system it seemed, as the movie was delayed at least 15 minutes. It was a nice surprise when we exited the theatre afterwards they handed out free movie passes Then we went to see The Muppet Movie on Wednesday for free. It was fine but didn't live up to the hype. Then yesterday Josh and I went to see the new Mission Impossible movie - again it was well-made and entertaining but it's not gonna change the world or anything. Sometimes I get a bit jaded about Hollywood, thinking of the exorbitant amount of money spent on making movies, regretting my support of such an escapist mentality, and wondering about the state of modern society ('bread and circuses' - have we really changed that much?)
     Last Saturday I got a start (finished yesterday) at cleaning up and organizing my office/desk at home. Bills and stuff tend to pile up it seems. I'm a big believer in binders for keeping papers organized (as opposed to file folders) so needed to spend some time getting things put away into their proper places. It was encouraging to start a new binder for retirement materials (2.65 years to go, but who's counting;)).
     I woke up early that day and couldn't get back to sleep so I got up and gave a more careful listen to Jason Gray's "A Way to See in the Dark." I had ordered the special edition in the summer and got it in September but really didn't give it enough time, so I sat down with the lyrics and really appreciated it. He does a wonderful job weaving in themes of light and darkness. My favourite song is the acoustic version of "The Name of God is the Sound of Our Breathing"(you can check out a live version in the video here).
     On Sunday we had some of Beth's family to our house for lunch. This doesn't happen often enough so it's always good to get together. We had potluck finger foods instead of the whole turkey thing and that worked well - a lot less cleanup for sure! I enjoyed getting to interact/play with our great-niece Jenna who is almost 4 years old now.
     Monday we attended a membership class at church and Tuesday we went over for a visit with Mom & Dad. I worked on helping Dad restore his email on his computer but it took way longer than I thought it would. Wednesday we helped Alison get the last of her teacher's college applications filled in and sent out. It's a lot of work (and money) just going through the application process - hope it results in some offers (she applied 4 places).
     Friday we went to MCC with our small group to help assemble school kits for shipment (mostly overseas). We had about 25 people come and we actually made pretty short work of the task. We watched a couple of videos about the work of the MCC Thrift Shops which are actually pretty amazing. They raise millions of dollars each year for the work of the Mennonite Central Committee.
     I read through Brian Walsh's "Kicking at the Darkness" book. Here's a portion of the review I wrote for my reading database:
This has rekindled an appreciation for Bruce’s great music and makes me want to delve back into his lyrics. Walsh does a wonderful job weaving themes that reappear in Cockburn’s work - windows, night vs. light, wind) and uses his words/images/poetry to articulate a robust Christian worldview. Examines 4 basic questions - where are we, who are we, what’s wrong, and how do we fix it. This is not a light read but is very rewarding for long-time Cockburn fans (like me).
      I also read Susan Isaac's "Angry Conversations with God," which is a pretty entertaining and creative memoir (she's an actress/comedienne). Favourite Christmas music listening this week was "Come Let Us Adore Him" a compilation with input from The Choir guys.