4-17-03

10:13a

Well, dinner last night was� different. Not bad and not interesting in the way I thought it would, either; just� different. G was exhausted from working all day. M didn�t come so D brought his daughter T instead. P was� odd. Very, very odd.

Niece-in-law sat at the foot of the table (what else am I to call it? The other end is the head, right?) with me to her right and N to her left. To my right was D, then T (D�s daughter) then Mom. To N�s left was G, then P and Nephew. Dad took his usual place at the head of the table.

We had hummus. I don�t like the name but it tastes good. Now I see why A-B raves about it. Weird name, good eats.

The lamb was good, though the mint jelly always makes it better. I had two, very small pieces of lamb, a small scoop of rice with pine nuts and mushrooms in it, and a twice-baked potato � For those of you who have never had them, you bake the potatoes then cut them in half, scoop out the potato stuff, mix up the insides as you would mashed potatoes, then spoon the mashed potatoes back into the potato halves, sprinkle the top with cheese and put them in to bake a second time, thus doubling your output. � or rather, half of a twice-baked potato, which is one serving. Oh, I also had half a sheet of Matzo (often considered �Jewish flat bread�. It�s unleavened.)

I put the hummus on the Matzo. And, as far as I know, hummus is a paste/spread made from garbanzo beans, garlic and spices. Not exactly sure of the specific components, but the point is that it was quite good� surprisingly so. I only had a tiny bit of hummus at first, cause I wanted to taste it. I was going to have more, but, as usual, it got used up at Dad�s end of the table.

I did not eat any of the spinach-and-stuff salad, nor did I eat any of the tomato-cucumber-mint-lemon-juice-and-olive-oil stuff. I can�t stand the taste of olive oil and I�m not a fan of tomatoes. There was supposed to be another vegetable dish but it was forgotten in the microwave.

After dinner, we had Brie, grapes, apples and nuts to cleanse the palate and I had two apple slices, about four grapes, maybe ten almonds, eight pecan halves, one cashew, three pistachios and two teaspoons of Brie. OH, I also had two glasses of wine. White wine� I don�t know how to spell the name but it�s pronounced (hard �g�) ge-ver-steh-meaner. In my opinion, I didn�t eat very much at all. The only thing I had seconds of was the wine. (I would estimate I had about 8 ounces of wine in total.

The conversation was fairly light, but I didn�t say a whole lot at the table. After the brie, fruit and nuts, we shifted into the living room where Mom served coffee and tea. I worked on my second glass of wine in there. That�s when I thought the intense conversation would start, as that�s usually the habit.

We started talking about religion vs spirituality and life stories and such, but G was extremely tired and had all he could do to stay awake, thus he was virtually silent. D was with his daughter and wasn�t being too bold. Atop that, he realized that he�d offended P on Sabbath, so he wasn�t loud or forceful� he wasn�t obviously zealous. P on the other hand, was louder and more forceful than I�ve ever seen him. It was rather confusing for me in that I had expected a certain outcome and it didn�t happen.

I�ve been thinking about this� putting all the pieces together and such� and what I realize is that this, for me, is like the story of Jonah. After all the trouble and trial and difficulty, Jonah did as God requested of him by telling the Ninevites that they were doomed to death� they repented and weren�t destroyed (yay God) but Jonah was ticked off about that.

To me, the lesson is that I have recently and fervently asked God to inspire me� to provide a difference in the way services work in this household. And He did. And now I�m confused. Saturday was incredible with D being zealous. Passover service was odd, as I mentioned before. P was trying a new approach and we did cover some of the same scriptures as always, but we also covered new ones. That�s what I�d complained about before Sabbath.

So, it was different, but not inspiring. However, as I mentioned before, I was somewhat sullen during the Passover service, so I�m not all that sure I was paying attention properly. I�ll have to get the cheat-sheet P made and go over the scriptures again to figure out what God was telling me.

Still and all, D was very quiet and non-zealous at Passover and last night he was zealous, but very, very quiet about it. I tried joining in the conversation a few times, but� as is usually the case, I was largely ignored. (the reason that�s usual is because I�m the kid� the young person who doesn�t really know what she�s talking about� that kind of thing)

Anyway�I spent most of the night being observant, rather than actively participating.

I suppose that this means I have to clean up the downstairs living room and invite some people over on my own to get the discussion stuff going. I really like the whole Biblical discussion thing. Not antagonistic Bible bashing/thumping arguments, but taking a verse and discussing what it means to you and why. I really like that kind of thing. It�s one of the parts I liked so very much about having Phil as a friend when he lived up here. (I�ve mentioned him before, but it was a while back)

Anyway� enough updating.

Ezekiel 48

Basically, this chapter is discussing how the land will be distributed between the tribes of Israel. I�m not exactly sure what significance there is for me, but I�ll be thinking about it. I must admit that I do like the last part of the last verse�

Ezekiel 48:35b �And the name of the city from that time on will be: The Lord is There.�

*smiles* I like that. It just makes me all warm and gooey inside.

Isaiah 26

Wow. Just� wow. I must digest this.