Corona on the Farm

Could it be possible that imports are making inroads because consumers are finally realizing that mass-market American beer is terrible? 

I’m not sure.  The Salon.com article is worth reading though, as it is decently informative and also worth a smile.  The article made me think about the most recent clashes I’ve had with domestic beers and my efforts to promote their imported counterparts…

I spent Monday evening enjoying a great meal and conversation with my pseudo family. (my fast friend Sarah’s parents).  The live on a farm four miles or so out of a small German Catholic town in NW Iowa.  Over the last decade, I’ve been absorbed into their family all but to the point of being blood kin.  I love them and always feel completely free and me whenever I’m hanging out in their kitchen.  We always do a lot of b.s.ing, but we also have a lot gut level talks about life and loss and pursuing our dreams.  Anyway, whatever we happen to be talking about it always happens over a beer.  Well, the Mom usually drinks wine and me and the dad will sip a cold Bud Light. 

I’d always had a fondness for foreign beers, but once I lived in Bosnia, my taste buds developed a most fierce aversion to American beer.  So I knew going over to the farm on Monday that I was going to have to buck up and drink a Bud Light.  Or maybe even worse….a Miller Light.  AHHHH.

But surprise, surprise, I opened the fridge to find a whole shelf filled with Corona.  I squealed with glee.  They even had limes.  They laughed so hard to see me so excited.  I tried to explain and it just didn’t quite register. 

On a somewhat related note, my dad knows I don’t like American beer, so when he was buying the beer for my sister’s graduation party, he also brought home a case of some pretty good microbrew.  Of course, I got made fun of for drinking it.  I was making people taste it to prove that it was good, and none of those scoundrels admitted to liking it (I’m sure they went out the next weekend and bought some).  In my last vain attempt of getting someone on my side, I gave some to my grandma.  She said, “Oh that’s nasty.  The only thing worse is cough syrup. Whadya do with my Miller Light?”

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Words Worth Hearing

• He always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands, and he has the resources to carry through with his high estimate of them.
                ~ Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

• Let the fragments of love be reassembled in you.  Only then will you have true courage. 
                                 ~Hayden Carruth, Sitting In

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Song of the Week

More often than not, I’d choose NPR over K-LOVE, but every once in a while I do come across a great song on Christian radio. Natalie Grant’s Held is by far the best song playing on contemporary Christian radio today. Can’t say that I’d recommend the rest of the CD, as it is a little too positive, encouraging and all things K-LOVE for my taste.

Anyway…so many things as of late have been speaking the same message to me about what it means to acknowledge pain and disappointment while at the same time acknowledging (and responding to) God’s dependable faithfulness. Last weekend’s sermon was one of those things; this song is another.

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
Were asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it’s unfair
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

If hope if born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our savior

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

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Heavy Feathers & Hard Grace

In addition to meeting two hilariously cute boys at church on Sunday, I got to listen to a great sermon.  Anytime I abandon my little country church to attend another local gathering, I always feel a bit guilty, but the sermon I heard on Sunday wiped away any guilt I’d been feeling at all. 

The church I chose to attend has decided to take three years to work through the entire Bible.  Cool idea, glad I wasn’t there on Leviticus day.  At any rate, this past Sunday the pastor preached from Ruth. 

His key point was that life is filled with Ruth 1 moments, but they will always lead to Ruth 4 legacies. 

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