WHAT IS SO RARE AS A DAY IN JUNE?

WHAT IS SO RARE AS A DAY IN JUNE?

THEN, IF EVER, COME PERFECT DAYS

I thought I had so much time to post about this subject, and now it is the last day of June for another year. June - my birth month and my anniversary month, the prettiest month of the year (or at least tied with May), the month when the delicate little wild prairie roses bloom and give off their heady scent. And now summer is one third over!

Under Daisy's tutelage, I had meant to share her "Greedy, Juicy, Learning Summer of Personal Delights." (And in my mind I always added the word "Luscious").

Oh, I have done some things. I have sat out on the deck on lovely evenings and enjoyed how the setting sun slanted through the trees and illumined the grass. I have read more books, always a greedy delight to me. I have sniffed the sweet smell of yellow clover - the scent that means summer in North Dakota to me.

I have been enjoying everyone else's flowers, as I have taken a one year hiatus from planting my own flowers. I have sipped glasses of lemonade filled with plenty of ice. I have eaten dinner at an outdoor restaurant on a balmy evening. I have had strawberry shortcake. I've had fresh corn on the cob slathered with butter.

But there are so many things I have not done yet! I haven't taken my little trip to see the bluebird trail. I haven't eaten a ripe peach and let the juices slide down my chin. I haven't taken a slice of watermelon outdoors and spit out the seeds. I haven't been anywhere near a river or a lake. I haven't even driven out to the country to just sit and watch and listen to nature. Bismarck is really such a small city that many would scoff to even call it that, but it is a city and I do feel hemmed in by it so often.

I would love to go for an evening boat ride on the Missouri River and feel the cool water spray on my face (no friends with boats at the moment!). I would love for my sister and I to take one of our infrequent jaunts to Minot (we used to drop her kids off at the State Fair and then do our own thing). How I wish we again lived close to Minnesota so I could smell the pines and hear the loons and (yes, I admit it), shop the quaint little stores.

There are pleasures still to be had - the peaches and watermelon are there to be purchased. I'll speak to my sister about that trip to Minot, even if both her kids have jobs now and are too old for the State Fair anyway. Maybe one of my friends would like to take a drive west to see the bluebird trail and visit the monks at Assumption Abbey.

Ahead there's still the Fourth of July celebration on the Capitol Mall, with fireworks and music furnished by the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony. My sis and I will go to Art in the Park in Mandan on the Fourth if she doesn't work, and there's the Capital Affaire on the Capitol Mall in August.

I can drive out to Sibley Park, just south of town, and watch the river slip by. I'll drive out to Fort Lincoln and go up the hill to the blockhouses. I'll hear meadowlarks and bobolinks and watch the setting sun (too many trees around my house). After having just read about Crazy Horse, I'll be thinking about how all this land was once owned by the Lakota and how they were robbed of it by the whites.

There are some movies coming that I actually want to see, so I'll beat the heat with a few matinees. I'll have a hot fudge sundae at the DQ and think about my Aunt Mary, who always had to have a hot fudge sundae when she came to town. I'll buy some Coppertone and slather it on myself - even though I don't go in the sun anymore - because that will surely be a sense memory for me.

Yes, there are still many more personal delights to be had during my greedy, juicy, learning summer.

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What is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,-
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?
**********
Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For our couriers we should not lack;
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,
And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!
**********
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-
'Tis for the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

by James Russell Lowell

BLUE MOON PART DEUX

HAPPY BLUE MOON TOMORROW FOR THOSE CELEBRATING IT IN JUNE!

(ALREADY TODAY - JUNE 30 - IN ENGLAND)

HOPE IT IS CLEAR SO YOU CAN BATHE IN THE MOONLIGHT

I just had to use this painting even thought it does not depict a full moon!

**********

Note added Saturday morning: Sorry, I didn't mean to ignore my Aussie friends who also celebrated the Blue Moon today.

JUNE 29, 1974

Determined to be a June bride, I made it - barely!

Welcome to Langdon, North Dakota's, first hippie wedding! It wasn't really, but that's what people in Langdon called it. It was the first outdoor wedding in the town's collective memory, which must have translated into "hippie" for them! (Langdon was very conservative at the time and probably still is.)

Thirty-three years and about two hours ago, on a warm, mellow late summer afternoon, my fiance, Dan, and I walked together across a city park toward a crowd of our friends and families to say vows we had written ourselves. The day had started with much less promise.

We awoke that morning to wind and angry black clouds threatening rain. I and my friends spent most of the day cleaning the Jaycee Arena, where the reception was to be held - and the wedding, if indeed it did rain. The previous party that had rented the hall had left it in bad shape, with muddy floors and a mess throughout. We only had time to clean, not decorate it. Tired and dirty, I was almost crying by late afternoon.

But everything did come together for a beautiful ceremony that was in keeping with our plans for a simple wedding. My dress was simplicity itself - handmade at a cost of under $100.00. I was daring to go with the hat, because brides those days seldom wore hats. On my hat and in my bouquet I carried simple garden flowers - roses, daisies and bachelor's buttons (some pink carnations, too, I think.) Our friends sang and played guitar on songs including "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "The Wedding Song" by Peter, Paul and Mary.

As a bride to be, I was anything but "Bridezilla." In fact, I was the opposite. I refused to have a bridal registry anywhere. To me, it seemed like "Gimme, gimme." I only ordered flowers for myself, Dan and our attendants. That upset some of the ladies so much that they picked flowers from their gardens to put in vases, as shown in the photo above.

Since Langdon is such a small town, and since Dan was known and loved by everyone as "Doc Fred" in his job as a physician's assistant at the clinic and the hospital, we invited everyone, and a lot of people showed up! For the reception, we didn't want to feed people justs dinner mints and nuts, so we had our friends at the local Greek American restaurant make up huge roasters of comfort food, and the ladies who worked at the clinic served it. The two doctors that Dan worked for footed the bill for the booze. The docs used to have champagne parties after hours at the clinic, and this party was no exception - the champagne flowed!

We had one small glitch later on - the band hired by Dan's little brother Scott failed to show up, but we just moved the whole party to The Eagles Club, much to the chagrin of my brother and sister, who were only teenagers. Everyone had a great time, which was our intent and focus.

I just die now to think that I let Dan choose his own powder blue wedding suit and accessories (see Bridezilla note above.) Everyone said he looked like a Southern gentleman instead of a Norwegian NoDak.

I set up the pose below, in imitation of those old-fashioned photos in which the groom is seated and the bride STANDS beside him (what was that all about?), neither of them smiling. I later had the photo printed in black and white to further the effect. We unfortunately lost our wedding photos in a house fire in 1982, but Dan's mother graciously gave us her photos. And I do mean graciously, because I remember her huge gasp when the photographer gave her the bill for the large set of photos she had ordered!

Oh, those white shoes - he's more dressed up than I am!

Much later that night, we hopped into our chrome yellow Volkswagen for the two-hour drive to Grand Forks. We had a plane to catch the next morning - to Athens, Greece!

Here we are, Bonnie and Clyde, off and away in the V Dub.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORDS

After reading my previous post, Lila from Indigo Pears suggested printing a list of the 10 Most Beautiful Sounding Words in the English Language.

I did an Internet search and found some lists, many way longer than 10 (try 223!). The first list I found was The British Council's list of the 70 most beautiful words in the English language, topped by "Mother", and containing other words with beautiful concepts behind them, like liberty. I had to refine my search to most beautiful SOUNDING words.

Louis Funk, author of "30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary," proposes these: Asphodel, Fawn, Dawn, Chalice, Anemone, Tranquil, Hush, Golden, Halcyon, Camellia, Bobolink, Thrush, Chimes, Murmuring, Lullaby, Luminous, Damask, Cerulean, Melody, Marigold, Jonquil, Oriole, Tendril, Myrrh, Mignonette, Gossamer, Alyssum, Mist, Oleander, Amaryllis, Rosemary.

Poet Louis Untermeyer says, "The most musical words seem to be those containing the letter "L". I think, offhand, of such words as Violet, Lake, Laughter, Willow, Lovely, and other such limpid and liquid syllables."

Annie Dillard, in "A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," wrote: "My friend Roseanne Coggeshall, the poet, says that 'Sycamore' is the most intrinsically beautiful word in English."

Here is reporter, editor and author Willard R. Espy's list of the 10 most beautiful words: Gonorrhea, Gossamer, Lullaby, Meandering, Mellifluous, Murmuring, Onomatopoeia, Shenandoah, Summer Afternoon, Wisteria. I would have to strike Gonorrhea because of the bad association connected with it. And Summer Afternoon -two words - is cheating! He's taken them from this quote by Henry James: "Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

I've drawn some favorites of mine from among the lists: Cadence, Caress, Cherish, Diaphanous, Dulcet, Ebullient, Effervescent, Eglantine, Ethereal, Evanescent, Glistening, Grace, Languorous, Lilt, Lustrous, Nevermore, Redolent, Renaissance, Scintillate, Susurrus, Tintinnabulation, Whisper.

But where is my "Thistledown"? It's not even on the list of 223, and now my head is swimming with words and I must stop. But thistledown is on some list, somewhere. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

HAPPY FAIRY DAY!

I think one of the reasons I love fairies so much is that I love flowers so much. How lovely it would be to have a hat made of petals and carry stalks of flowers larger than myself!

In celebration of the day, Vicki at Victoria Station has put together a wonderful collection of fairy pictures, poems AND a video on her blog. Just clink on the link under my "Kindred Spirits" sidebar. Please, please check it out.

In one of the poems on Vicki's post, it says that a fairy's breath is the wind. While I was at the mall yesterday I bought a sympathy card for Daisy's family. As we were returning to the car a gust of wind grabbed the little bag out of my hand and the bag, the card and the envelope went flying away in three different directions. Each would travel a while, land on the ground, and then just as I was about to pick one up, it would lift up again and go sailing again. It took me a long time to finally gather all three pieces up. I traveled a long way across that parking lot. So far that my sister drove her car over to meet me where I finally ended up. I think it was a sign from Daisy: "You don't need this card; my family doesn't need this card. I am here. Today I am in the wind, teasing you a bit. Tomorrow I may be in the rain. I am in the stars and in the moon, I am in the flowers and the trees."

In another of the poems Vicki posted, I saw the word thistledown. Isn't that a beautiful word? In my post on Thursday regarding our Fairy Day celebration, I mentioned that I had given my friends little gossamer bags. In a comment under this post, Rowan from Circle of the Year said that gossamer is a perfect word to associate with fairies. I agree, and I think thistledown is another. I once saw a list of the ten most beautiful sounding words in the English language, and both words were on the list.

I have a collection of the Faerie Glen fairies because I think they are the prettiest of all. They also have the prettiest names: Fernwhisper, Willowshimmer, Seamurmur, Shadowmyst, Dewdance. So evocative!

THE FAIRY WORLD VS. THE HUMAN WORLD

I have to make up excuses to post so that I can use up all the wonderful Fairy Day images I have stored in my computer!

Thursday is the day we held our book club/solstice/fairy day celebration. Thursday is also the day my new company received its license to abstract in Morton County, which is across the river from Burleigh County where Bismarck is located. So to celebrate the company president invited us to have drinks and snacks at Fiesta Villa, a Mexican restaurant in Bismarck. What a dilemma - I had so much left to do to prepare for the party. (Yes, I am a procrastinator.)

I felt I had to make an appearance as I am a new employee and I do work in the Morton County office. I am glad I went. We sat out on the patio, which is shaded with small trees and filled with flowering planters. It was a perfect June evening, I had a great strawberry margarita and chips and salsa (my supper) and I got to meet the people from the Bismarck office. But all the time I'm thinking, I gotta go, I gotta go. Fortunately, I was not the first to leave. At 6:00 someone left and I made hurried apologies as I got up too.

At home I scurried around, filling my gift bags, checking and re-checking them, looking for the temporarily-lost fairy wands (WHERE CAN THEY BE???), printing things off the computer, adding last-minute touches like stickers, rummaging through all my craft supplies to find the embroidery thread because the rings on the fairy charms were so small I couldn't use ribbon. The next thing I know, Gracie has snatched the card with the five colors of floss and taken it out in the yard. I had to chase her around for five minutes before she got distracted by Penny's ball and left the card in a gummed up mess on the lawn. Fortunately, the lavender color was not harmed.

Finally, I am ready to go. I'm late, but I'll make up for lost time by speeding. Bad idea! All the bags fall off the seat onto the car floor. Then I get lost finding my way to Vicki's. I can never find her place, which is ridiculous, seeing as how I used to live just a few blocks from there.

I gather everything up haphazardly and dump it willy nilly into the bags. Fortunately Vicki came to my rescue. We dumped all the bags out on her bed, sorted things out and re-filled the bags. You can imagine the state I was in, but then I stopped and thought. We are celebrating fairy day. Would a fairy act that way? She would take everything in her stride. Stop acting like a human and start acting like a fairy. So I did, and the rest of the evening went very well, and when I left, I drove straight home, because I can always find my way BACK from Vicki's.

I am sure that in the fairy world, all things go smoothly all the time. Never a ruffled feather or fairy wing, never any mud, never any hurt feelings, never anything but play and rest and beautiful music and reading. But alas, I spend 99.99% of my time in the human world. But hopefully I can keep on thinking like a fairy and not get so ruffled all the time.

We have to recognize the boy fairies too!

BIRTHDAY FUN

SHE HAD THREE LILIES IN HER HAND

AND THE STARS IN HER HAIR NUMBERED SEVEN.

Dante

*******

My friend Jude, whom I often mention, is a kindred spirit to me for many reasons, not the least of which is that we are both Cancers and we ALMOST share a birthday. Her birthday is the day after mine next week, so today we shared a birthday lunch at Kroll's Kitchen, a replica of an old 1940s diner. In addition to being nostalgic and serving great chocolate malts, Kroll's also features knoephle soup, a German staple around these parts. It and the other Kroll's Kitchens in town have cute TV commercials featuring ladies with thick German accents saying, "Sit down und eat!" We chose Kroll's because it is three minutes away from my new office, but I digress.

We generally don't gift each other, so when we saw that each of us had pretty gift bags in our hands, we said, "Now, we aren't going to make a habit of this!"

I got Jude a nice pink, capped pen and "J" note cards just like I had featured on my blog a few weeks ago. My sister and I happened to go back to TJ Maxx a week after I bought my stationery. Lo and behold - and I could have sworn there were no more left - there was a box of the "J" cards. What serendipity! Jude is a lady from the old school - she still writes notes and letters in longhand, bless her.

I also got Jude a card that is a reproduction of a Victorian folding fan. On the back I wrote, "It isn't a nu shu Secret Fan, but I hope you like it." This is in reference to the book "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," which our book club read last month.

An important part of the book is the tradition of Chinese women sending each other messages on silk fans in nu shu, or secret women's writing. Jude had the inspiration to add some writing on the fan next June and send it back to me, and so on and so forth. I have heard of people doing this with Christmas cards, etc. I hope this starts a great new tradition. Leave it to a kindred spirit to think of something like that.

The plaque above is Judy's gift to me, just right for my new front garden. I have seen the Dante poem before, but I was thrilled to have it on a plaque so I can read it often.

She also gave me the card shown below. To know Jude is to know that even picking up a CAT card is an ordeal for her. She is, shall we say, very "uncomfortable" around cats. "They are too unpredictable," she says. However cats always seem to go straight for Jude, even in a crowded room. At our book club Christmas party, Jude leaped onto Kathy's lap when the resident cat decided to stand up and put her paws on Jude's - and ONLY Jude's - legs.

So, for Jude to get me this card is extra special. By the way, the inside of the card reads, "Have a happy birthday, if you must." Just like a cat!

Tomorrow - a saga of angel food cakes and a special BD card my sister gave me!

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

It's 11:55 PM - only 5 minutes left of Midsummer Night (taking it literally). I have had the best Summer Solstice ever. I have long wanted to celebrate the occasion but never found the opportunity until now. Tonight was our regularly scheduled book club meeting, so I asked the hostess if I could add a little celebration within the meeting.

Since Vicki can't build a bonfire in her yard, and since her neighbors would look askance (and aghast) at us 50- and 60-something ladies dancing naked in her backyard, I decided to pass on a pagan-type celebration and instead observe Fairy Day a few days early.

I have had so much fun the past few weeks, looking for fairy-and nature-related items to give to each member. I made up gift bags, each containing the following: A fairy/zodiac magnet (half of us are Cancers!), a fairy postcard, a fairy temporary tattoo, little embroidered flowers, a little gossamer bag filled with soap leaves, a fairy wand (of course!), some stickers, bubble-blowing liquid and a little vial of fairy dust tied with a string and a little fairy charm. I purchased the magnets, the postcards and the tattoos at http://www.enchanted-designs.com/. These fairies are decidedly adult, and not at all cutesy. Risque is more like it!

I also printed out the Fairy Meditation from http://www.fairyday.com/, and cut it into strips so each woman could read part of it. I ended up with five strips, so I printed out three fairy poems from the Internet so each of us could read something aloud. Afterward, we went out on the deck so we could blow bubbles (because fairies are attracted to bubbles.) After that, we went in and applied our tattoos.

After we enjoyed Vicki's sinfully delicious dessert and her hazelnut coffee, I had everyone look under their cups. My friend Jude found a sticker under hers, so she won the "grand prize," a little resin fairy and a small dream catcher.

Everyone, may I say, enjoyed the experience tremendously! And as I was getting into my car after it was over, I gazed up at the half moon, and gave a little wink and a nod to Daisy.

And yes, daughter dear, I have one of everthing left to make you a bag too!

There's still time to plan a celebration for Fairy Day, which is Sunday. The website listed above is full of ways to celebrate: e-greeting cards, free graphics, kids' projects, tips on decorating your house, and recipes. (I was going to make fairy sugar but didn't have the oomph to get it all together.)

P. S. When I got home from work today there were two huge boxes that came in the mail. I already know, without asking, that my niece Lisa will forbid me to open them until Monday. The big question is, can I resist?

DAISY'S GARDEN

(Painting by Alana Harley)

I have always longed to have a front garden, and now I'm going to get one!

I used to be an avid gardener. I wrote a column called The Garden Gate for the Bismarck Tribune. I prepared the newsletter for the Bismarck-Mandan Garden Club, and I took the Master Gardener Class. I had a pretty nice perennial garden going in my back yard, but as our huge American Elm got even huger, the garden got shadier and shadier, and eventually everything died out. My lovely little herb garden is too shaded as well. Although I continued to grow a lot of annuals in containers, my dream of having a beautiful perennial garden evaporated.

Funny how some things come together. The north half of our front yard - where the sun shines all day long - had gone badly to weeds in the past couple of years, so this spring my husband rototilled it all up. Weeks later, he still has not planted the grass and the weeks are back with a vengeance.

Then, a certain home improvement store, which I won't name, but starts with Lowe's, finally gave us a refund on a badly-installed floor. (I'm still going to fight to have the labor costs refunded too.) However, it was in the form of store credit, not cash. Well, I certainly am not going to buy another floor at Lowe's, so what to do with the money?

I made Dan a proposition: "For Father's Day, let's use part of the money to get you a really nice, new gas grill for a change. And," I continued, "why not let me turn the front yard into a front garden? That way you'll only have to seed the boulevard." It didn't take him long to answer. Done deal!

While we were at the garden center I picked out 40 leaf-shaped stepping stones for laying out curving paths. It turns out that the front yard is bigger in reality than in my mind's eye, so I will go back tomorrow and pick up some of the stepping stones that have a Celtic look to their design. I also have a collection of decorative stepping stones from my pathetic shade garden that will now go up front. I already have an arbor with a seat that will go in one corner.

At least for now, I think I will be putting down plastic mulch to squelch the weeds. It's more important, I think, to get a lot of hardscaping done now. I will put in the perennials gradually, and I'll plant seeds this fall like bachelor's button that will sprout in the spring. And of course, I will fill in blank spaces with annual bedding plants.

I do have a picket fence and an arbor over the sidewalk, on which grows a monstrous William Baffin climbing rose. (The poor mailman should have a machete to whack at William when he delivers the mail.) William is in full bloom right now, and he is gorgeous. I also have other hardy Canadian shrub roses against the fence, and some lilies, so I won't have to start absolutely from scratch. In fact, a lady passing by once told me that my house looks like a fairy-tale cottage!

I have a birdbath and some large pots that I will put to good use in the front. And, I have a large collection of fairy statues, and a sign that says, "There are fairies at the bottom of the garden." So, as I am imagining this fairy garden, a light bulb went on in my head. Who loved fairies? Who loved gardening? Who gave herself a nom de plume made up of two flowers' names?

Yes, my garden will be in honor of Daisy Lupin. I will put a little plaque or marker to that effect somewhere. Even though I don't have a digital camera, I will try to post a few pictures now and then to show you the progress of Daisy's garden.

SINGING WITH LUTHERANS

Lutheran Ladies Janet Letnes Martin and Suzanne (Johnson) Nelson

Authors of "Lutheran Church Basement Women" and other funny books

**********

I really, really needed a laugh today, and I got it, courtesy of Lila from Indigo Pears (link at right). Lila knows I am a Lutheran, and her mom is Lutheran as well. In fact, Lila's mom sent this to her: (Bold, italicized comments are mine):

SINGING WITH LUTHERANS

Garrison Keillor

I have made fun of Lutherans for years - who wouldn't, if you lived in Minnesota (or North Dakota)? But I have also sung with Lutherans and that is one of the main joys of life, along with hot baths and fresh sweet corn.

We make fun of Lutherans for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of giving offense, their lack of speed and also for their secret fondness for macaroni and cheese. But nobody sings like them. If you ask an audience in New York City, a relatively Lutheran-less place, to sing along on the chorus of Michael Row the Boat Ashore, they will look daggers at you as if you had asked them to strip to their underwear. But if you do this among Lutherans they'll smile and row that boat ashore and up on the beach! And down the road!

Lutherans are bred from childhood to sing in four-part harmony. It's a talent that comes from sitting on the lap of someone singing alto or tenor or bass and hearing the harmonic intervals by putting your little head against that person's rib cage. It's natural for Lutherans to sing in harmony. We're too modest to be soloists, too worldly to sing in unison. When you're singing in the key of C and you slide into the A7th and D7th chords, all two hundred of you, it's an emotionally fulfilling moment. (I can't hold a tune in a bucket, but I sing in church.)

I once sang the bass line of Children of the Heavenly Father in a room with about three thousand Lutherans in it; and when we finished, we all had tears in our eyes, partly from the promise that God will not forsake us, partly from the proximity of all those lovely voices. By our joining in harmony, we somehow promise that we will not forsake each other.

I do believe this: These Lutherans are the sort of people you could call up when you're in deep distress. If you're dying, they'll comfort you. If you're lonely, they'll talk to you. And if you're hungry, they'll give you tuna salad!

The following list was compiled by a 20th century Lutheran who, observing other Lutherans, wrote down exactly what he saw or heard:

1. Lutherans believe in prayer, but would practically die if asked to pray out loud.

2. Lutherans like to sing, except when confronted with a new hymn or a hymn with more than four stanzas.

3. Lutherans believe their pastors will visit them in the hospital, even if they don't notify them that they are there.

4. Lutherans usually follow the official liturgy and will feel it is their way of suffering for their sins.

5. Lutherans believe in miracles and even expect miracles, especially during their stewardship visitation programs or when passing the plate.

6. Lutherans feel that applauding for their children's choirs would make the kids too proud and conceited. (Believe me, this is true. It was FORBIDDEN to clap during our Sunday School and Bible School programs.)

7. Lutherans think that the Bible forbids them from crossing the aisle while passing the peace.

8. Lutherans drink coffee as if it were the Third Sacrament.

9. Some Lutherans still believe that an ELCA bride and an LCMS groom make for a mixed marriage. (ELCA is the most liberal branch of the Lutheran church, LCMS one of the least.)

10. Lutherans feel guilty for not staying to clean up after their own wedding reception in the Fellowship Hall. (This is my theory: Catholic guilt is instilled by the priest. Jewish guilt is instilled by Jewish mothers. And Lutheran guilt is instilled in oneself.)

11. Lutherans are willing to pay up to one dollar for a meal at church.

12. Lutherans think that Garrison Keillor stories are totally factual.

13. Lutherans still serve Jell-O in the proper liturgical color of the season and think that peas in a tuna noodle casserole add too much color.

14. Lutherans believe that it is OK to poke fun at themselves and never take themselves too seriously.

15: My addition to the list: Lutherans never, ever, sit in the front row. It's that modesty thing.

And finally, you know you're a Lutheran when:

*It's 100 degrees, with 90% humidity, and you still have coffee after the service;

*You hear something really funny during the sermon and smile as loudly as you can;

*Donuts are a line item in the church budget, just like coffee;

*The communion cabinet is open to all, but the coffee cabinet is locked up tight;

*All your relatives graduated from a school named Concordia; (I wanted my daughter to go to college at Concordia Lutheran in Moorhead, MN; she would have none of it. "I'm not going to a religious school," she said, which is totally ironic when it turns out that she went to Georgetown University (a Jesuit school) and is attending grad school at Catholic University of America.)

*When you watch a "Star Wars" movie and say, May the Force be with you, you respond, "and also with you";

*And lastly, it takes ten minutes to say good-bye. (This is more of a Norwegian thing, but I'll accept it.)

And how do you tell the difference between a Catholic and a Lutheran?

Catholics glorify Mary; Lutherans glorify rice.

I hope neither I nor Garrison Keillor (a god to me) have offended you; it was all in fun. And if you get the chance, please read one of the Scandinavian/Lutheran books by the Lutheran Ladies.