Cold

I wore my winter coat in the house all day. Typical winter day. It was probably about 15 C. Clothes hung out all day and are still wet. Mosquitoes are slow, but they're still around.

Church on Wednesday and Saturday was attended by several prisoners. Maybe "attended" isn't the word--they listened in by phone.

Jerusalem is an interesting place. But I didn't exactly have an interesting day. I was a bit sick so I didn't accomplish much. I don't have any cute kids that say cute things and do cute things. I didn't go anywhere except for a short walk and I saw nothing new. I did stop for a look at my favorite rosebush. I am tempted to cut a rose and take it home. Nobody loves that rose as much as I do. The bush usually looks pretty sad, but the roses on it are nice. I wonder if the bush were treated for rust would the flowers still be as good.

I didn't see the gray cat today. He's not an average cat, but a special breed of some kind. He frequently sits on a wall by the sidewalk, at a convenient height for me to stop and pet. After petting him for a minute I walk on, so he jumps down, runs ahead, jumps onto the wall again. He does this several times, then returns home. If I had a cat that nice I'd be worried someone would steal him.

I stopped to pet the fat yellow cat. I startled several wild black and tabby cats out of the garbage bin.

I transcribed several tune ideas from my recorder. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll be able to finish a tune.

Supper was supposed to be a delicious potato soup. It turned out to be a so-so potato soup. Try again tomorrow. Only without the potatoes.

I Found It!

I just stumbled across the verses that intrigued me some time back.

Compare Psalm 71:3 and Psalm 31:3 (written with middle part scrunched). Switch tsaddi and dalet and consider that hand-written vav's and yud's are very similar.

הֱיֵה לִי לְצוּר מָעוֹן    לָבוֹאתָּמִידצִוִּיתָ  לְהוֹשִׁיעֵנִי
הֱיֵה לִי לְצוּר-מָעוֹז     לְבֵיתמְצוּדוֹת   לְהוֹשִׁיעֵנִי

Or simply leave out vav's and yud's and an alef and you get,

לבתמדצת
or
לבתמצדת

first is "be for me a rock of strength, and for a house of defense(s) to save me"

second is "be for me a strong habitation, to come continually, you commanded to save me"

Also I find interesting that in the Psalms you can often change the line breaks and verse breaks without changing the meaning.

Winter rains

Fortunately winter rain doesn't mean cold rain. At least so far. It's more like spring rain. A bit dreary, but nice to have everything getting a wash-down.

Unless it's the clothes on my clothesline. Then it's dirt that washes down from the sky.

After living in Israel for a while, I find myself thinking of myself as Israeli. It's "us," "our troops," "our" prime minister. The day Gilad Shalit came home was quite a day for me.

Most of what is missing here is nature. I have never wanted to be a city person. I miss the grass, the open spaces, the nice parks in Indiana, the nice park north of Dallas, trees, waterfalls, etc. I thought I would perk things up by buying 3 house plants. I was horrified when I got home and realized that one of them had cost me $17!!!!! It has grown 5 new leaves and dropped 20. Oh well, it's trying--probably busy growing more roots. The other two look about the same as when I got them.

Cease-fire

A bus-bombing yesterday tied up traffic for a while. The last such incident, I hope, for a long time. Now all is quiet, and the air is full of a feeling of normalness. Almost boring. Nothing on the news, so now let's see, where was I...

For the last few weeks I've been working on power-points. Now, after finishing the job and getting a little burnt out on it, I'm ready to do something different. But first I need to re-arrange the flat. There, I said it. "Flat." Not a tire, but an apartment. I didn't know I would ever say that word.  While being re-arranged, everything looks a bit worse, but it will look better in the end.

Windows

I apparently napped through an alarm yesterday. A missile landed south of Bethlehem. I am on the ground floor, which is not as safe as the basement, but much better than the top.

Today is a beautiful day, sunny and cool. I spent quite a while in the laundry room. The laundry room has two big windows that have needed cleaning for some time. In the past three years I have washed mostly just the insides of them, reaching around the sides to get what I could of the outsides. I assumed they were too heavy for me to take down.

But today I decided I would just go ahead and take them down and clean them properly, even though, as I expected, they turned out to be quite heavy. It was very satisfying getting them down without incident, and washing all that dirt off. It was also a very satisfying moment when I managed to lift one heavy window with my weak little arms and push it into the top slot in order to put it back. But then I got a sudden leg cramp, so I had to let it down again before I could get it into the bottom slot. Oh well, Al will take care of that tonight. The windows are at least half-clean now, but that's 1000% better than they were.  (What kind of math is that?)

I need to make some carrot-cauliflower soup. Sounds like a boring job, but maybe after I get started it won't be so bad. It is hard for me to imagine how some women actually like to cook.

Safety

   Up till last week, I would have said that Israel, and especially Jerusalem, is one of the safest places you could possibly live. There isn't much crime, and I don't feel that there are very many weird or unpredictable people around. I don't worry about being out alone at night, unless in some very remote place. There are certain dangers which are the same as anywhere else, such as getting caught in a crowd of excited people, but mostly it is really civilized and sane.

   After two rockets landed near Jerusalem last week, my feelings haven't changed much. But if I am out taking a walk, I look at my surroundings a little better. What do I do if the sirens go off? I wouldn't be able to run home in 90 seconds. So I look for  stone walls, which are everywhere, stone stairways between stone walls, open parking garages, or simply the cubicles surrounding the garbage bins, cement and stone on three sides. The chances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time are very small. (Unless you are in the wrong place at the wrong time--then your chances are zero.) And "chances" are God-ordained. God is good, and we are in his hands.

   Daily life has more struggles and conflicts than a "possible" missile strike. Reality is that every minute I am awake I am bombarded by complicated problems of my own and everybody else's. If anything, the possibility of something sudden and unusual helps me get in perspective, to a small degree, some of the other issues of life. Instead of getting into a downward spiral of trying to figure things out and getting deeper and deeper into a muddle, I can just "do it." Your instincts sometimes cause you to do what's right. Wash the dishes, now! Pray, now! Forget making plans and schedules, just forge ahead. With a more alert and composed mind, I can either do something or do nothing, and have confidence that "His eye is on the sparrow," knowing that to Him we are of more value than many sparrows.

   And no doubt his eye is on cats, too. There are many stray cats in Israel. Thousands of them. (Not many mice, ha ha!) They look at you suspiciously, some of them almost wanting to be friendly, but they don't dare. Just like our life in this world. Since we don't belong here permanently, but are just passing through, we should be suspicious of earthly things that take too much of our time and affections, in order to preserve the health of our souls. God gives us all things richly to enjoy, but we are seeking the things above that cannot mold, rust, be stolen, or be bombed away.

Winter

Winter is here. In other words, it rained. And after having rained once (for the first time in several months) it will probably rain again. Especially when you need to hang out the laundry. Clouds come and go, rain comes and goes. It looks like it will be clear for a while, so I hang out the laundry and after an hour it is half dry but clouds are gathering. Do I dare wait another half hour? Do I bring them in half wet? Better than all wet. Or some days I leave them out all day, and it doesn't rain, but nothing drys because of the coolness and the humidity.

Rocket fire from Gaza is always on the edge of our minds. Not that we go around worried or scared all the time, but it adds something very serious to life, and our hearts are with people who are in real danger.

I have added several Psalms to my list. I avoided using them earlier, because they are usually just one or two verse, which is quite different from singing the Scottish metrical in groups of six or so verses each. But really they are quite nice, in spite of being very short.