Irony Becomes Her

On Something

Aduma's a sweetheart of a guy. If he hadn't invited me to join the happy throng at the Polyphonic Spree concert in Fort Worth on Friday, I don't think I would ever have wished I were on something. As it was, however, the colors and the euphoria wanted only a few hallucinogens to round out the experience.

If you don't know anything about the Spree, it might take more than a few sentences sufficiently to increase your understanding. It took me a whole concert to begin to grasp. I will try to content myself and you with a few keywords: robes, color, dancing, and the sun. It was like a charismatic worship service without preaching or God. All was happiness, all was sunshine, none made sense.

I managed to erase all the pictures on my Cheapo Freebie Digital Camera (CFDC) by trying to take a picture of it all. Randomly pushing buttons had always worked so well for me before.

Waking up the next morning was almost equally an experience. Dazed and confused, I wondered if I really could or should make it to Houston. I had promised several times to be at my friend's wedding, and the only thing that got me up and going was a sense of duty rather than of real inclination to make a drive which MapQuest described as taking over seven hours. Nothing heroic, nothing joyful, nothing Spreeish. Just, "Well, I said I would." Thankfully, as sometimes happens, that inferior motivation impelled me to a much more rewarding experience than I deserved. Perhaps the Holy Spirit takes what he can get in order to push us the right way.

The wedding went off with as few hitches as weddings generally have, none of them fatal. (No matter how much the bride or her mother worry about them, they rarely are.) A man with a much better camera than mine took a picture of me and a mutual friend and offered to email it to us, which he did with great alacrity.

Becca was one of the wedding singers and did a pretty good job singing a man's part in "You Raise Me Up." I find it interesting that when Josh Groban sings it, he's probably talking to some girl, but when Selah sings it, they mean God. How many love/Christian songs are like that? Don't we often put other people in places only satisfactorily occupied by God? And yet, the love between a married couple is a reflection of what the love between God and humans is like. For a Christian wedding, therefore, I found the duality to be appropriate.

On my trip to and from Houston, I saw a few of those things that make you think, "Huh."

• The second-slowest gasoline pump I've ever seen
• A business establishment with the following sign: "Kumon: Math, Reading, Success"
• Man-made fireworks against a backdrop of divine ones
• A highway sign which announced, without a hint of a smile, that I was traveling simultaneously on 6 North and 340 South.
• A cloud that looked like a pirate's head (CFDC photo below taken while driving and after substantial disintegration of pirate appearance)

I made it home safely and plumb exhausted. The next day I came down with a cold. Perhaps the Spree is not as wholesome as it wishes it could be.

posted by Lynn @ 7:33 AM