Julie and Julia

Yesterday I talked more than listened in the sermon, does that mean I preached? I think it was my first sermon in Fortuna.

We are starting a series about the Exodus and facing the new world in front of us. I have always loved the Moses story and it has been speaking to me for the two months I have been here. Sermon 1: we get trapped by tradition (Egypt) and it is a process to get out.

I don't know how many people notice the screen. But Christine has been running the computer the last couple of weeks and we are learning new things about it every week, getting better and better. This week, she was getting up hymns for the sing along as fast as people could request them. Great job, thank you Christine!

Harriet, Jennifer and I went to see Julie and Julia today -- again. I loved the movie when I saw it last week or whenever, and loved it more today. No surprise.

• I loved Julie Powell's book when it came out.
• I love Julia Child's cookbooks -- I don't have Mastering the Art of French cooking, but I have two of her Julia Child and Company books. I think I have made everything in them.
• Julia was one of my cooking teachers -- I love her TV shows and have been watching them for a hundred years.
• Cooking saved my life when I was in a bad place. I would watch a cooking show (usually from the Great Chefs series) go out, buy the ingredients and make it that day trying to make it look like the Great Chefs did. As I paid attention to the little details, I fell in love with life again.
• And I adore the fact that the movie is really about falling in love and being in love in all sorts of ways. (The movie is such an oddity. Two married couples, wonderful rounded human beings. No affairs, no stripper bar down the block, the world does not end tomorrow nor do people get gunned down in the street. It takes a long time to get goals met, and loving is something that happens over a long time.)

Thank you Nora Ephron and everyone else that made this wonderful, spiritual, movie. You have lifted my spirits, made me laugh and laugh, and reminded me of some things that are very important to me.

I know in the church, we are suppose to say that it is just Jesus that saves us. But the fact is that it has always been a non-theological two way street. That is, our theology says that Jesus saves as a sheer act of grace, but we also have to get off our backsides and do something. (The Israelites have to pack and get out of Egypt).

Have you taken on a discipline or project that saved your life? What was it?

picture from http://bookpage.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/julie_and_julia.jpg