Last Sunday was absolutely crazy with the children in church. On recent Sundays and during certain portions of liturgy, LMark has behaved as if this is the time designated for his nap. If he is told to stand up for the Gospel, to bow for a censing, or to cross himself for Communion, he behaves as if he is about to drop dead of exhaustion. With activity from the other children who are trying not to interact and to socialize within an 8'x8' space on the women's side, it was--to say the least--kind of chaotic.
And of course, this is the time we get a visitor.
Providentially, it was not someone from the Bible College this time. Thankfully, he was Ukrainian Orthodox, so he knows that we allow children in the church.
Actually, we already knew him as a friend-of-a-friend. Sasha is a professional 7-string Brazilian guitarist who works in Atlanta. He graciously accepted when Fr Mark asked him to play a few songs for us. I was in awe of his playing and the beauty of his music. He gave each of us his CD which our family hasn't stopped playing all week. Ella is in raptures.
Out of curiosity, I emailed my brother to see if he had heard of Sasha, since the restaurant he plays is only a few miles away from my brother's house. Of course he had. But I was surprised to hear that he had been going to see Sasha for years, and it was during one of his shows that my brother had been so moved that he was inspired to go "run with the bulls" on a trip he was planning to Spain.
FR MARK: Did you tell him that Sasha plays Brazilian guitar...
ME: I mentioned it...
FR MARK: Pamplona is in Spain.
ME: Yes, I know.
It is actually thanks to my brother that I am able to record this tale at all. He gave me his old desktop computer when he decided to chuck all of Windows and go to Mac. This computer had been in a closet upstairs until my mother-board decided to die last Monday. I pulled it out and, with a few tweaks here and there, we got back to work.
My brother is a lawyer so he had three hard drives installed on this computer to hold all of the documents for his business. Usually I suffice with only one. So when I accidentally discovered he still had files on these other hard drives, I went looking...
Boring, boring, boring.
He did have a very large MP3 folder of music and artists I have never liked except for a few. Here and there it has been kind of fun. Otherwise it is like looking into a large and impressive collection of music I don't like and wouldn't listen to even if it was just to fill up the space.
I'll just listen to some 7-string Brazilian guitar and think of bulls.
