No Pips

What was I up to last night? Well, some of you may know that several years ago, Gladys Knight joined the LDS church. She assembled a 100-voice choir, Saints Unified Voices, and taught white boys [and others] to sing gospel and to *move* while they sing. I have their first CD. It is magnificent.

This weekend she and the SUV are here for four missionary concerts. The premise was that if you have friends who are curious about the church, you could buy tickets quite inexpensively and bring your friends, and if they wanted to know more they could later arrange to speak with the missionaries, and if they did not, they would have had a nice evening out with their friend [you] and Ms. Gladys and heard some lovely, inspiring music.

My friend P had invited two of her friends, and they bailed on her. She put up a post on the dinner group’s board asking if anybody wanted to go [the tickets were all sold, weeks ago]. I posted “Me, me, me, pick me!”, so my friend L and I met P over at her home in BigD [this is beginning to sound a lot like alphabet soup, no?], and we carpooled to the Dallas East stake center. Where we stood in line to enter the meeting house for 45 minutes and were not the only knitters in line.

The capacity of that stake center is 1300, so that’s how many tickets were printed for each performance. I saw no empty seats, but someone on the dinner group board said there were a few at the performance we attended. I did see a lot of discreet eye-wiping among my neighbors.

The choir sang several of my favorites from their first CD. It was the sort of evening that you don’t want to end. Her husband bore witness and gave his conversion story. And then she did the same. You cannot fake that kind of warmth, generosity of spirit, or conviction.

Today we are having the big stake sacrament meeting. The only ward boundaries unaffected by this are my best friend’s ward, the singles ward, and the Spanish ward. All sorts of rumors have been flying. Brother Sushi said at dinner on Friday night that 40% of the active priesthood brethren in our stake are in two wards: his and the one next to mine. And two of the wards barely have enough active brethren to fill the necessary callings [which is why Second Ward was dissolved five years ago]; one of those wards is Firstborn’s.

I don’t expect to leave the meeting feeling as devastated as I did, five years ago, when they dissolved my old ward and threw the children’s father into my new one, just as I was getting settled in. I do expect to see a lot of new faces at church next week. And I am feeling pre-comforted, if you will, by the knowledge that no matter how many faces from the ward before this one are in my new ward, I will only be there a few more weeks before moving out of the stake.

There are a handful people from the old ward who are in the next ward over and knew me when I was Poor Sister Ravelled and still treat me with the faint condescension they accord to women who divorce and/or who have had rebellious children. [Because obviously, their own children are angels.] It gives me opportunities to remember that the church is not a shrine for the perfect but a hospital for the sick or afflicted, even if there is some private disagreement on which of us fits into those categories. If I end up in *that* ward, I will chalk it up to Heaven thinking that it’s time for me to finish forgiving that handful of twits my brothers and sisters.

In the comic-relief department, there are new matches on the Churchboy Dating Service. One turned out to be a guy that I was bold enough to ask out during Leap Year eight years ago, who has politely kept a roomful of people between us ever since. So, no, I don’t think it’s going to be a match.

Maybe another half-inch on Anastasia yesterday; not enough to merit hauling out the camera. And not quite a full pattern repeat on what I think is going to be a happy confluence of yarn, pattern and tweediness with my much-frogged Denim Silk, so no picture there either until I know for sure.

Did everybody else get the email from KnitPicks about their new Gloss laceweight? Cue the Pointer Sisters, because I’m so excited!