count your blessings

Aaron and I got very lucky when we moved into our apartment, because our church ward just happens to be thebombdotcom. It's tiny both in members and geographical boundaries but it's diverse and runs like a family and feels like a perfect fit for us. It only got cooler when we found out our bishop is a musician who has recorded with the likes of the one and only Tom Waits.

So a few weeks ago, Aaron came home from a church meeting and asked me if I knew the local group The Lower Lights. I did cus I listen to music other than rap and also Clifford family favorite Paul Jacobsen is a member. They had an upcoming show that I had wanted to go to but it unfortunately overlapped with a previously planned engagement so I didn't think we could make it.

But Aaron informed me that as it turned out, our bishop was also in The Lower Lights. He had gotten tickets for the young men of our ward for an earlier show that had been added to the evening...which meant we could also totally go. I told my family about it and my dad decided to join us as well as Christopher and Tasha and the boys and my mom and her husband too. It was that snowy Saturday before Thanksgiving and as people came into the theater, shaking off the snow from their coats, we noticed that not just the youth were there, but a bunch of grownups and families from church had also come. Before the show started I walked around chatting and showing off Wyatt in a setting outside of church with the people who feel more and more like friends to us rather than just Sunday acquaintances.

And then of course the music was wonderful. I'll talk harmonies and steel guitars any day, but it was especially nice to hear them used to folk up hymns and give a little more volume to songs that are usually played under more conservative constraints.

Plus as someone who firmly believes that there is room in the LDS religion for all kinds of personalities, political beliefs, interests, tastes and appearances it was nice to see the guy at the pulpit also be the guy in the band (he's usually a drummer but was only in picture view when he played the tuba...I know tuba alone doesn't quite scream rock and roll!).