Happy 4th of July

I love the 4th of July! I love the fried food, the warm weather, and then the fireworks. For me it always takes too long for the Sun to pass through the horizon. Silently I will the Sun to move it's last sliver past the Earth so that my mind can be blown away by the magic of our hosts. I love seeing the contrasts of red/purple, blue/green, and orange/white across the night sky. And it amazes me the new shapes and designs within designs that the engineers come up with every year. I cannot wait for the day that a dragon such as the one Tolkien writes of at Bilbo's party come to pass!!

My fav. 4th of July happened near Hearing Beach in MA. I had heard their fireworks were pretty good and as I had never seen fireworks over the water before I was determined to go. So I picked up about 15 friends and we went to the beach for the afternoon playing in the water, getting bit by horsefly's, playing Volleyball, and eating dinner. Then around 9pm it all started but not at our beach. A town a few miles down started early with a HUGE bonfire and then they set off their fireworks. It was cool but I was disappointed because they were so far away and so we could not take part in the fun......then 5 min later fireworks again started going off. These were much closer and m0re colorful but again they were coming from another town a mile up the beach. Then BOOOM....BANG.....POP the fireworks I had come to see were here!!! There were all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors and they were beautiful. And the best part was that I could look all around me and see fireworks! I could look down the beach and I could see them! I could look up the beach and see them there too. And then I could lay down in the cool sand with my eye to the stars and see those explosions of light and be satisfied. And for a time I was able to put away my worries of Hebrew, and of my job, of the youth ministry I volunteered at, and how I was going to pay for the next yr of school and just be.

And so that time of year is once again here. I am looking forward to seeing friends, eating good food, and maybe throwing around a Frisbee, but the main attraction is those bursts of light and sound. And while they are often too short of a show they are none-the-less beautiful and make me look forward to the great celebration, the one that will never end, that is yet to come.