Friday

How many of you are doing the "tgif" thing today? It amazes me as I follow several facebook friends whose main status updates incorporate some version of longing for Friday--every day of the week! What is that anyway?

Maybe it's dissatisfaction with their job, or school. Problems with work-mates or unpleasant teachers; I don't know. Maybe it's just longing for some unstructured weekend time to catch their breath or get chores done. But then, first thing you know, they're moaning about it being Sunday and they've got to go back to work and long for Friday once more.

I took a look at Wikipedia and discovered just an enormous amount of information about Friday, its origins, rites and rituals associated by various cultures and countries around the world. Those are the Muslims at Friday prayer in the picture up above. Why Friday? Well, it's simple. For them the Jews had Saturday and the Christians had Sunday, so coming in five hundred years later--Friday became the Muslim holy day.

It's interesting how rituals get connected to days of the week. Many of us, without any Catholic connections at all, may still eat fish on the occasional Friday, just because it's Friday. Friday is the day of the long drive to whatever weekend destination feels right, despite the inevitable traffic jams heading out of the city and up the very same road. (A road that will be virtually empty next morning, but never mind.)

My weekends this summer have been practice time for retirement. Lots of sitting on the deck enjoying the silence. I'm reminded of Carman's lovely tribute from last year. He spoke of Bishop DeLapp and Doc Cheville and their two very different attitudes about retirement. Whichever one chooses, there is not much concern over which day of the week it is.

Welcome to Friday! may it be a good day for you. Enjoy your long weekend and next week we welcome Carman back from his well-earned vacation.

Posted by Marion

Summer

Summer is passing quickly. Somehow I knew that would happen, but I am still dismayed at the speed with which these lovely summer days are slipping by. What is the hurry? Summer just began, and already in the fields around the village where I live, the farmers are working on the 2nd cut of hay, the strawberries are over, the wheat has already turned to gold, and the corn…I swear it is growing at the rate of 6 or 8 inches a day! It seems like just last week those corn plants were just two little leaves sticking out of the ground, and now they are already five feet high!

A few days ago in this blog we were talking about the rapidly approaching camping season, and I recall writing that in a mere 13 weeks it would be Labour Day. Now it is a mere six! Summer is passing far too quickly.

At the risk of showing how old I really am, when I was a child, summer days seemed to last forever. I can recall being about three, and playing outside day after day. Then there seemed to be no end to summers but now they pass so quickly.

Of course buried in that statement lies the truth. When I was a child, I played outside, day after day with no other demands. Now the opportunity to play at all seems so illusive. And therein lies the problem.

It occurs to me that Jesus would not waste his entire summer on work. I can’t imagine it, can you? Somehow I see him saying to the disciples, ‘Lets go down the park and play some ball today, or maybe go for a swim.’ After all, does Matthew not tell us that Jesus actually moved and made his home in Capernaum by the sea (Matthew 4:13)? So what is with all this constant working anyway?

I hope you are able to take some time to enjoy your summer. You need to visit with friends, meet some new people, feel the sun on your face and smell the roses. You may as well; the work will still be there.

And if you need still further incentive, Let me remind you that December 1st is now only 19 weeks away.

Posted by Carman

Ice Cream

On Civic Holiday, Joan and I took the opportunity to go to Westfield Heritage Village with two of our grandsons; Aidan,age five, and Wyatt, age three, along with their Dad.

Westfield is a pioneer village in the Rockton area which is dedicated to teaching, by demonstration, how the pioneers lived and worked. The Civic Holiday weekend is the occasion of the annual Ice Cream festival. Given that it was close and would involve only a short car ride, it seemed like a perfect holiday outing. I learned a lot from this outing, and thought I might share some of my new understanding with you. Discerning what each of these lessons actually mean will probably take a little longer.

1. For a five year old, having a ride in a horse-drawn wagon is a lot more fun when you don’t have to wait in line.
2. Learning about weaving cloth on a barn loom is of practically no interest to a five year old boy, and being told that his great, great, great, great, grandfather was a weaver means absolutely nothing at all.
3. Watching the blacksmith hammer a red-hot iron bar into a pointed hook is infinitely more interesting than hearing said smithy explain the process.
4. Seeing how ice cream was made in small batches by putting cream and sugar into a can, surrounding that can with ice and salt in a larger can, then shaking that can gently back and forth, is interesting and fun…to a point. The idea of doing that activity for half an hour is not. Moving up a few decades, making strawberry ice cream in slightly larger batches using a hand-cranked ice cream church is also somewhat interesting, but the only part that really matters is tasting the final product.
5. Lemon Sorbet is much more interesting than plain ice cream, or even strawberry.
6. Tasting the quickly melting hand-made ice cream on the end of the wooden, teaspoon sized tasting stick is fine, but in the end, not very satisfying. Enough with the little tastes already! Can’t we just go back to the kiosk by the entrance where they sell the “real ice cream”! Real ice cream, I discovered, is already made by Bryers and fills a big cone!
7. The most interesting part of a steam locomotive is not the engine but the only part you are actually allowed to climb on; the caboose.
8. If you have been patient and are finally going to have fresh made caramel corn, having a small bag of your own that you can actually have in your hand is much better than having a huge bag to take home and share with everyone.
9. Even in a 19th century school house, teachers are teachers, and teachers think you should be able to do things for yourself, especially if you are five.
10. It is easier to be patient in order to have another ride in the horse-drawn wagon when it is closer to the end of the day and you are getting a little tired. It also helps that there are now more horses and wagons, and you may be able to ride in a different one this time.
    

Somewhere in the above list of observations, I am quite confident there are important life-lessons, even though I am not yet sure what they are. Perhaps you can see them. If not, maybe we each just need a big bowl of ice cream to help us figure them out. Enjoy!

Posted by Carman

Pace

Summer is definitely upon us. Carman wrote yesterday about our need for consistent rest. I have mentioned how our summers seem to have changed, to be somehow more full and hectic than I remember. It always seems we need to squeeze just so much into a limited number of warm summer days, weekends, weeks.

In many ways church activities do tend to slow down a bit as congregations shift to a different schedule, some even taking some time off to allow folks to vacation, go to reunions and camps or just step away from congregational responsibilities for a bit. Maybe some will even take a real vacation. But even there, somebody must do the laundry, the packing, the route planning, ticket buying, newspaper stopping, dog boarding, plant watering, lawn mowing...all the things that need looking after before and during an absense from home. Who hasn't said "I need to take another vacation to rest up from my holiday!"?

I'm off to Ziontario next week for Loaves and Fishes. It will be great to spend some time with family--while Art is quite present on facebook, I only get to give Eric and Tiona real hugs in person--so it will be special. I look forward to spending time with people I may not have seen in months with a little bit of slower time for chats under the trees or around a fire. But sometime between now and then I have a couple of sermons to complete and a few other items of business that just won't quit.

So this post is really just reminding us all to Pace Ourselves as we enter the summer season. Make sure to take that necessary rest time, to enjoy the people we don't see so often, to slow down and relax standards where we can, to ensure we set our priorities well. None of us, I venture, will do ALL we want to in the coming summer weeks. But we'll also likely do wonderful things we hadn't even thought to plan for. I think those latter wonderful things are most likely if we are careful with our pace of life and living.

Have a good summer everyone!

Posted by Marion

Read

Are you a reader? Do you read a lot? Do you have favorite authors or genres? Do the local librarians all know you by your first name? Do they know your tastes so well they automatically set books aside for you, knowing you will stop in one day this week to refresh your stock?

I used to read a lot of books. Fiction, non-fiction, historical fiction, biography; they were all companions I loved to spend time with. Having served twenty-three years in the publishing industry, perhaps that was to be expected. As a former children’s book salesman, my children’s library was also well supplied. Richard Scarry, Mercer Mayer, Robert Munch, and many others were wonderful family friends.

I still like to read, and usually have a couple of books on the go, but I don’t seem to have near enough time for it any more. Finishing a book may take days if not weeks.

What I read has also changed. Even when I lived in California, I was a devoted reader of Canadian fiction authors. It was there I discovered the revealing Vincent Lam and his title Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. Lately, however, I only seem to find time to read books I hope will help me in my ministry. Much as I value the insights gained there, I miss reading great and innovative authors like Yann Martel and his clever story The Life of Pi.

But Christmas is coming! Surely there will be time to take a few days off and just curl up with a good book! In particular, I think it is time to read a couple of works of fiction again!

So let me ask you; read any good books lately? Would you care to recommend an author or a title or two? What about your ministry list; read anything there you really liked recently? Let’s have a good conversation about the books we enjoy! Care to start it off?