Diversion

Monday was my day off, the first one since Thanksgiving. It has been a busy period, with preparation for Mission Centre Conference, the conference itself, meetings with our Apostle, a couple of conference calls, two trips to Buffalo airport, plus meetings this past weekend in London, Owen Sound, St. Thomas, and Barrie. I was beat, and the next few weeks will be just as busy.

Despite that, I found it hard to turn the mind off on Monday morning. Since I was way behind on email, I decided to work for a while to try and catch up a bit. It is an odd paradox that my mind would not disengage, and yet my heart just wasn’t in it. A change of pace was needed.

Some time past noon my son called to see if I could give him some help rebuilding his deck. He doesn’t often ask for help, and since my work often involves weekends, I am often not available when he does. I decided to go, hoping it might help me get my mind off the many church matters that seem so pressing. It would be a welcome change.

For several hours we worked together, pulling nails, removing old deck boards, and figuring out the best way to repair the structure of the deck itself. When my grandsons came home from school, the older one wanted to help, as I knew he would. He became an enthusiastic junior worker pulling bent nails out of old deck boards, under grand-parental supervision of course. Then after supper, there was time to read stories before bedtime (theirs, not mine).

All in all, it has been a lovely day in the fresh air and a nice diversion from work. There was no rain, and even a little sunshine. Now I feel as if I can face the waiting tasks at hand, or at least some of them. This week there is planning to be done, several daytime and evening meetings to attend, and a Temple School course to prepare before next Saturday. A day off has restored some sense of balance to life, and things will be okay.

What do you do for diversion? When life is busy with work and other pressing matters, how do you find a change of pace to recharge your personal batteries? Do you have trouble finding time to do that? How do you make it happen? Will you share your best learned tips with the rest of us?

May you find the necessary time and diversion to restore yourself today.

Posted by Carman

Thoughts from the Summer Kitchen

To cook or not to cook; that is the question. Whether it is better to turn on the oven and heat the house even more or eat peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of the week.

It is not nearly so eloquent as Shakespeare’s soliloquy in Hamlet, is it? Nor is it likely to last for 400 years and more, stimulating the philosophical imagination of millions of people. No, it is just the question we face on these hot summer days. For those with air conditioning, the question may seem even more significant as we pay to cool the house and then deliberately set one appliance working against another!

Many years ago when I was a youth, farms had no air conditioning but some had summer kitchens to solve this dilemma. This was a room on the back of the house, or sometimes a separate building with the capacity to prepare meals or do the home canning without heating up the main house. There would be some kind of big stove (wood fired in the era of my childhood), and at least one big table on which to prepare the food to be cooked. In some climates, it may have been a room with less than four walls, which would not keep out the flies, but would at least allow in any passing breeze.

Whatever happened to summer kitchens? Did urban dwellers ever have such things? Did they just become too expensive, too luxurious for the modern world? Did the era of the supermarket and fresh produce all year round supersede the need for such a device?

I stand in my kitchen and idly ponder this question of no importance at all, then glance out the window to my back porch where my eye falls on what I realize is probably the modern equivalent: the bar-b-que! Talk about miniaturization; a whole room has been replaced by a fairly small device! Of course you are unlikely to can your peaches in the bar-b-que, but most of us don’t do that any more anyway, do we? We simply store all those sealers in the cold room in case we ever decide to try it again. Mostly we just cook frozen hamburgers and hotdogs. Oh there are persons who are really industrious who try some more exotic creations in the name of keeping the house cool; my wife once baked rhubarb crisp in there, but mostly we don’t, do we?

All of this means nothing at all that I can think of, and that is exactly the point. Every one of us need time, once in a while, to contemplate what are merely the musings that get caught in an idle mind. It all rather reminds me of Eeyore in A. A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner;

They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake.

How delightful! No wonder I love Pooh so much.

I hope you are enjoying your summer, and blessed with time for some idle musings of your own.

Posted by Carman

Streams

It is a beautiful, spring, Saturday morning and the sun is beaming its life-awakening warmth on the reviving earth below. The sunshine calls me outside for my morning walk where a surprising abundance of springtime memories await. The first of these calls to me from what may seem the most unlikely of places; the roadside ditches. Little streams of water flow in those ditches, and they immediately carry me back to the 3rd concession of Eastnor Township in Bruce County. I am, once again, walking that 1 ¼ mile gravel road home from school, and watching with fascination the ditches alive with the spring run-off caused by melted snow. I must stop to look.

I hear the sound of the small rivulets of water as they flow steadily along, creating gurgling rapids as they go. The water runs from this ditch to a larger one, and eventually makes its was to Lake Huron just a few miles distant. I marvel at how clear and clean the water is as it washes over last year’s grass and the earth below, and I wonder again how that is possible. It was an earlier time, before words such as pollution had become part of our usual lexicon or our daily worries. I recall being so tempted by these cold, clear streams that I would bend down and scoop up water in my hands to drink. It was my own private sacrament. Water never tasted sweeter.

Back from that brief reverie, I continue my walk and soon recall another stream. This one is a little larger and runs through the country property of a friend. When I first noticed it, I recall asking if there were any fish in that stream. “No,” my friend replies, “there used to be lots of them, and all different kinds, but that was before a local farmer spilled some fertilizer and killed them all. Now they are all gone.” I am shocked and saddened.

I return to my walk. I see a coke can in the ditch, obviously thrown out the window of some passing car, and am surprised that people still do that. I think of the wise counsel we now refer to as Doctrine and Covenants 163, and of verse 2b in particular.

Generously share the invitation, ministries, and sacraments through which people can encounter the living Christ who heals and reconciles through redemptive relationships in sacred community. The restoring of persons to healthy or righteous relationships with God, others, themselves, and the earth is at the heart of the purpose of your journey as a people of faith.

I need to restore a healthy relationship with the earth; we all do. The little stream in the ditch beside the road reminds me. It is a restoring moment.

If sacraments can be defined as sacred moments, then not all sacraments occur in church. May you be aware of your sacred moments in the streams of your life today.

Posted by Carman