Just a Quick Warm-up

I'm supposed to be writing my sermon right now. I know that it's really late on Saturday evening to be doing that, but it's not as bad as you think. So, I'm putting in a little warm-up writing time here.
DH and I went on a farmers market spree this morning and came home with all kinds of good stuff--peaches, blackberries, corn (less than 24 hours from the stalk), purple-hulled peas, tomatoes, squash, you name it. And some of this stuff--peaches, blackberries, corn, peas--I bought in bulk. I just finished (finally) reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and now I have this insane fantasy going about freezing and drying all this stuff for the winter. (Absolutely no canning, though. I haven't lost my mind that far yet.) So wish me luck. If I don't get this stuff put up before it starts going bad, I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing the inside of a marriage counselor's office.

I just listened to the most wonderful presentation by Phyllis Tickle. She preached this week at Mars Hill Bible Church and I picked it up on their weekly podcast. The main focus was on the seven most ancient of the spiritual disciplines, but she also spent a great deal of time talking about how religions, at least the Abrahamic ones, seem to go through 500 year cycles. At the end of each cycle, the church seems to shake itself loose from calcifications that it has picked up along the way and emerge, like a butterfly--to use a really trite image--new and fresh, with a fresh excitement and energy. She believes, and I agree, that the current emergence is just such a breaking loose and I am so excited to be blessed to be a part of it. What grace that God put me in this time! Yes, it can be scary, and I'm sure that we as a church and individuals will stumble some in wrong directions, and I probably won't live to see how it all shakes out, but what fun to get to be a part of it.

I really recommend that you listen to her talk. If you don't already get the podcast, you can pick it up here. I would love to hear what you think about it.

One down...
OK, another Sunday done. Each week gets easier as I start feeling the rhythm of the week, the rhythm of the services, and get more and more of a feel for who this church actually is. Today was, of course, the last Sunday of the month, so we had our regular potluck lunch after church. It was great. I really cherish every time I get to sit down with the folks from the church and just talk, with no business to take care of.

Last week was VBS, and it was really fun. I hadn't done VBS for a couple of years, so it was really great to get the chance to do it again. All went well. This group really does know how to handling programmatic things, but then, that's really the easy part of being a church, isn't it.

Son is back from camp. He's been gone two weeks and I have really missed him. I can't say I'm looking forward all that much to the empty nest thing that should hit us in the fall of '08. Although I can't say the same thing for Son. He's happy here (as much as I can tell) but I do get the sense that he's really ready to jump out of the nest and see what happens.