Deferred Maintenance and New Opportunities

I don't have as much time to write today.  I have to take the car in for an oil change, a task that has been on my to-do list for many months.  Each time I've returned from seminary, I've been determined to get it done.  But other tasks got in the way.  And yes, I do see a pattern, and yes, I do see a larger metaphor for the way I'm living my life.

This summer will be partly one of taking care of deferred maintenance:  finding a dentist and getting our teeth cleaned for both of us, a mammogram for me, an annual exam for me, a dermatologist for me.

But it will also be a summer of exciting opportunities.  I'm signing up for volunteer positions at camp, which starts June 5:  mail delivery to campers, help in the camp store, and being the Bible study leader for middle school campers during the last week of camp.  I always wanted to live in the residential section so that I could do these kinds of things, and I don't want to wait for some future summer.  My schedule has a way of getting crowded.

I will write more about my other exciting opportunity tomorrow, when I know more after an afternoon Zoom meeting that happens today.  I am going to be a Synod Authorized Minister for a church in Bristol, Tennessee for the next 9 months.  It is a very part-time job, which will consist mostly of preaching on Sunday mornings.  Bristol is 2 hours away from me, but it's a beautiful drive through the mountains.

What I find interesting is that it's not very far away from one of my ancestral home places.  My mother's mother's family had a farm in Bluff City, Tennessee.  My grandfather came from his family farm in Lexington, SC to his first call as a Lutheran pastor, serving 5 churches in East Tennessee. That's where he met my grandmother, and they decided to join their lives together. 

Last week, when I drove back to seminary, I had a bit more time, so I decided to drive by the church through Bluff City.  I had this idea that I might be able to find the family farm, even though I haven't been to it since the early 80's.  It's a romantic idea that comes from too much idealistic reading in my youth, the idea that the land will be a sort of homing device, or that some sort of matrilineal homing device is part of my body, handed down from the ancestors.

Nope--I didn't find the homeplace or the church.  I was working from a memory of a map, so I don't see it as an ill omen, just an amusing story.  I realized it would be very easy to get very lost, even with my magical smart phone, so when I saw a sign that would take me back to the interstate, I went that way.

So, let me get ready for the day:  deferred maintenance and new opportunities.