Sunday Reunions

Yesterday was not only the day that the camp counselors came.  Our old campus pastor also came to worship.  I had time to reflect on our various journeys.

My spouse and I met at Newberry College, a Lutheran school in South Carolina that had more Southern Baptists than Lutherans.  Our campus pastor was also a professor.  Later, he would return to parish ministry and spend time as parish pastor at my grandmother's church in Greenwood, S.C., so I stayed in touch in a way I might not have otherwise. 

Much later, my spouse served on the board of Novus Way, the group that oversees 4 Lutheran camps and more programs than I could list here.  Our old campus pastor retired and found that he needed more to do than supply preaching--and thus, he travels across multiple states, supporting the mission of Novus Way.

Yesterday he came to our church for a variety of reasons; the main one was to give my spouse a beautiful print in honor of his service.  He also talked to the congregation about what their donations have made possible.  After the service, we had pizza and talked further.

At one point, I said, "Who'd have ever thought, back when you were my Phenomenology professor, that some day we'd be here, talking about church camp?"

One of the church members said, "Phenomenology?"

I said, "Yes.  I had to give an oral report on exorcism.  And one of my classmates was an ordained Baptist minister, and he said, 'Oh yes, I've done lots of them.'  And I never quite recovered my momentum."

Soon after that, we gave our campus pastor a hug, and he was on his way, driving all the way back to South Carolina in one day.  I said to my spouse, "I'm both glad that we're not making that long drive and slightly envious of that meditative state he might achieve."

We came home to keep working on projects, chief among them getting the cottage ready for the camp counselors.  I hope they'll be comfortable--I've done as much as I can do to that end, with the resources that we have.

Week-end Update: Graduation and Camp Counselor Prep

It has been a week-end with an odd mix of relaxing and getting things done.  When I look back on July and wonder why my writing didn't pick up once my intense online class ended in June, let me remember my spouse's intense July and how I tried to help him.

My work week lasted late on Friday, since I had to go to graduation.  In many ways, it was like most graduations.  Our Hollywood campus joins with the main campus in Ft. Lauderdale for the graduation ceremony.  Hollywood had far fewer graduates--let me remember these numbers when we compare retention rates.  At the Hollywood campus, most of our programs are still quite small--so when just one student decides to drop out, it impacts our retention rates far more radically.

Saturday morning, I got up with that barely-able-to-move feeling that's becoming more and more familiar--especially after an evening like Friday, when I was on my feet for hours.  But I drank some coffee and did some writing and eventually my muscles unclenched.

Yesterday my spouse and I began our morning together the way we have for several weeks now:  the task list and the divisions--the decisions about what must be done and what can be postponed.  And then the work commenced.  But we also had time to relax in the pool and to enjoy some burgers.

Our task list this week is complicated because we are hosting camp counselors who are coming to run our Vacation Bible School; see this post at my theology blog for more in-depth thoughts on this approach to VBS.  They will stay in the cottage, so it won't be as intense as it would be otherwise.  But it still involves some cooking, some cleaning, and some transport.

Late yesterday afternoon, I thought about getting some of the cleaning done.  I thought about baking.  But I was really enjoying the book I had just started:  American War by Omar El Akkad. Man oh man, is it a good read! It's a wonderful dystopian novel, set in the late 21st century. It's a fascinating way to look at climate change and refugee crises and the Civil War, both the one in the book, and the earlier one, the real one, in the 19th century.  These days, I get so little time to read the way I once did, when I just sink down into a book and settle in.  I decided to enjoy it.

Today I have a bit of time before the counselors arrive.  I'll do some cleaning and some set up.  I'll keep reminding myself that college kids who insist on resort style accommodations generally don't choose camp counselor as their summer job.  I'll keep reminding myself that hospitality doesn't mean that everything is perfect, but that everything is clean and comfortable with enough food to share.

Easter in July

Today, we celebrate the feast day of Mary Magdalene.  You might be saying, “Mary Magdalene? Wasn’t she possessed by demons? Wasn’t she a prostitute? Why would Christ appear to her anyway? Why does she get a feast day?”  Or maybe you remember more modern stories and think of her as Christ's secret lover and wonder if they had a secret family.

Or maybe you remember her in the Easter story as the first one to see Christ after the resurrection.  After Mary tells the disciples about the empty tomb, several of them race towards the tomb. They look, they assess, and then they go home. It is only Mary who stays behind to weep.

But because she stays behind to weep, to be still for a bit, she gets to be the first to see the risen Lord. The male disciples are first to see the evidence of resurrection, but Mary sees Christ. Soon others else will see him, but she is first.

The story of Mary Magdalene has much to say to us in the 21st century. We need to be reminded to stay alert for the Divine, and for each other. Busyness is the drug that many of us use to dull our senses. But in our busyness, we forget what's really important.

If we're too busy, we might miss Christ altogether. Both the Old and New Testament teach us that God will come to us in forms we least suspect. If we're not careful, we'll assume that we're not needed and go back to our houses. If we're not careful, we won't notice that the gardener is really Jesus.

It's good to be reminded of the resurrection story in the middle of July. Now the year is over half way done. We don't have the magic of spring to renew our spirits. We may be feeling scorched by the weather and by our dashed hopes for the year. It's good to remember the story that we can be part of; it's good to remember that we're promised grace and salvation.

Creativity Report: Thursday Night

Last night, I got home earlier than I have any other night this week.  I did some writing--a very small bit of writing.  Once I could write a huge chunk of short story, if not the entire short story, in an hour or two.  Now I feel lucky if I get a paragraph or two without feeling despair at not knowing how to write the story.

Next week we are hosting 2 camp counselors who are arriving to help our church lead Vacation Bible School.  Last night I found out that I'll be feeding them 2 nights, which is fine.  After all, when we agreed to host them, I assumed we might be feeding them dinner every night.  This week, my dinners have been my favorite:  wine, crackers, and cheese, which I feel O.K. about since I've been vigilant in portion control.  But that won't do for camp counselors.

I've had some poblano peppers that I bought when I planned to make a mole sauce.  They were on their last days, so I used the impending approach of camp counselors to make the sauce.  Later, I stuck it in the freezer for next week.

I had planned to collage, but I was running out of time.  I decided to go ahead and do it, just to see what would happen.  A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out some shelves, and I found a lot of materials that we kept in anticipation of doing more collaging.  I decided to throw away old calendars.  But I kept the envelopes of images and words that I cut out and saved. 

Last night, I decided that I didn't have to look through every envelope.  I found an old Christmas card that I liked, and I decided it would form the anchor of my collage.  I chose a few phrases, and a few other images.  When I was sorting, I came across a stash of mat boards that we bought at a sale long ago.  I decided on a purple mat board, even before I chose the images.  I love how it all came together:

I do notice that I tend not to collage like other people.  I have a lot of open space in my collages.  If I like the original image, it's hard for me to add other things on the image.  You'll notice that the Christmas card image is untouched, although I let things creep onto the white border.  The lantern had the purple glass.

When I used the modge podge, the images wrinkled a bit, and the blob at the lower right of the Christmas card formed.  I try to see it as part of the process, but my inner perfectionist is not happy.

If I look at this collage as a journaling exercise, it's clear to me what my soul is saying.  I'm ready for Christmas!  I'm also interested in more open spaces, in a different landscape.  What do those turtles mean?  Coming out of my shell or going in?  Wishing my house was more portable?

I didn't spend more than 45 minutes on this project, but I found it immensely satisfying.  Let me remember that for the future.

Love Each Other the Way You Have Loved the Monastery Dog

Near the end of our June retreat at Mepkin Abbey, I said, "I'm going to go home and love my husband the way we all love the monastery dog."

When I first met the monastery dog, I felt sorry for her.  I heard the story about how she appeared at the monastery in very bad shape, with a chain around her neck.  The monks took her in and taught her to trust the humans that show up at the monastery.

When I first met the dog, I thought about all the children who would never be part of her world.  But she has a never-ending supply of visitors who would likely pet her.  The monks take care of her.

I'm intrigued by how most people respond to the dog.  Almost everyone pets her head as she comes up to them with her wagging tail.  Many people kneel her level, all the better to be with her.  She seems to put most people in a better mood, and they respond to her accordingly.

She makes it easy to love her, in a way that humans don't always.  But how would the world change if we treated each and every human in the loving, soothing way that we treat the monastery dog?

I've had similar insights as I've watched toddlers move through the world.  I remember seeing a toddler in the process of having a crying meltdown in the parking lot--I'll never forget seeing the adult who was with her drop to her knees and talk in soothing tones.  It was so different than the way adults usually treat a child in the midst of a meltdown.

If we treated everyone that way, what a better world we would live in!

Lessons from a Pudding Quest

When we had a planning session for this quarter's Student Appreciation week, we knew that students didn't want to have a salad bar.  We did that for Winter quarter, and because we had so many non-perishable salad items left, we did it for Spring too.  We thought about hot dogs for our summer Student Appreciation week, but I knew the smell would be oppressive (to me, at least).  I suggested ice cream, with toppings.  But that could be messy, what with all the melting ice cream.

I said, "How about pudding?  We could have similar toppings, but the pudding wouldn't melt the way ice cream will."  And thus, we agreed to pudding.  I had a vision of big tubs of ready-made pudding in the refrigerator section.

On Monday, I went out to get the pudding.  I thought it would be easy.  I went to the GFS, the store that wants us to think it's a Costco or Sam's, but without those membership fees.  They had pudding in a can.  I haven't thought about pudding in a large can since my days as a counselor at Girl Scout camp.  I can't remember what we did with the pudding, but I remember that our can opener didn't work, and so we used a rock and our penknives to open the can--punch, punch, punch, all the way round.

I went to Wal-Mart--no pudding in big vats in the refrigerated section, and no instant pudding either in the powdered section.  I started to worry.

Finally, in the Publix, I made a decision, after briefly considering switching to yogurt.  I went to the powdered pudding section, and there were pudding cups.  I compared the price to the small vats of ready-made pudding and how much it would cost to make pudding.  The pudding cups were cheaper.  And so, I switched my plan.

The pudding cups had advantages I didn't think of.  I was interested in big tubs because I thought it would be cheaper than other options--likewise, creating our own instant pudding.  But in addition to being cheaper, the pudding cups were more convenient--we didn't have to spend part of our morning making the pudding--and more important, we didn't have to dish out pudding.  We still used some paper bowls because we had thawed fruit and whipped cream that we'd kept in the freezer from a past student appreciation event that featured waffles.  But we didn't have to portion out pudding, so our prep time was much speedier.

So, in terms of waste, we probably generated more trash with this event.  But I took the cardboard packaging home to recycle, so I'm hoping we're about even.  And we used up some of the frozen stuff which was probably reaching its end date.  Just add it all to my tally--I need to spend my retirement planting trees to make up my debt to the planet!

As usual, I overbought, because I didn't want to run out.  We still have enough pudding for another event.  And because I bought cups, the pudding will keep.  If I bought vats of pudding, or if we made pudding, we'd have a lot of pudding to consume right now.

I'm glad I was able to change gears and go with an approach that worked better than the one I was convinced that we needed.  I'm glad that I had to consider other options when I couldn't find huge vats of pudding.  I'm glad that students seemed delighted to have pudding, even though they didn't eat as much as I thought they would.  I'm glad that my initial frustration at not finding pudding ended in a plan that worked.

Injecting Fitness into Regular Life

This morning, I did a little running as part of my morning walk to the marina to watch the sun rise.

Let me clarify.  I say running; you might watch me and beg to differ.  You might use a verb like jog or something that denotes an even slower speed.  Still, I haven't run much at all, much less at a sustained pace that lasts beyond a block, since 2015.  This morning, I did.  It felt great, until it started to feel painful.

I'm not planning to try to get back to my younger self who could run long distances.  I do miss that ability, but right now, I'm just trying to inject a bit more exercise into my days.  Lately in spin class, I've been thinking about "pushes," where we speed up for just 30 seconds, and I've thought about using that principle when I walk--because when I walk by myself, I'm rarely getting my heart rate up.

This morning, I could feel my pulse pounding--in a good way.

Before I started, my foot and back felt good, unlike some mornings where I can barely limp through my walk--on those mornings, I persevere because the movement helps loosen up the soreness.  This morning, perhaps because of the heavy pasta meal I ate last night, I felt raring to go.  And so, I let myself experiment with running a bit.  And it worked!

I've been trying to inject fitness into my days in other ways.  I work in an office that has energy saving lights that turn themselves off when there's no movement; often that happens when I'm still at my desk, since the motion sensor part of the light is in a strange spot.   So when the lights go out, I use it as a reminder to stretch.

I've thought of using a calendar reminder to stretch or to leave the desk--but I know how easy it is to ignore that, once I've got it set up.  The lights going out are harder to ignore.

I feel some of my fitness levels ebbing away as I sit at my desk day after day.  It's good to remember that I can reclaim parts of myself that I assumed might be lost forever--particularly as I'm dealing with foot pain and back pain.  It's good to remember what can be done, even when there's pain.  It's good to remember that midlife has it's challenges, but those challenges aren't the final word.

It's a good larger life lesson too.