My friends, the time has come for Lori and I to take a break. We've been going flat out since General Convention last July, with fall classes, two EfM groups, Thanksgiving and Christmas, Yule Log hunt, confirmation class, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. We've been visited by the Presiding Bishop and the Diocesan Bishop. We've had four blizzards since the Fourth Sunday of Advent, and we've hosted the Parish Tea and the Pentecost Picnic. We've had more special Sundays than I can count. We've also had 10 funerals at St. Paul's since the beginning of the year.
It is definitely time for a break. Time to reconnect with family and friends far away.
That also means I will step back a bit from this blog. Not completely, but this blog can use a rest, too. I will post from time-to-time as events and the Spirit move, but not every day. So please check back, and we will pick up the pace again in July.
For now, let me leave you with a favorite poem by -- who else? -- Mary Oliver. I've used it before but it is well worth repeating. Enjoy your summer...
The Summer Day
By Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Painting of Evening Glow at Mono Lake, Calif., by Chiuri Obata (1885-1975)
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