Beangirl was sick at home two days this week. Not much fun anytime, but it is really hard when you have just started at a new school. So we have been trying to keep fun on the agenda. In between long naps on the sofa and the general business of feeling dreadful.
Andrew Stephens-Rennie posted this brief but provocative thought on Empire Remixed this week, and I wanted to share the idea here. Is he onto something? Are we mainlining Presbys wishy-washy on resurrection?
A couple of months ago, I went to the baptism of a little boy named Isaac. He is the son of good friends of mine and the happy first born in their family. The baptism wasn’t in a Presbyterian church, so some of the liturgical furniture was a little different. But that was all to the good.
Although we’re almost a month past the bonfire date, that issue is still in the air, primarily because it wasn’t a new issue in the first place. The Rev. Terry Jones merely announced an already awkward reality, loudly and dangerously.
September is always about the creation of the world. After the summer’s haphazard ways, we find new patterns and new ways of being. It is, as Thomas Merton once wrote, the time of year when everyone is filled with ambition.
And then there are the little details. How do we all stay clean, and how is that going to affect the fragile planet?
Okay, so perhaps not so little.
Growing up, every Sunday morning saw me in a big stone church in downtown Ottawa. I was one of the kids in the pale blue choir gowns, my pigtails scruffily bunched up (again), much to my mother’s chagrin.
It was one year ago this week that the Spouse lost his job. The timing of this only occurred to us a few days ago as we drove to the airport.
Every library needs a reference section, and, so too with my bookshelf. I have recently been considering a couple of useful advice books that have worked for me like reference books.
My bed is covered with things. More specifically, my bed is covered with clothes. Clothes that need to be sorted and packed and, well, disposed of.
A teacher friend of mine tells me that kids in the classroom aren’t responding to quiet voices.
In teachers’ college, student teachers are taught that to get the attention of a class, the key is to lower your voice, not raise it. But apparently, it isn’t working anymore. Kids today are just too used to screaming.
Perhaps most parents don’t take their four year olds to see modern dance. There certainly weren’t any other kids present. A teenaged boy lurking with his dad in the back, but nobody remotely pint-sized other than Beangirl.
This morning, we’re snails again. We’ve got the old station wagon packed to the gunwales, and we’re heading east again.
Growing up, I spent all my summers at camp. Yes, we’re talking a good old Presbyterian summer camp with moist cabins, the outdoor chapel overlooking the lake, canoes and mosquitoes galore, cabins and campfires and all that.
What books are important to you right now? What is on your bedside table? What’s overdue on your library card? What are you taking to the cottage?
For us, this is the last irrelevant summer vacation for a while. This fall, Beangirl will be starting school, as will Spouse, who will be wading into grad school and all that might bring. Come September, it will be a whole new chapter for us, so this year, we mean to soak up as much summer as we can get.
As of today, I’ve been a mother for four years. If you count the birth of the child as the birth of the mother. My own mum counts up the ages of all of her offspring and calculates it out that way. Impressive when she does it; I’m just getting started.
Ah, Father’s Day.
I love the idea of a day set aside to help us fulfil that tricky fifth commandment.
Kids ask hard questions. And we lucky parents get to answer them. How’s this for practical theology?
“Who are we to say what God finds proper?” So this week, I’m thinking about play. And playgrounds.