Ruby Spider Daylily is the star of the garden these days
I’m a daylily fan
Daylilies are still blooming even though things are a little soggy. The blossoms look great with a few drops of water on them, but eventually most of them are damaged by continued downpours. Every garden has some old favorites like my Ruby Spiders in the featured picture. But there are also up and coming new favorites like Primal Scream and Angel Rose. I know most of the daylily names but not all. The nametags are always moving in the process of clearing winter debris away. A few years ago I started growing daylilies from seed and encouraging “volunteers” too. Volunteers are ones that sow themselves in your garden. I am reaping some pleasant surprises from these practices this year resulting in the chance to name some new varieties like Kel’s Purple Ripple and Kel’s Star Glow.
I am inspired by a traditional Fourth of July worship service
Celebrating the Fourth of July in the traditional way with patriotic hymns and maybe even the Pledge of Allegiance might raise questions these days. Is it too secular? Maybe even partisan? Or just distracting?
I have always felt very positive about a traditional Fourth of July service. I even find them inspiring.
First, a Fourth of July emphasis keeps the Sunday service relevant on a holiday weekend in the same way that we make services relevant for other national holidays such as Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Thanksgiving Sunday.
A song such as “America” which I nearly always choose is itself a prayer and very appropriate for a church service.
The Pledge Allegiance to the American Flag seems really to be an affirmation that we will do what we are commanded to do in 1 Peter 2:13, to submit ourselves to the human authority which is over us.
The phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance reminds us that our first allegiance is to God. When I use the Pledge to the American Flag in a service, I also use the Pledge to the Christian Flag. And I do the latter one first, noting that our first allegiance is to Jesus.
A Fourth of July service with patriotic overtones pays tribute to the Christian heritage of our country’s beginnings. Connecticut was founded by the Congregationalists from Massachusetts and had an established church until about 1818. We don’t wish to return to that but we do want to remember their legacy. In 1892 the Supreme Court declared, “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian” (Church of the Holy Trinity V. Unites States). So, there is a close interrelationship between the values espoused in our country’s great documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Christian faith that partially inspired them. A Fourth of July service reminds me of this linkage.
One of the subtle gifts of the COVID-19 time is to reveal just how restless I have become and urge me toward more quiet time with God. I have been learning to sit and be silent. One way to create opportunity for this is to hike to a quiet seat in the woods, to a place where a log fell across the path and has been cut in a way that leaves a great sitting spot along the path. I have also discovered listening apps on the computer. In learning to be quiet, I discovered that I often find it hard to stop to listen. My thoughts are too busy with what needs to be done, what I’m concerned about in my own life, and what is going on in the world. Sometimes I need to pray aloud through some of my concerns as I quiet my soul.
I have been discovering some listening apps that can help me. Here are a couple:
Each year for about 20 years, I have set up a Christmas train village and invited children of the church to visit and run trains. This year, due to COVID-19, the only visitors were my two grandchildren. I decided that I would still put the whole village up because my wife and I enjoy it immensely. The featured picture is of our granddaughter sitting in the set. The set footprint has been the same since I moved to West Granby, but it has gained many great houses including several Dept 56 pieces. Each year I tweak the set-up, changing a scene or putting a house in a different place. This year I added an engine which gave me greater flexibility in which trains I could run on which track.
One of the unusual happenings at our house for 2020 has been that we have been able to take a vacation week from the Monday before Christmas to the Monday after Christmas for the first time in our ministry. We had recorded the Christmas Eve service ahead leaving us free a few days before Christmas. Normally I am busy right through Christmas Eve. As a result. this year was a more relaxed Christmas for us. The added time has also allowed me time to play with switching trains around in the village. So you see pictures of different train configurations. Below is a gallery of shots. I have only included a couple close-ups in this gallery because I intend to do a follow-up post about the set details.
When my daughter was of age, I advised her bluntly; “Men want sex, companionship and help at home and in that order. If you give them all three and don’t get a wedding ring in return you are being foolish.” While I believe choosing marriage over living together is also the right moral choice, the reasons for such a decision are plentiful simply from a practical viewpoint. That is the key idea in this thoughtful and well-reasoned article affirming the wisdom of choosing marriage over living together.
It all began the summer after my freshman year in college. I went with my brother Al to a Youth rally at the Kanona Youth for Christ center, Kanona, NY. Afterwards we stopped at the corner Root Beer stand for a snack. Al was talking to Joe DeSerio, Jr. about riding to Alfred College together that fall, and I was left to talk to Joe’s younger sister, JoAnne. Soon after, my college roommate visited me and wanted to go out on a double date. So I called JoAnne. He was a photo nut always taking pictures and developing them himself by the page full. Well it happens he took a picture of me making a call for that date.
Calling JoAnne the first time
A month or so after I graduated from college, we were married in JoAnne’s grandparents’ church, Arkport United Methodist, Arkport, NY. Neither the little country church I attended (Haskinville Wesleyan) nor the little country church her father pastored (Buck Settlement) would have been big enough to fit all we invited. My brother Al served as best man as I did for his wedding three weeks later. Her brother Mark and my brother Phil were ushers and my brother Phil also decorated my Olds Dynamic 88 Convertible for the trip out of town that evening. JoAnne’s college roommate whose nickname was Jody served as maid of honor.
For the honeymoon, we didn’t have reservations anywhere, we just started out. We stayed in Rochester, NY the first night and attended Penfield Wesleyan Church on the first Sunday morning of our married life. Then we drove to the Adirondacks and found a place called Hemlock Hall on the far side of Blue Mountain Lake. We stay7ed in a cabin and canoed every day even though at that time, we were not skilled at it at all. After we moved to Kirkville, NY, near Syracuse and started vacationing in the Adirondacks, I found Hemlock Hall again and we made reservations this time and stayed in the same cabin on one of our big anniversaries.
Our married life has been blessed with many beautiful chapters so far. Like many young adults, we moved a lot at first. By the time we landed at our first church assignment in Bentley Creek, PA. not far from Elmira, NY, in 1979, we had moved about 7 times.
Wisdom is a key theme for my blog. I found this verse during one of my recent devotional times. It is a reminder of how important wisdom is to all our projects, both short-term and long term, both physical and interactive. Success in building for the future requires wisdom today.
This is a powerful article for today. The questions near the end could be used to help the thinking of every church leader and church council/board/session. We are coming to a major transition period when the current restrictions end. It is an unprecedented opportunity for positive adaptation to the true needs of our culture.
This year was JoAnne’s and my 50th Christmas. The grand tree pictured above as the centerpiece of our Christmas decor this year (2019) is our 50th Christmas tree. This year’s version (an artificial tree) is complete with train village and beautiful snowflakes made by our grandson. (For you who subtracted 1970 from 2019 and only got 49, please remember that in counting our Christmases, you count both 1970 and 2019 which will result in a count of 50.) I could not help but reflect how things have changed over the years. Memories flooded my mind and I paused again to count my many blessings. My mind went back to what our tree looked like on our first Christmas together.
Christmas 1970
I was looking at a photo album the other day for something else and there it was–a picture of JoAnne’s and my first Christmas tree together. What a contrast between the small little coffee table version that brightened our mobile home living room and the what is the focus of Christmas trim in our living room this season. That first Christmas tree was the natural kind you get by finding a tree growing out on the home farm and cutting it down. Sometimes we thinned a stand of trees and used just a top for Christmas. Notice that on our first tree, many of the ornaments were homemade. JoAnne made small holes in both ends of egg shells, blew the contents out, and then painted the shells and attached strings. You can see gold, silver, and green eggs on the tree. I made ornaments by folding cardboard into geometric shapes and covering them with foil wrapping paper. Then we added candy canes and tinsel. Notice that the side of the picture says April, 71. That was when we got the film developed. Remember those days?
An original ornament that has hung on all fifty trees.
If you look closely on both trees you will find this ornament. For the record, it is a homemade dodecahedron with the original foil wrapping paper. But what is special is that it has hung on all fifty of our Christmas trees. It has gotten a little shabby looking so some years JoAnne insisted that I hang it in the back, but it has been there to witness all those Christmases. It has appeared in seven or eight different houses. That makes it special.
