Categories
Journal

Celebrating Christmas Village 2021

Pano of our Christmas Village
Wide angle view of our 2021 Christmas village

What’s New?

There are always new twists and challenges to the annual Christmas Village that I am privileged to erect in our current parsonage. This year, we decided to downsize on furniture a little and sold the big bookcase which has bordered the right side of the Christmas layout since we moved here. So I needed to invent a new treatment for the right side. However, I used familiar scene concepts in doing so. The street of shops in the back became longer so added a new Dept. 56 Dickens series bakery and a gas station. The homemade fencing that I picked up second hand at the train show combined with a lighted fence that I had not put up before, really added to the church and school scene on the right front. On the left side, a couple years ago, Cherie suggested that a log cabin would look cozy on the hillside. This year I found a Dept. 56 one and modified the slope just enough to add it in. I like the result.

More Pictures

I keep improving our Christmas village for a month or so and usually take pictures until I tear it down for the year a couple months later.  But I took some early ones this year to share.   I will try to post again using a better gallery block.  

Track issues

A few years ago, I switched all my track over to Lionel FasTrack. I added a foam layer under it to reduce noise. But since I tear up the track and put it down again each year, and since the lower levels are on the floor and some parts get walked on, it is beginning to show wear. Occasionally pins break and subtle corrosion will prevent good contact causing a train to stop. I overcame these by a combination of soldering a wire underneath to bridge broken pins and applying an anti-oxidant product called Ox-Gard to joints. Also, the track pieces sometimes bend slightly from being walked on which can cause issues with keeping Thomas the Tank pieces hooked up. If detected before you put it down, they can be straightened.

Categories
Journal

Houghton College Honored Again

Houghton College is the college that I consistently recommend to superior students. This fine institution has again been highly recognized by two national ranking organizations. I served for six years on the board of Houghton College and both my wife and daughter are graduates. So I know personally that it deserves the accolades it receives.

Categories
Americana Country Touches Journal Who Am I

Daylily season underway

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.

Some pictures for you

More daylily fun

Three more, two without names.

Categories
Americana Journal Wisdom

Why have a 4th of July church 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.
Categories
Journal

Learning Quiet

Finding new ways to be quiet

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:

YouVersion Rest

Abide App

Categories
Americana Journal Who Am I

My Christmas Village and Trains

West Granby Christmas Village and Trains

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.

Categories
Journal Wisdom

Living Together is Unwise

A Wise Article

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.

Categories
Journal

Celebrating Our 50th Wedding Anniversary

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
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.

Categories
Journal Joy Notes Meditations Wisdom

Wisdom is needed

A key verse

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.

Categories
Church Leadership Forward Look Journal

Thinking Ahead

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.

outreachmagazine.com/interviews/54136-the-future-is-now.html