One body, different parts

Nancy and I visited our son and his family in southern California this past weekend. Great visit. Wonderful family time together.
It is always enlivening to worship in a different Episcopal congregation. They live and worship with a special emphasis due to their location and the presence of many military families that my home congregation does not. The different congregations are definitely “one body in Christ,” and we are different parts of the same body. Same blood, same "DNA" so to speak, but our bodies react differently to the different environments in which we live.
We are not frozen in one identical liturgy, one liturgy that could become boring and less meaningful. To me the way that we can adapt the liturgy to fit our place in "the body" seems most natural. And certainly our God who is more than we can describe, know, or imagine, is used to our varieties and our varieties of worship.

Children's sermon on the Prodigal Son

We have seen that children’s religious books and bibles take big life issues and describe the essence of them in simple terms. Adults can often learn important information by reading children’s religious books bibles. So too for a good children’s sermon.
Click here to view a video of what we think is a good children’s sermon on the Prodigal Son that carries and important theological precept for all of us. It is preached to the students at St. John's Episcopal Church and Day School in Chula Vista CA.

An acolyte video

Having worked with young people and in the Church this video by and about acolytes really tickles me. Perhaps you will enjoy it too.

Books at a liturgy workshop

Last Saturday Nancy and I displayed and sold some books at a local workshop for clergy on the topic of liturgy. It was very good to visit with the clergy for whom remains important to keep studying the liturgy to see how it can be kept fresh and alive. Actually, those dedicated indiviuals were quite inspiring.


That is a description of the ministry-which-is-the-store. As for the business-which-is-the-store, there was insufficient sales at the workshop to pay for the extra help we needed at the store so that we could attend the workshop with the books, let alone to pay for our time to order the books and attend our display. This is a continuing discernment that we work with. Do they pay for themselves? Usually not. Should we remain involved in them? Yes.

Erin

Okay. I can write on this blog again. The Busy Season had other activities for me, but now life in this ministry-which-is-the-store has calmed down.


Erin is an interesting and dear customer. She is located on the other coast of the country and phones us with book orders. Over the past year, without prying into her personal life, we have deduced that she is bed-ridden in a residential facility. A few days ago I asked her if the cherry trees were blooming yet. She replied that although the curtain is open, “they have not raised the shade yet.” She could not tell me if the cherries were in bloom.

On a regular basis Erin orders books, some new, and many out of print that I can find for her as used books. After several orders I inquired about her source for finding the titles. Erin replied that her source for the titles is from the bibliographies of the books that she has received from us. (Bibliographies are a treasure of titles that the authors recommend.)

Each of us looks forward to each phone call from Erin. The book orders are good, but better are the  brief conversations with a delightful, thoughtful woman.

You know politics is having an effect when...

We have a wonderful bronze plaque in our store. It reads:

Bidden or not bidden God is present.

A customer earlier this week, while looking at that plaque exclaimed, "Biden?! What is Joe Biden doing on a plaque in your store?!"
We explained that Vice President Biden has a single "d" in his name and the word "bidden" has two of them. We continued, "'Bidden' means to ask and the plaque is saying that whether we ask for God or not, God is still present with us."
She replied, "Oh. Okay. Sure, I know that."

Bob B.

I attended the celebration of Bob’s life today. He was quite a fellow.

For over 30 years he was self-employed as a supplier of office paper supplies for businesses in the Seattle area. Even though he “had no truck with organized religion” Bob lived the life of Christian service to others and had a big impact of everyone he met.

His family told stories to the overflow crowd about parts of Bob’s life that most of us did not know. As I remarked to another person on our way in to the event, “All these people. And I thought that I was one of Bob’s few friends through his business.” She replied, “Yes, me too. He had that effect on everyone.”

We were told that Bob had very few possessions and a huge heart for helping others. Making money was not important to him. Helping others was of utmost importance to Bob. By providing office supplies, his specialty was all sorts of paper products, to businesses he found that he could help others. Bob would go way out of his way to find and bring to you whatever paper product you wanted.

Learning more about Bob’s life was very inspiring today. He positively impacted the lives all that he met.