So many Wednesdays

Hello to another Wednesday morning.

I’m impressed and amazed at the number of Wednesdays there have been in my life. The days and weeks flow by like a swollen river, unceasingly.

Do I treasure each Wednesday, each day? It may be easy to take them for granted as they roll by but each one is precious to me.

Do you know the effect of your church's website?

Here is part of a message from a customer in Belgium.

I already got my book this Friday, July 20 (7 days delivery time). It was even faster than the previous order, maybe because the package was smaller. Thanks a lot and I have to say I appreciate very much the personalized way you make contact with your customers. I wish everybody would do as you do.

You may be surprised top have a customer in Belgium who is not even a native speaker of English, but the story is this. I discovered the Episcopal church by chance (or by the Grace of God?) in 2004. I watched the funeral service of former president Ronald Reagan at Washington national Cathedral on television and I was impressed by the beauty of the cathedral and the solemnity of the service. I tried to re-watch it on the web and so I discovered the cathedral's website and from link to link I learned more about Episcopal liturgy and I began reciting the daily office first on the Internet, than with a BCP I orderd from the cathedral's webstore.

... We have an Episcopal congregation in Waterloo, Belgium but it is not really close to my home so I go on attending my local Roman Catholic parish church but I use the BCP for my personal prayer and this combined trans-denominational worship fits me well, since I've always believed we are all christians in our common faith and catholic, anglican, protestant or other depending much more from our historical background or the place we live in rather than from a personal choice.

An alternative health care story

Today, the 5th of July, I joked with our FedEx delivery driver about having all of his fingers on the day after The Fourth Of July celebration. He removed his glove and showed me that he is actually missing his thumb.
Then he told me more of the story. In the country where he comes from he worked in a factory that made wheels. In an industrial accident his thumb was badly injured. At the hospital they had two choices of treatment. Those who had money had their fingers repaired. For those who could not pay for the repair the treatment was amputation. And that is why he has nine fingers today.

I stand with the sisters --buttons

We have a basket full of special campaign buttons that state “I stand with the sisters.” They are on display near our cash register for visitors to take and wear as it suits them. I am in full support of the women religious (nuns) and their plight with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. In my humble opinion the women have been doing the work of Jesus in their daily lives and work as they see it, for centuries. The bishops are wrong in attempting to curtail their work, for whatever reason.

The buttons express the wearer’s support of women religious. I wore one the first day. I have not worn one in the past few days. Nancy, immediately upon seeing them this morning, pinned one to her blouse.

My reluctance to wear a button has me trying to discern my feelings. Obviously I support the women in the devastating decision by the male leaders of their denomination. I can, and have placed political yard signs in my yard, at times. But I have resisted putting political stickers on my car and have not been known to wear buttons.

As I think about it, I think (but the person any one of us can fool the easiest is ourselves) that my reluctance to wearing a button is that I do not want to draw attention to myself (yet I am writing this message, these thoughts, that can be read by people I may not know).

You go, you women religious. Stand up for your values and your ministries. Speak truth to power. I support you. I just think that I’m going to leave the buttons in the basket on the counter.

Grandma Marshall, Tavis Smiley, & vacationing in Duluth

Yesterday I heard part of the Tavis Smiley show on National Public Radio. In the segment that I heard Tavis was interviewing a man who encouraged families to take their children into the wilderness in order to help teach the children the importance of wilderness in all of our lives. Part of his reasoning was that when children grow up knowing the value of wilderness we will be less inclined to agree to the removal of the natural resources, especially energy reserves, stored in the few remaining wilderness areas so that the those wilderness areas can be preserved in their natural state for the generations to come.

Tavis asked the man he was interviewing how poor families from the inner city could achieve that goal of having their children experience wilderness life.

I have an answer for Tavis. To my mind it fits with Tavis’ ongoing encouragement of each of us to live up to our potential. We can each do it if we put our minds to it and commit to it.

This is a family story that I been told by Dad about his life as a child, living in Duluth MN.

My paternal grandmother, Mary Richardson Marshall, was a petite woman no taller than 5’ 2”. She and her husband, always referred to as The Duke, lived in Duluth MN in the early 1900s where The Duke worked for the Northern Pacific Railway Company. For railroad workers at that time vacations were not included as part of their employment.

The Duluth Marshalls did not own a car and generally had no need of one. Here is the tale of how each summer Grandma Marshall took the family children, and sometimes their friends, on vacation.

After preparing for the vacation Grandma Marshall would hire a taxi to pick them up at their home. The canoe would be loaded on top of the cab and all of the stuff they needed for a week’s vacation was stuffed inside along with the kids and Grandma. The taxi would deliver them to the train station. Grandma loaded the kids and their stuff on the passenger train, canoe included. An hour or so outside of Duluth the train stopped and the entourage’ was unloaded from the train.

The canoe was filled with all their gear. Then everyone pitched in to carry the canoe about one mile down a path to the lake. Grandma Marshall and the tribe of kids camped at the lake for a week. They caught fish for dinner. They swam, played, and camped out.

At the end of the week they reversed the process. They carried the loaded canoe back to the train stop where they flagged down the passenger train. Everything was loaded on the train, and then transferred to a taxicab for the ride home.

My father said that Grandma Marshall organized this vacation every summer for several years.

A customer's reply to ordering a calendar in the month of May

I will share with you that I spilled a bowl of chili (yes, chili!) on my 2012 calendar yesterday and was glad that you had one in stock.

From a store visitor

Crazy people make roller coasters out of mole hills.