Our hydrangeas in their summer bloom

Jack Thomas is a retired Boston Globe reporter. At 82 years old, he knows he is going to die. He knows he is going to die in a matter of months.

“After a week of injections, blood tests, X-rays, and a CAT scan, I have been diagnosed with cancer. It’s inoperable. Doctors say it will kill me within a time they measure not in years, but months,” Thomas writes in an essay published in the Globe last week.

In the essay, Thomas seeks to answer his own question, “How does a person spend what he knows are his final months of life?”

The preacher in me found three points in the text of his essay.  How does one spend his final months of life? Celebrating, remembering, and wondering. Continue reading →

Room with a view, but not perfect,

Becky and I have been road tripping. Sixteen states in the past four months.  All of our children and grandchildren plus some very good friends.  Along the way, we have stayed at a few hotels. Our most recent hotel stay was during our weekend in Menominee, Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula.  Between the two hotels in town, we picked the place Trip Advisor told us would be the best.  It was a good place to stay. Our room had a view of the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. The bed was comfortable, the sheets were clean, and the shower worked.  All we needed.

The first morning of our stay, we had breakfast at what had been one of our favorite restaurants when we lived in Menominee 25 years ago.  We were not disappointed. The omelets were wonderful and the view of the yacht harbor beautiful. Getting ready for church the next morning, we decided to opt for the hotel’s breakfast, and were disappointed.  Even by hotel breakfast standards, it was not good. The rehydrated scrambled eggs were soggy and the reheated bacon was limp.  I should have gone for the Raisin Bran. The third morning we hit the road early for our trip home and ate on the way. Continue reading →

Rambling thoughts after a weekend ramble.

Poetry is not my thing. Maybe it is my inherent lack of rhythm. Perhaps I am too practical a person. For whatever reason, I don’t get poetry and, frankly, I don’t care all that much for poetry. If ever I were to aspire to be a man of letters, I would need much remedial work in the poet’s art.

I thought well of myself, then, this past Monday as Becky and I were making our way across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We had spend a glorious weekend with friends in our old stomping grounds around Menominee at the furthest southwest point of the U.P. Our route along U.S. 2 on the south side of the peninsula and the shore of Lake Michigan was partly through the Hiawatha National Forest.

I turned to Becky and asked, “So other than Longfellow and the shore of Gitchee Gumee?” what did Hiawatha do to have a National Forest named after her? We had enough of a cell signal for a quick Google search. It turned out I would have scored some Trivial Pursuit points, but maybe not a pie slice worth.  “The Song of Hiawatha” is a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, and it is known for the line “By the shore of Gitchee Gumee…” (In fact, you don’t get to Gitchee Gumee until Part 22 of a way too long epic poem). But Hiawatha was not the princess I thought she was; he was an Ojibwe warrior in love with Minnehaha, a Dakota maiden. Continue reading →

In March we bought a new car. A Honda CR-V, it is our retirement-grandparent-road trip car.  We like it a lot. The Honda is a smart car, and smarter than any car we’ve owned before.  In addition to telling us when to change the oil and informing us of our current fuel consumption rate, the car keeps us in our lane, slows down when we’re too close to the car in front of us, and flashes a warning when there’s a car or truck in our blind spots.  One of the features allows us to round curves with our hands off the steering wheel (though the owner’s manual advises us not to take our hands off the steering wheel – ever).

The car can be a bit of a nag, telling us we’ve been a bit inattentive and that it’s time to stop for a cup of coffee.
 
The Honda is usually right. I did wander across the center line or forgot to use the turn signal on that lane change.  But it is not always right. It gets upset in some construction zones when its cameras and its algorithms cannot determine the lane lines in order to remind me to stay within them. Back in April we were driving through Montana when we hit a mini-blizzard and a few minutes of close-to-whiteout conditions.  Without a word of apology, the car told me its radar was obstructed and that I was on my own to make it through.  Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is July 4.  How shall we celebrate the Lord’s Day when it falls on Independence Day?  And how shall we celebrate Independence Day when it falls on the Lord’s Day?

I’ve just entered my second year of retirement, so the question of Lord’s Day worship on July 4 takes on more of an academic tint than it had when I was planning worship week by week.  For sure, my musings are more for me than for our church here in Auburn or the church we will attend this Sunday in Memphis during a visit to our daughter and her family.

The question of July 4 worship (or first Sunday in July worship) has been a question since maybe 1776, but perhaps it takes on a new urgency in a time when a malignant nationalism has badly infected too many American churches.

Some churches will drape the flag over their crosses, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing God Bless America, and, if their tech team is up to it, explode indoor fireworks during the worship hour. A few pastors may find opportunity to curse the country, while still others will faithfully preach the texts given for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Continue reading →