Thrift Stores and Stonehenge

Cana and I tried to go two different stores in Westport today, MisKnits and Boomerang and both were closed. We were, as she said, bummed. I suggested we go thrift store shopping, and we did and had a good time! We went to the three in south Waldo on Wornall--2nd chance thrift store (that benefits City Union Mission, I think); DAV that supports the DAV; and Goodwill, which cannot be visited by me without me wanting to tell someone that Sam Cox, the former CEO for Goodwill International, is my brother. Which would only make me feel good, and only, then, for a moment since no one working there would know of whom I speak and would look at me strangely. I resisted today.

Of the three stores, our favorite find (which we did not buy) was a Stonehenge Snow Globe at Goodwill. The picture below is a photo of one just like it. What a find!!! We laughed a lot, which was the best part of our outing. At DAV, the most thrify of the stores, I bought a green paisley plastic waste can for my porch/lanai and a backscratcher with a massage roller on one end and vintage corn on the cob holder-on the end thingies that probably have a name. Twas a good afternoon, most especially because I got to spend it with Cana, who is the most delightful person I know and on a serious note, is very concerned about the outbreak in violence in Iran.

Braggin on Buckner's Baby Grace one more time...

Baby Grace is the person to person ministry between persons of the Buckner church and teenage mothers in there area---it started with the UMW there, and was begun by Anne Farmer and Juli Yocum, UMW leaders---Anne is a teacher at Fort Osage and new the need and over the last two years the program has grown.

Today was a Baby Grace open house where the moms and dads come in to pick up free clothing, baby items of many types (strollers, car seats, etc) and toys. There's a lot more to the program than that, but I thought I would just share with you some pf of the pics from today.... There is one is of the pastor Robb Webster, Anne Farmer, and Juli Yocum; there is another of Marilyn Yocum, Juli's mother in law and the widow of one of our pastors, John Yocum. The other are of moms, dads, and kids or kids in vitro---there is one of me holding Austin...his mom was going through clothes. I'll try to post more on Facebook tomorrow.

There is No Upside Down with God

A little ditty for those struggling with debt (sins) or debt (money) Hearing the "upside-down" phrase to describe folks who owe lots more on their houses than what they are worth, has inspired this. You can sort of sing this to The Lily of the Valley. Sort of. Tongue in cheek, sort of, too. But maybe not.

There is No Upside Down with God

The worldly way of living

Numbs us to all things hard

Its lights are shining brightly

Like a golden Visa card

Just say "no" to earthly treasure

Turn round and feel His grace

He loves you through each sin and bad mistake

In debt, He's our forgiver

In debt, He is our gain

Your net worth is that you are His precious child

No, there shouldn't be a worry

That you'll be foreclosed on

For there is no upside down with God.

Watch for more verses as the mood strikes!

If you are silly enough to want to use this somewhere (which I really can't imagine) ya might wanna figure out some way to say where you got it...WHY I would want credit, I'm not quite sure....maybe I am being attracted to those lights that shine like a golden Visa card.

First day in for a first time full time pastor

The Voigts are moving in to the Weston parsonage as I write-- Jim, Kim and daughter Alexis. It worked for them to move in their "stuff" before they took some time to see friends and vacation a bit. Jim will be preaching on June 21 as his first Sunday.

I didn't get to Weston until nearly 9:30 pm tonight, having been to another place in my district earlier this evening. I was having a bit of a problem finding the parsonage even though I have been there several times and stopped and asked a policeman in his car in a parking lot if he could tell me where the "funeral home with the house owned by Weston United Methodist Church" was. I knew the funeral home was next door. He said, "You mean the house where all the people are moving in?" and I said that that would be the one. Actually there were only 3 people moving in, but several folks from the church, plus some family were there to help move stuff off the Penske truck.

The song, "We've Only Just Begun" kept running through my head as I left...I just found the words online and of course it is a sort of corny song about getting married sung by the Carpenters and was sung at countless weddings where brides wore broad brimmed hats and grooms wore groovy powder blue tuxes in the 70s and 80s. But I was hearing it run through my head tonight because of the first line "we've only just begun to live." And also for the second verse:

Before the rising sun we fly,
So many roads to choose
We start out walking and learn to run.
And yes, We've just begun.

To me, that is the way it feels at the beginning of a new appointment every time, but for Jim, its the first time. Jim, I hope you choose the roads you take with Weston imaginatively, with courage, creativity and compassion and that you always know that God can do far more than any dream or imagining we can have.

And welcome, big time, to the Heartland North District, where by grace you will walk and run and fly!

Gettin over it....

Today I started the 30 minute walk that Virgin miles recommends. They say 5 times a week is best but I think 4 for me right now is about it. I don't have my neat pedometer yet, but ordered it yesterday. There are basically two areas to walk to/in- around my home-the Plaza two blocks south or Westport three blocks north. I found out today that it is 15 minutes to Panera's in Westport the way I walk. If you walk from my condo to Westport, it is nearly impossible to miss walking on a sidewalk that belongs to St. Luke's Hospital. But I am not at all happy about how our insurance program no longer works at St. Luke due, I think more to our insurance program than St. Luke's. So I tried to avoid St. Luke's, which I did until when walking back by a different way than I had come, the sidewalk where I had hoped to walk and thus avoid St. Luke's, was, alas, blocked by an underground cable truck, and, alas and alack, I had to walk on the sidewalk by the parking garage for St. Luke's on Broadway. And as I crossed the street to get there and avoid the truck, I whiffed a lovely sniff...it was the trees that bordered the sidewalk ---the parking garage on one side, the trees on the other. It was a gentle, not clinging fragrance and not only that, the five trees along the sidewalk offered a cool canopy under which to walk.

Maybe I had best buck up about St. Luke and pray that somehow soon we will be able to use them again. Actually, two weeks ago, when Cana had to be rushed to the emergency room with pain in her side, I did take her to St Luke's, and the folks were wonderful. At one point her doctor was talking about admitting her, and we all thought we were going to have to drive her to KU med center, because of the lack of hospitalization insurance with St. Luke's.. The accounts manager for the hospital was there that Saturday, came down and talked with us, and said that she could be admitted and with a little fancy penwork by him, her bill would be treated as if she did have an accepted insurance.

So all in all, St Luke has been pretty nice (and gives good medical care) to us and to the many parishioners I saw there over the 5 years I was at Broadway. I will, in fact, walk that walk through the cool, aromatic lane of trees this summer, and be thankful.

PS Here is a little branch that had fallen from one of the trees. I am far from being a botanist...anyone know what it is???

Outside My Condo

Here's a picture of how it looks outside my condo, taken between the vertical bars that provide air and light and hold up the screening. I guess the bars were meant to be discouraging of thieves in the night and also I would guess they were part of the architectural plans to make this a very hip looking place in the mid 60s, which it is, in my book, in 2009,

However, bars and cool mid century looks aren't the only thing outside my condo. Off our courtyard, there are seven doors that lead into seven homes, one of them being mine. I know by sight all of the other six condos' occupants, and have had multiple conversations with three of them. One of those three is a a woman in her late sixties, I would guess, retiree, who volunteers on the Plaza weekly for something I am not quite sure of; one is very fun and interesting older woman, whom I am told had a several-year-long close relationship with the drummer of a long time jazz group here in town; and the third is Eddie (and Rebecca)--They are right next door; Eddie works for Children International and this is a very nice couple.

Somewhere out there (actually I know where they live) are my condo neighbors. If you look closely at the picture you will see that there is another patio/porch that is like mine, but smaller, across the courtyard. One day a month or so ago, when I was home in the afternoon sitting out on mine, I heard the TV across the way---a televangelist preaching. I thought, hey, there's someone out there (actually the blond woman in her thirties who seems quite nice but I don't know her name) who finds some meaning in the Gospel, or at least may be just trying it out right now. Enough to start a conversation on, I must say. And I didn't but I will. I will have willpower, not won't power. Lord keep my ears and eyes and heart open. Amen

The Drive Home...

I'm back!!!! Kevin Buckrucker wrote me a note this day at AC saying it might be a good idea to go home and hug the kids and write on my blog. And thus, so directed by the best darn District Lay Leader a district and superintendent could ever have, I do.

I just strolled through Facebook and saw gobs of positive comments at AC. I believe it to be one of the, if not THE most inspirational ACs of the 38 (!) I have attended and apparently many others do too. Lots of lots of VERY high moments---for me Bishop's morning presentation today was the most transformational (not to dis at all Rev. Cleaver II of course) of the presentations, although the three-bishop ordination sermon was transparentally transcendent.

There was one moment today that beat them all for me, though---We sang We are One in the Spirit at the end of the fixing of appointments, after the pastors had moved to their new churches/districts on the floor. While we were singing. Barbara W, my admin asst, grabbed my hand, held it, and raised it up holding hers. And then I saw that our entire district had become one surpentine maze of clapsed hands, held high in the air, winding up and down our long tables, over the tables to the next table, all four rows with hands raised in unity and love. Not sure exactly who started it, but it wasn't me. That one moment exemplified for me the family that is the Heartland North District. There is so much love here, love for all, in all, Christ's love that has created and is creating authenticity, compassion, laughter, and tears in the HND. I am proud to be the superintendent of this fine, fine part of the body of Christ.

Now, to the drive home. Driving home from conference, 38 of them, has almost always been an experience of inspection of my insides---how am I going to enter into the world in more effective ways for Christ to those "someones out there?" was the question this year, along with thinking about my finances, my kids, my office, charge conference schedule, talking with Kendall and concerns around the district. Over the 38 years, I have driven home from : McKendree College in Lebanon Illinois (Southern Illinois Conference); the Ramada Inn in Mount Vernon (again Southern Illinois Conference); Central Methodist University (Missouri East Conf); Holiday Inn Select in Columbia (Missouri East and Missouri Conf) and now from Springfield Mo for the Missouri Conference. In order, I have been alone in the car coming back, then with Philip, then with Cana and Philip, then with Cana, and once with just Caleb and Philip, then four of us again, and then with Cana, and then alone. Sometimes that last "alone" feels fairly lonely, but usually only for a moment or two. That drive home, is really, every time ,a drive HOME--back to where, I live with whatever family is living with me currently (now Cana and sometimes Caleb) but always headed toward HOME. Robert Gail Woods (a former Canton pastor), when I made my move in 1992 from Wesley Memorial-Plattin to Canton, saw me crying as I walked from the old St. Louis South district to the Hannibal-Kirksville district, said to me "Susan, don't cry...I'm sending you home!" and to be honest Canton was as much "home" as anywhere has been for me. Whether going back to the same appointment or moving to a new one, God is bidding us to take one step closer to home---the kingdom of God---and to do all that we possibly can as God's servants to search for those along the way who need so desparately his life-changing love. We who claim the name of Christ are being led along the sometimes dark and sometimes lonely way home, the home where we will rest in the arms of Christ. The truth is that we will be most at home when there are others with us whom we have met upon the way, who may not have heard until they heard us calling out for God's guidance, that there really is a God to guide. Praise be to God! One in the Spirit, one, at last in the arms of our Savior.