Reading

My Presbyterian Outlook subscription expired sometime in 2009.

I can't recall exactly when. I have a pile of subscription notices asking me to renew. Each notice was placed in my "get to sometime" stack in my filing system without engendering any desire to write a check for another year. Sorry, but the Outlook's lifeless black and white covers of odd pictures, along with editorials I found tiresome, never-used International Bible Study lessons and a back page of pastoral ending and beginnings of people I don't know just wore me out.

My first subscription to the Outlook began as a freebie for seminarians. In the late 70's I was interested in the magazine. Over the years, and especially in the last five or so years, I read fewer articles. I began throwing away copies after glancing through the pages. I should have known what this meant.

Loving magazines is part of my DNA. Throwing away copies is not a good sign. As the child of a father who kept stacks of Life, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic on bookcases in his workshop, I value the printed page. National Geographic's from the 1920's survived past his death in the 1980's and were thrown out, mostly intact in the mid-1990's when my parent's home was sold.

All magazines are troubled these days. I'm sorry about the hard times of magazine publishing. I doubt many will return when the economy improves because we've learned to get our content from the internet. I think I kept up my subscription to the Outlook because I want places for people to start conversations and discuss ideas about the Church. The Christian Century fits my needs in this arena.

But, I feel odd about putting an old friend out to pasture.

Yours,
St. Casserole

This Week in My Heart

I'm home today while the Air Conditioning Guys install a new unit for the kitchen/family room part of our home. The weather is hot, steamy and miserable from days of rain followed with this morning's scorching heat. We've struggled through two days of "too hot to use the kitchen" and "too hot for good humor". By this afternoon, we'll be cool again for family room life.

I ran errands this morning to be home for the AC Guys. I arrived home to find the mailbox overflowing with college ads (for LD, the High School Senior), two bills and THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY.

I sorted the mail, threw another load into the wash and wandered off to read the new mag.

I turned to Gordon Atkinson's When Members Leave. He's got that right.

The next article, Life Expectancy: On Not Praying for a Miracle by Dayna Olson-Getty blew me away. She writes about her pregnancy with a baby with acrania, a birth difference where the skull does not form. She writes, "We can expect that if he makes it through birth, our little one will live for just a few minutes or hours".

With real honest words, Olson-Getty describes the planning she and her husband are making for their baby.

This article is part of the picture of why I am a Christian. To live our lives, with honesty and realism, to be faithful to God while enduring what makes no sense to many while living into a future with God, this is what is beautiful and weepy about faith.

If you got your September 22 issue of the CENTURY, read this article. If you don't subscribe, consider ordering a subscription.

Thank you, God, for people of faith. God bless the Olson-Gettys,

St.Casserole

My mind is on:

Nov.4 Election

Sermon for Sunday

Deep South Fall Weather

LD at the Holy Ghost Weinie Roast

Mr.C's Office Building

Little Church's ongoing restoration

*Pic of Fish in his ADVENTURE CAT Halloween Costume

What? Is there Anything Else?

St.Casserole

Gadzooks! The Presbyterian Outlook ditched the hideous black and white covers for color!

Ben Spark's article about the 1983 Reunion of the Church and Montreat is excellent.

Didn't finish reading the magazine. The phone rang. The dog barked. People came to the door.


St. Casserole

Now that I am Older...

Now that I am older...

...I realize that is not necessary for everyone to know what I think of them.

...When you engage me in conflict, I will not tell you all I know about you because I care about you. I want to continue the relationship in the future so I will not put your back against the wall verbally.

...I realize that it is well nigh impossible for the young to realize that the world does not revolve around them, even those who are in their 30's.

...I understand that I never won when I took on the Senior Pastor. I wasn't the associate to correct the HoS or run the congregation.

...I know that most stuff isn't personal, it's just stuff. If we can't figure out how to redeem it now we can pray that our situations and relationships may be redeemed in the future.

...I look for kindness in others more than the excitement of their chaos.


Yours,

St. Casserole

Honesty

I'm listening to Alexander McCall Smith's The Right Attitude for Rain as I drive around. This is the third book in the Sunday Philosophy Club series with Isobel Delahousy.

Isobel is discussing theft with her niece Kat's deli employee. Coffee bags have gone missing from the deli again. Isobel muses on the subject, with careful deliberation, as she does on every subject.

I began to consider honesty, too. We aren't to take what isn't ours. There is no excuse for stealing. Stealing is violent; stealing is disrespectful; stealing takes a bit our our souls away when we take something that doesn't belong to us, etc.

After a few minutes of reflection, I reached into my purse to get a lipstick. As my hand moved around in my purse, I pulled out a ballpoint pen. Not recognizing the feel of the pen, I looked at the pen. Taped carefully to the side of the turquoise plastic pen was a neatly written note, "Do Not Remove".

I don't know whose pen it is. Where did I pick up this pen? Bank? Water Department? Office?
Can't return it. Don't know where the pen belongs.

Over the years, I've noted the synchronicity of my ranking/blasting/pontificating against something only to find myself guilty of the offense, too.

Human here,

St. Casserole