Not a Good Way to Start a Day's Reading...

From Presbyweb ...

Over 1,000 attended a November 20 funeral Mass at the cathedral in Lansing for 17 abortion victims whose remains were found in the trash by a pro-life activist. Following the Mass, the babies’ remains were interred in a Catholic cemetery.

The Bishop in charge of the burial said...

“Today we mourn, like Rachel weeping for her children, we mourn for how some seek to destroy Jesus in these his least brothers and sisters.”

“Yet, not only for the hurt to the Lord, we also mourn for these children themselves, whose very lives were desired by God, whose dignity was given by God, whose purpose and destiny are known only to God.”

By everything that is holy, what kind of people would throw a child's body in a trash pile?

Not a good way to start a day by reading this, but this is the sick world we live in!

May God have mercy on us!

Sunset in Idaho - Just Before the Snow!

Beautiful evening sunset in southwest Idaho at our RV resort near Boise:


Sparrow gone for the winter and abandons her nest in little tree next to our RV:

Forty-two Years Ago Today ...

On this day, November 18, 1968, our second son, Lance Wade, died in Hinds General Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, of a brain tumor, with my older brother, Gene, as the attending physician. His death is still fresh in our minds and hearts. He would have been 44 now. Any parent (most at least) who loses a child never gets over the loss. You give the sadness to God and pray for strength to go on, believing you will enjoy his presence once again when you arrive in God's eternal presence. And, you remember, God gave his only Son that insures the grave is not the end. God promises to 'whipe away all tears' and detroy death forever...and ever.

We will be forever grateful to the hospital which named a room in pediatrics in Lance's honor and to the (former) Church of the Hills for naming its chapel "The Lance Wood Chapel". Memories are helpful in dealing with grief, but the greatest help is our hope in the resurrection of our risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

Musings, November 15, 2010

The Next Years...

If, as it has been reported, the average American lifespan is 81 years, I'm wondering how I am being called by God to use the last 9 years (give or take a few years) of my life for good. I'm in the process of moving my presbytery membership from Greater Atlanta Presbytery to Boise (ID) Presbytery (first time my presbytery membership will not be in the southeast.) It'll be interesting to learn how 'things' are done out west, to establish new collegial relationships, work with new colleagues here to revive the PCUSA (prospects not good for PCUSA as membership continues to fall radically and the theological differences continue to grow at an alarming rate). This Wednesday I will be joining Boise area Presbyterian pastors for lunch and discussion of the forthcoming vote on amendments to the PCUSA constitution. More importantly, I want to be of whatever help I can be for my granddaughters here in Nampa and the other five grandkids in Atlanta and NY in my last decade of life. Those of us who are older need to assess how we plan to use the last years of our lives for good.

Different Landscapes, Different Pace…

I still am amazed at the radically different landscapes out west from those with which I was most familiar in the greater Atlanta area and in the southeast generally. Yesterday, on our way to Covenant church in Boise, I saw many nice neighborhoods with beautiful homes adjacent to the corrals housing their horses -- many half-acres with one or more horses grassing leisurely in their fenced small pasture. Horses are everywhere out west. It's a way of life to be expected where there are untold thousands of acres of open range as well as the neighborhood pastures.
The pace of life is much slower out west. People don’t seem to be in such a hurry. And it doesn’t take hours fighting traffic to go a few miles. We are five miles from our daughter’s home and have to drive through two towns (Caldwell and Nampa) to get there and it takes 10 minutes max! The less traffic may extend the nine years I mentioned above, you think…?

New York, New York…!

In late December, we are flying to New York to spend time with our son, Todd, and his five kids (two in Atlanta area and three in the NY area) at his house in Connecticut. It’ll be a fun time, and likely, will be cold!
We spend much of our time here with Anna and her two girls, Emily and Molly. Last evening after a wonderful meal at Anna’s, we moved three beds between the girls’ bedrooms. We all got rather hysterical with the project. It was fun. Today Helen is working at Anna’s school and I’m playing golf at noon with my Monday foursome. Weather is beautiful right now…68 degrees and sunny. Some rain forecast, but in this part of Idaho, it seldom lives up to the weather forecast. Going for that elusive 79 today.

Staying in Touch…

We enjoy staying in close touch with dear friends from our last pastorate. We’ve done a lot of praying for some of them. George is recovering from an illness, but at 86 he’s now starting to play golf again. Sooooo good to hear that! Myra has taken good care of him. (Remind me sometime to tell about Myra’s driving adventure with her girl friends in Jackson Hole, WY, going to see the buffalo.) Bonnie is beating her cancer with Mike’s help. Buck and Billie have been great support for both couples. Buck and Mike live and die with the Georgia Bulldogs, as I do with the Ole Miss Rebels. For sanity, I have the undefeated Boise State Broncos. Then, there’s Lee (and Amy), Rusty (and Sonya) and Rees (and Daryl), my other Atlanta foursome, three trusted friends I have known for 15-plus years, but there’s not much I can tell publicly about those three! What happens …stays! LOL. I’m so proud of Lee’s leadership with World Water Relief. Children are dying by the thousands for lack of clean water! Rees is always available to help me solve mechanical problems and Rusty is as close as the phone to offer advice on a myriad of problems I run into on the RV trails. I stay out of issues in my former parish, but enjoy the friendships I share with these and other friends, as does Helen with her girl friends.

Note 1: There are many other old friends in COH/JCPC that hold special places in our hearts and memories, but I am careful not to be intrusive in our former church's life, so I don't call them.

Note 2: Our former church has a new pastor now and I am so grateful for Gray's ministry. Thanks be to God for a rich future ahead of the church under his leadership. (Now, if the PCUSA doesn't collapse in the next few years....)

New Friends Out West...

Everywhere we go we make new friends – in Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. When we leave here in the new year (later than usual this time), we will be meeting up with these friends, many of them also full-time RVers. Also, it’s been good to catch up with older (and I mean older!) high school and college classmates. I just got a PC Class of ’60 pictorial directory and discovered the names of those in my class who have died. Some huge surprises, too. And a friend in Moss Point, Mississippi, keeps me up to date with classmates, live and dead. Friendships renewed are precious.

Last Home Gone!

I used Google Earth to look via satellite at our last home, nearly five acres in north Atlanta (Cumming, to be exact.) The home, of course, is gone, and the acreage on GE is scraped and cleared. The paved roads, street lights, etc are in, but it still looks weird to see the empty space where we enjoyed living ‘down in the woods’ for nearly 15 years. Hold on to good memories

Idaho Ski Swap...Amazing!

Last evening Helen and I served our first night at the Idaho Ski Swap at the Boise Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall. Our grandaughter Emily joined us and tonight our daughter Anna joins our volunteer team. People came from all over Boise, Idaho and out of state (one man came from Machinaw City, Michigan), bringing used and new skiing and snow boarding equipment and accessories to be placed on consignment. I expected a lot of skiing stuff, but was blown away by the volume of items placed for sale.
The Exhibition Hall is enormous, (think SuperWalmart store) probably 8-10 basketball courts size. Helen and I, working the 'stocking' assignment, would push a grocery cart up one of the intake lanes and other volunteers checking in the equipment and recording same on computers would fill our cart with equipment, etc. Then we would wheel the cart to the appropriate area to place the items according to size, age, etc.

There was, at the 9:30 p.m. closing time, 25,000 items -- skis, snowboards, skiing and snowboarding boots, googles, poles, etc., and enough snow clothing to fill a Target store!





Emily is hoping to make the Idaho Varsity Snowboarding team and go on to try to make the National team. She is really good on the board. She boarded on the Nampa High School team last year, but won in competition so easily she decided to go for more challenging competition, thus the Idaho team.

Helen and I are working four days as volunteers at the Ski Swap. Last night we 'stocked' equipment. Today we work Security, tomorrow Admissions and finally on Sunday afternoon we work Inventory.

Think of a SuperWalmart store stocked wall to wall with only skiing equipment and you get a mental image of the enormous scope of the Ski Swap.