Miscellaneous Thoughts...

I took a look at the date for the last post and realized that it's been a while.

Most of it has to do with just being busy. Things at work, things at church, life.

We filled half a ten yard dumpster last Saturday with excess stuff from St. Elias. It's amazing how much stuff accumulates even in a building that's tiny by the standards of most churches. Some of it was about being frugal. Some of it was about being afraid of offending people by throwing stuff they gave or made away even if it was broken or had long since stopped being useful. All the toys are still there even though a good deal of them are in tatters because who wants to be the one to tell our handful of children there are less toys even if they'd probably never notice? Some of it is also probably a kind of cluttered way of being that comes with being a small church in a run down section of LaCrosse.

It's interesting, though, to see how people positively react to clean up and getting our little building back into shape. For its extremely small size and complete lack of functionality for a modern, and by modern I mean anything after 1950, parish it still has a charm buried beneath a pile of stuff that once unearthed is revealed. A few flowers here and there, a coat of paint, a repair or two and the place looks at least serviceable and reminds the older members of better days. Regardless, its a step in the right direction, a mark of progress to be able to root around inside and lighten the load.

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The past few days have seen some welcome relief from the high temperatures that mark a typical July / August in these parts. It's normal around here for it to be hot for a few days and then to have a good sized thunderstorm come through and wallop the place while trailing cool air in its wake. But for most of July we had the heat without the storms and things were getting brown. A couple of thunderstorms later and even the grass is starting to recover, and so are we.

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My boss at work retired this past Friday after nearly 20 years service. That in itself is unusual in the human services field. Normally we stay in the field but just swap companies every few years when stress or corporate politics or sheer fatigue burns us out. At conventions its usually the same old faces and only the name tags are new. 20 years in one place is amazing and with her departure an era ends and the time for corporate policy changing has begun.

Sometimes it really is necessary but I think a lot of times policies are changed not so much for greater efficiency, although that's given as the reason, but rather because in this world there is a hunger to leave a legacy and absent a way to truly do that or the understanding of eternity that undergirds so much of the Christian sense of what really matters, we settle for a few lines of policy in the company manual as our mark on the world. But its still just treasure on earth where moth and rust do cause decay and where the next person in your office will undo everything you worked so hard for the second they get your office.

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I've been noticing, too, how tired I've been lately. Part of it is the heat. Much of it is the work load.
Tired is now the baseline for me and I barely remember what it was like to be refreshed and completely awake. Yet I've been sustained and that makes all the difference because the cause of St. Elias is a worthy one and with just a bit more work we can start to find our way up and out and on our way...