Some Tuesday Thoughts

I gather from Mary Hamrick, who completed her 51^st first day of school teaching kindergarten at Unity School, East St. louis, Il, that a successful first day was getting peed on only once.  I must say I was never peed on by a kindergartener or a confirmation student, though the time I tried to emulate Jesus and hoisted a new born calf on my shoulders to carry it across Apple River,  I did feel some warm liquid flowing down my back, ungrateful little beast.

In the Gospel lesson for this past Sunday, Jesus says not to worry, God feeds the birds, and clothes flowers with beauty.  I’m glad some Goldfinches are feeding on the seeds of a clump of beautiful purple Coneflowers, but I hope they leave a few seeds to grow next spring.

I’ve been tussling with the Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday in which a not so sweet and mild Jesus speaks of hoping the fire will be kindled soon, undergoing a baptism, and has not come to bring peace, but division.  I have gone from “What in the world am I going to do with this?” to “Well I may come out with something beneficial for the congregations straddling the Kaskaskia River in Ruma and Evansville, Il.”  It reminds me of Jacob wrestling with God by the Jabbok creek all night and by dawn coming out with a limp and a blessing.

We got good news regarding a sewer pipe on our property.  The insurance will pay for it.  A week or so ago, a plumber discovered that someone in the distant past had chiseled into the clay pipe and shoved a pvc pipe to carry rainwater off the house roof.  Its just one of the many puzzling things we have discovered about this house, beginning with tiles falling into the bathwater shortly after Becky took a bath when we first moved in, 16 years ago.

We missed the big rains from yesterday, but had a good down pour this morning which tested our newly redug Jansen Creek and the bags of pea gravel Aaron and crew put in last week.

Life continues to be interesting and its best to view it through humorous glasses.  Though it saddens me that yesterday at 5:00 o’clock 8-year-old Xavier Usanga became the 11^th child killed by gunshot since June.  It puzzles and saddens me when I see “Jokes” reposted from gun associations as if these killings had nothing to do with us.