Water, and a goodbye

Last week I was at our cabin in Dahlonega, and as I usually do when I'm up there I took a hike. Cane Creek runs through Camp Glisson where our cabin is located. It is a tributary of the Chestatee River, the water eventually going to Lake Lanier, the Chattahoochee River, and, finally, the Atlantic Ocean. On teh camp property is a waterfall, Cane Creek Falls. It's not huge as waterfalls go, maybe 50 feet high, and just about as wide, ut it's a local landmark, and in an earlier era was owned by Georgia Power and provided the power for Dahlonega. The water coming over it has a very distinctive pattern, and when it is running full it is quite impressive.

It is not running full now. I have never, in 45 years, seen so little water coming over the falls. Relatively speaking it is just a trickle coming over the falls. There were spots in teh center of teh falls that were actually dry when I was there , which I found almost unbelievable. The sad shape of the falls is just one more reminder of the critical nature of the draught we are in. I saw another sign when I drove to Gainesville to meet Josh for supper. When I drove over Squirrel Creek, it was very small, with high grass growing in places that should have had water.

In this part of the country, at least, the water crisis is becoming critical. Bans on outdoor watering will not be enough, I don't believe, to address the crisis. We need to practice stewardship of water inside our homes and businesses. And I believe we need to stop development until the situation improves. What we are doing now is unsustainable. It is stunning to hear serious talkabout the possibility of our running our of drinking water.

This will be my last blog. It is clear from my spotty entries that this is not a communication tool that matches my schedule. I will leave this up a day or two and then shut sown. Maybe down the road I will try again. Until then, God bless.

Jimmy

Whither Decency

George Will and I disagree and many things. We share a deep love of baseball, but he tends to be a good bit more conservative than I am. But from time to time I really resonate with his writing. Such was the case with his columnat the end of the latest Newsweek, entitled "Now, Defining Decency Down".

He writes about the "absurd" explanantion Larry Craig gave for the collapse of his carrer as a Senator. My daughter's take on this kind of apology is, "do they think we're stupid?" (Wills also notes the "almost unfathomable" sadness in Craig's unraveling.) He comments as well on Mitt Romney's responce, which Wills dscribes as "devoid of human sympathy".

Wills has caustic comments to make about Alberto Gonzales' leave taking of the office of Attorney General. I have been amazed for some time that this man was retained in this critical position in our government. Wills says that Gonzales leaving demonstrated his unfitness for the office, especially his statement that his worst days as Attorney General would have been better than his father's best days. Wills: "This implicit disparagement of his father's life of responsibility andd self-sufficiency turns conservatism inside out. It is going to take conservatism a while to recuperate from becoming associated with such people".

In his last paragraph Wills talks of the issues around the 18 year old contestant in the Miss Teen South Carolina pagent. After describing what happened with her question, Wills says:

Although there was not a shred of news value in it, Fox News and CNN played the
tape of her mortification, and by last Friday YouTube''s presentation of it had generated
more than 10 million hits. The casual cruelty of publicizing her discomfort, and the
widespread entertainment pleasure derived from it, is evidence that standards of
decency are evolving in the wrong direction.

Reading this, I was convicted of our showing of this video in our office last week.

Wills is on to something in this column that is important for all of us. I am impressed that one would wrestle in such a forum with issues of decency and morality.

Jimmy

Labor Day

Julie and I spent a good bit of the Labor Day weekend at our cabin in Dahlonega. Julie was actually there all weekend, trying to get over some combination of cold and sinus problems. I went up late friday, left Saturday evening to go to a wonderful gathring that included low country boil and some great bluegrass music, and came back for church. After church I went back up and we stayed over until today. It's always a good place to be, and this weekend there was nobody at the camp, so it was really quiet. No rain, which was nice in some ways, but the falls are pitiful. They say the rivers in the state are at historic lows for water levels. It sure seems that way in Lumpkin County.

When I am at the cabin I almost always go hiking late morning. On this trip I went twice, and you could really see the changing of the seasons taking place. I know. It's still summer. And there was enough heat to cause me to sweat pretty good on my hikes. But nothing like a month ago. And the leaves on the tulip poplars are turning yellow and falling. Other leaves are beginning to drop. Summer camp has been over for several weeks, and the pool is drained for the season. It is clear that autumn is just around the corner.

It is common for me to get a touch of melancholy about this time every year,and I was aware of that this weekend. I began to be tuned in to this pattern some years ago. Some of it has to do with the fact that summer is ending. Newspaper cartoons this weekend were filled with jokes about kids realizing theat summer was over and school was about to start. There is some of that in me. More specifically, I realized some years ago that I wa grieving the end of summer camp. My grief was focused mostly on the times that I had been a summer camp counselor. Those were extraordinarily meaningful times for me, and late August meant it was over for that year.

These days I think there is another layer for me, and it has to do with my mortality. I am 59, the age of my father when he died. I can still hike the boundary trail at camp in pretty good time, but I am a long way from the young man who worked as a counselor in the late 60s. My expectation and desire is to live a number of years more, but I am moving into autumn. And winter follows.

This weekend i began to read The Celtic Way of Evangelism, by George Hunter, a fascinating overview of celtic Christianity. Hunteer quotes Thomas Cahill:

Fixity escaped these people, as in the end it escapes us all. They understood, as few have
understoood before or since, how fleeting life is and how pointless to try to hold on to things
or people. ..... The face of the Dying Gaul speaks for them all: each one of us will die, naked
and alone on some battlefield not of our own choosing. After the assassination of John F.
Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was heard to say that to be Irish is to know that in the
end the world will break your heart.

I am part Irish. Perhaps that is the part coming out in these beautiful, bittersweet days.

Jimmy

I'm Back!

As seems to be the case too often, it's been too long since I last wrote. We were away most of the last of August and first week of July, and I don't khave a laptop. Have been trying to catch up since, and am sort of back on track.

Tomorrow is a big day at Saint Mark. We have a brief activity in the service to get ready for our Capital Campaign kick-off next Saturday. As part of camp meeting month we have our staff bluegrass band and choir making their inaugural performance in worship. But most critical for me will be baptising my first granddaughter, Naomi Jones, at the second service.

We've been a little while getting here with all that has been going on in Allyson and Phillip's life this past year, but tomorrow is the day! Naomi, now about 17 months old, is just about the cutest little girl I have ever seen. She talks all the time - I have no idea what she's saying - and has the most wonderful smile. I especially like it when she smiles at me. And tomorrow we will share the good news that she is a beloved child of God, made in the image of God. The congregation will pledge on behalf of the - as of now unknown - church that Allyson and Phillip will join later, it's love and support for all of them as Naomi grows as a child of faith. Stan and Josh will be here, along with Philip's parents. And we will eat lunch at the Varsity. it is alost too good to be true. I thank God for the priviledge of being part of this sacred event.

Jimmy

Grace

Have been away for a week on a mission trip to Honduras. More on that later. I want to go back to a meal I had on July 3rd.

I wa invited to lunch by one of our wonderfull older adults, a woman nearing 100. She had been good to me in the past, giving me small gifts along the way during my time at Saint Mark. One of th ethings I have not done real well in my time here has been to tend to the older adults and shut ins of the church. I carry some guilt over that, and keep working on freeing up more time to do a better job in that area. When this good lady invited me to lunch I was more than happy to go, but I wasn't sure what the ocassion was.

It turned out that the reason for the visit was simply to spend some time with her preacher. She comes from the old school in terms of relating to preachers - she holds themm in high regard and wants to know hers as well as she can. And she has seen some good ones at Saint MArk since she came to the church back in the 1930's. She had her family there, and we had an absolutely wonderful lunch. Her people are old Atlanta - going back to the Civil War - and all of us had a good time sharing stories about the Atlanta we remembered from years gone by: things like Rich's and the Atlanta Crackers. It was a great experience. And at teh end, when I was getting ready to leave, she gave me a gift.

I thought when I left that I had just had a right powerful experience of grace. I had done very little to merit any gift from this good lady, hardly enough to get any attention from her. And yet here I was, leaving having had a wonderful meal/time and being given a tangible gift as well. I understand that some of that is rooted in my role as her pastor, but still......... Lots of folks would not have done what she did. Grace. I was grateful.

Jimmy

Potter

Julie and I were in Dahlonega for the fourth, and while we were there we went shopping for some wedding presents. If you're getting married and we're invited, the odds are extremely high that you are going to get as a gift a piece of pottery from Brad Walker. Brad has been making pottery and selling it on the square in Dahlonega for around 20 years. He makes beautiful pieces.

After lunch we went into Brad's store and Julie picked out what she wanted to give. As we were paying we began to talk. Brad showed us an article from th eAJC from several years ago that he had been reading when we came in. It wasby an Episcopal priest in Atlanta. He had once been a Franciscan, and the article was about his understanding himself to be a fundamentalist in the sense of Saint Francis - namely one who is focused on the love of God and neighbor as the core of religious life. The article ended with the famous prayer of Saint Francis. Brad and agreed that Francis and this priest pretty much had it right.

Brad began to talk about other authors that he found meaningful in his mixture of Buddism and Christainity. He likes Thomas Merton, the great Catholic spiritual writer who died tragically in 1968. He likes Thomas a Kempis' the Imitation of Christ ( a very influential book for John Wesley). He really likes Saint John of the Cross and the classic work The Dark Night of the Soul. Most of these authors he has on his shelf there in his store! I recommended Henri Nouwen and Brian McLaren to him. I knew Brad had a pretty deep spiritual side, but I did not know the depth of his reading and thinking. Right there on the square in Dahlonega.

He was in Vietnam in 1969 and 1070, and we talked briefly about that, and he showed us a writing he had done during his stay there when he began to realize, "this is crazy". We named Josh's experience in Afghanistan, and Brad just shook his head and was grateful that Josh was back safely. We talked a few moments more and he said, "It's amazing what we will do for greed." I agreed.

It was a great visit. I came away with more than two pieces of lovely pottery.

Jimmy

The 4th

Julie and I went up to our cabin at Camp Glisson for the 4th of July. We enjoy getting to the cabin anytime, and we know Dahlonega will have plenty of 4th of July activities. Among other activities we saw a pretty good fireworks display at the Lumpkin County High School last night.

It's almost impossible not to think about our fighting men and women when you are in Dahlonega for this holiday. Every road coming into the downtown area is lined with white crosses, each cross with the name of a person from Lumpkin Country who has fought in a war going back to World War I. An American flag is attatched to each cross. If the person remembered was killed in the war, there is a KIA on the cross. One of the stricking things to me about this display is how many of the names are from World War II = I would guess almost 70% of the total number. I have heard it said that almost every household in America was directly impacted by that conflict, and the crosses in Dahlonega would seem to bear that out. I sometimes wish we had equally moving ways to honor people who ohave given their lives to peacemaking, but these crosses and flags are a powerful reminder of so many who have sacrificed so much to preserve our freedom.

My son, Josh, fought for a year in Afghanistan. He recently gave me a book to read that was written by a member of his unit. The title is Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green. This book has got me to thinking about soldiers as well, especially my son. Perhaps because it hits so close to home, this book has been the most troubling read I have done so far on our current combat operations. As written, Army recruiters lie (a theme in everything I have read), the Army beaurocracy often is lost in space, we don't do well relating to the Afghani people, and the whole experience is enough to scar most anyone involved. When we talk about the sacrifices
our soldiers make, we need to understand that all of them are impacted deeply by their service, not only those killed and wounded. Josh and I are having some good conversations around the book and his experiences, as I continue to try to understand as best I can what he went through. The 4th is a good time to reflect on those who have served in this way.

Jimmy

Miracle

Yesterday, at about 5:00 pm, I became a granddaddy for the second time. Our daughter, Allyson, gave birth to Hannah Cole Jones - 6 pounds 9 ounces, 19 and 1/2 inches long, with lots of red hair. Now Naomi has a baby sister, and Allyson and Philip have a newborn. We take birth for granted sometimes, but it really is a miracle and a sign of grace. Don Williams' song comes to mind. "Miracle"

I got to be in the room until close to the time for the birth. Until Allyson got her pain medication she was maoning pretty good when the contractions came. A reminder to me of how much is asked of the mother at the time of birth - t say nothing of all that goes with carrying a baby for nine months. It is humbling to be near her at such a time. We were one day past the original due date, and Allyson was induced. When th eactual birth came she had a relatively quick and easy time of it. She only had to push a few times, and when she called me to tell me Hannah wsa her she sounded great.

My main hope around any birth is that mother and child are well. I read an article just this week about how many women die in childbirth every day world wide, and it is an amazing number. Both of our girls did fine.

We think Hannah is pretty darn cute! The word "beautiful" was used a number of times. Naomi got to see her, but we have more to see about how that adjustment will go. Julie and I got to keep her and the dogs at our house last night, and will do so again tonight.

A great day for us. We thank God for this gift.

Jimmy

Pride, take 2

My apologies for the cryptic, nonsensical post of a couple of days ago. Just as I got started my computor died. And then yesterday I was busy with my second granddaughter being born. Hannah will be discussed in the next post, but she is well and beautiful. At any rate, I wanted to say a word about Pride and our church.

Atlanta has one of the largest gay Pride events in the country. Befoer I came to Saint Mark I knew about Pride activities, but I had never been a part of one. The currrent chapter at Saint MArk was begun at a Pride parade in the early 1990's. The route for the parade goes right in front of Saint Mark. Some laypeople back then had been to a workshop reminding church leaders of the necessity of reaching out to their neighborhood. Many gays and lesbians had moved in to the mid-town area at that time, and so the church made a conscious decision to reach out in an open and affirming way to this community. When the parade came by Saint Mark there were some older ladies passing out cups of water to the marchers - it's hot in Atlanta in late June - and a sign over the doors saying everyone is welcome at saint Mark. The resulting influx of persons and the revitalization of the church was dubbed by one prominent Saint Marker as "the miracle on Peachtree Street".

Saint Mark is about more than its ministry to and with the GLBT community, but that is certainly one central element of our witness as a congrgaton. And the Pride weekend is one of the major times in our common life. We start off our activities with what we call a Diversity Diiner/Worship on the Thursday night. It is often very powerful. This year Beth Stroud spoke. Beth was a United Methodist pastor in Pennsylvania until she went public about her committed relationship with another woman. The resulting church trial ended with her losing her credentials as a pastor in the UMC. She spoke eloquently to us about being called by God and about the risks that come with that call. At this service we also gave out our annual Diversity Award. It goes each year to someone in Saint Mark or in the larger community who has made a substantial contribution to diversity. This year it went to Mike Beechum for his work in supporting Chris Kids and Chris Rainbow House. A very moving moment.

Along with several other churches we always have a booth in Piedmont Park ovr the weekend. And we are a presence in the parade. Some of our folks worked very hard on a great flaot - we won second place - and we had a number of walkers with the float. Saint Mark always gets a good many cheers as the parade unfolds because many people know of our welcoming nature. It is powerful to hear. More churches are involved now - the Episcopal churches in the region were especially well represented - but we were among the first. We had lively worship services that morning as well. One especially moving moment to me was singing the last verse of "In Unity We Lift Our Song." The tune is that of "A Mighty Fortress", powerful in itself, and the organ was on fire, the choir was singing beautifully as only the Saint Mark choir can, the sopranos had this glorious descant, and our people were singing their hearts out. the words?

For God our way, our bread, our rest, of all these gifts the Giver.
Our strength, our guide, our nurturing breast whose hand will yet deliver.
Who keeps us till the day when night shall pass away,
when hate and fear are gone and all our work is done, and we shall live forever.

I wish I could have bottled the moment.

There are elements of Pride that some of us here would like to see changed. But the overall event is critical to our people. We work hard to approach it from a specifically Christian perspective, and this year we had a good weekend.

Jimmy