The Family Letter

Well, I am back from vacation! I realized today that I'd never finished blogging the vacation, so here's the nutshell version:

As the photos suggest I did finally meet up with my hosts the Edwards at the Roanoke airport. We got them home late on Tuesday. Wednesday Al was off from work so the two of us went in hunt of Umbrella Falls, a nice little hike an hour or so north of Roanoke. We did find it and had a pleasant hike, and even got our feet wet in some extremely cold mountain water. Those pictures are here, on page two. That dominated most of the day. Dinner was at a cafeteria style restaurant in Roanoke. I mention that because we don't seem to have those things up this way, and I think it's kind of nice. Lots of choices, and the food is vastly better than what you normally associate with the word "cafeteria." I am curious, too, to know where geographically the "cafeteria restaurant" exists.

Thursday was a relaxed day. Kathy, Granny (Kathy's mom, who also lives with them), and I spent the afternoon in downtown Roanoke. We met Marge, Kathy's sister, for lunch and then just browsed the market. It's really a neat market, too! After that we checked out the art museum. It isn't much, but I enjoyed the exhibit of photos of people from all over Virginia. Back home we had a turkey dinner chased by Kathy's lemon/lime meringue pie. Excellent!

Friday Kathy had to work so I went back downtown and visited the Virginia Museum of Transportation. I wasn't as impressed as I was with the museum on Tuesday, but I had the ticket so… Crawling around the locomotives was fun, too. Those photos are in the same spot as the ones above. Al and I hit the gym in the evening.

Saturday of course was the big day! While I always enjoy visiting the Edwards, this time I timed it so that I could go to Tripp and Trish's wedding. It was fantastic. In mid afternoon I drove over to Huddleston, VA, where the church was. The wedding went very well. It was also very Tripp… Funny, spontaneous, the whole nine yards. I also got to see folks from Seabury: Si, Susie and her husband Luke, and of course Tripp. I made some new friends, Kate and her husband Larry. He's a Lutheran pastor and she made Trish's dress. They're not too hard to spot in the photos, just look for the purple hair. Wonderful folks. I gather he's a part of the multi-denominational church plant in Chicago that I'll be celebrating at in October. Cool.

Sunday we did church in the morning. Their new associate is a friend of one of our newest priests here in NW PA, so that was cool. In the afternoon Al and I went north to the Buena Vista, VA, area, seeking two sonic waterfalls. The first was spectacular, and we picked our way down to the bottom, taking photos as we went. Getting back up wasn't too much harder, but I did manage to loose my footing near the top and took a small piece out of one leg. Just a flesh wound, but it's driving me nuts because I keep rubbing it on stuff. After an adventure getting back home (my idea–"Let's turn left and see where that goes!") we went to Marge's home on the side of a mountain and had dinner. Back home I did laundry and packed.

Monday morning I set out for Hermitage, and got in a little after 1600. So far this week things have been busy but about normal.

'Night.

Check out this article from Time magazine.

First of all, I don't appreciate the spin. I'm glad to know, I suppose, that some breakaway churches are doing well and continuing to spread God's word in the world. But I really would like to see an article about some of the via media work, or perhaps some churches that have chosen not to get bogged down in the decisions of GC 2003, have kept moving forward, and are doing good things. (We're not one of those churches, by the way. We struggled with some of these issues for every vestry meeting I was at from September 2003 until May 2004. We still have some members that feel this parish should do something more in protest, and others who have said that they will not support our building campaign because of all this. Fortunately the vestry did drop it officially.)

There are a few things in the article that disturb me too, including the $100,000 rector's office in the old church. We're struggling to build a new social hall and/or church school wing, and aren't sure how much money we'll be able to raise. We aren't even touching the offices, and they need help too. What kind of priority setting is it to sink $100,000 into the rector's office. That, to me, says a lot about the priorities of the congregation.

I suppose most interesting is the quote, "If I stayed, I'd lose my soul." He honestly seems to believe that if he had remained in ECUSA his soul was forfeit. I guess this isn't too much different than what must have motivated oh, say, Luther. But then again most reformers tried, at least at first, to stick things out and, well, reform. They weren't called reformers for nothing. They didn' t just bail and start their own churches (again, not at first).

To his credit he did lots of things right along the way, like not deliberately campaigning for the church members to come with him. I wonder when he took "Episcopal" off of the church sign–obviously before he left.

What think you all..?

Here's the last three days worth of digitial images:

Note: I finally figured out how to export these from iPhoto so that you don't have to enter the /virginia3.html piece. In fact, if you do enter that, it won't work. So follow the link as it exists above.

Enjoy!

If you scroll down or browse my archives you'll see a post about the whole "which candidate really served, was his service in the military valid, what about when he protsted the war…" thing. Blah, blah, blah. Today I found this, and it sums up what I feel about that issue:

(It is a Flash cartoon-movie, not Quicktime, so it isn't too huge.)