A Great Day in our Nation's Capital

Rosie, Melanie and I went to Washington yesterday to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity.  It was a wonderful experience.  We heard little or nothing of what went on at the rally, but just being there was a lot of fun.  We joined about a quarter of a million of our fellow citizens before the Capitol building where it all went on.  The real story for us was the transportation.  Lynn Cullen, a Pittsburgh radio personality arranged for a series of buses to get us to DC.  We arrived in Rosalyn, Virginia where we were to take the Metro into DC for the rally.  The problem was that all of the trains were crammed full of people.  They looked like sardine cans.  We finally arranged for a car to take us into the rally.  We got there and walked around watching the people, seeing the signs and listening to the crowd.  It was fascinating.  The signs were full of humor, the crowd was alive and excited.  The costumes were a joy.  I bought some souvenirs for far too much money and we walked around the rally for a while.  Eventually we decided to go back to where the bus would meet us.  We went to the L'Enfant plaza station to get the Metro.  We started to go down the escalator to the tracks, but all of a sudden something happened.  There were screams and the crowd started to surge backward.  We quickly left the building and tried to find out what happened.  Later we discovered that the escalator began to moved very rapidly, tumbling the passengers into one another at the bottom.  Four persons were injured, none seriously.  We saw the fire, police and Metro security people quickly arrive at the station.  We got a taxi and got back to Virginia.  We got some refreshments and met Melanie's friends Hope and Terry Alcorn.  We visited for a while until our bus came to pick us up.  We left Virginia about 5:00 and got back home at midnight.  It was a good day simply to be present at the thing and to watch all that went on.

Myth and Fact

           Keith Olberman had a man on his program the other night who he described as a comedian, whom he also said was an atheist.  The guest justified all of this by describing the bible as a collection of stories without any factual foundation -- a collection of mythology.  I certainly couldn't argue with that.  It was a bit discouraging to me to have him base his atheism on such a fragile foundation.  Certainly the bible is full of myths.  It is the only reasonable way to describe God.  When scientists dismiss God or religion out of a concern that mythology is at the root of it, I wonder at their intelligence.  Myth is a wonderful way to describe God.  When I think of Moses encounter with God in the burning bush, I am not at all sure that the story happened in exactly the way that it is told in the bible.  I do know that what effect this encounter had on Moses was profound and was rooted in his faulty belief system that was overcome by the burning bush conversation that he had with God.  That moment with God, however it happened, is what brought Moses to the leadership of the Hebrew people in their escape from Egypt and their hegira in the desert for forty years, which is another mythological event.

           Even in the New Testament, myth has a firm place.  Who knows what Jesus' life was all about.  How was be born, and where; in Bethlehem, or Nazareth?  Was Mary a virgin, or is this an attempt to connect the birth of Jesus to Isaiah's prophecy?  How was Lazarus raised from the dead, and did it all happen just as John's gospel describes it?  All of these are attempts to tell a story, to describe Jesus as the incarnate God walking the earth, which is to me one of the most exciting ideas that I have ever known.  But how do you describe this without myth?  Jesus the human born in a stable in Bethlehem and raised to be a rabbi who somehow has the power to heal and to raise the dead to life, as well as provide enough to eat for five thousand people at one time, is a wonder in himself, but to describe him as God takes more than facts.

           The word "myth" has been equated with falsehood in this culture.  It isn't false at all.  Myth is a way of speaking truth that can't be comprehended by fact.  Myth is larger than simply a collection of facts.  It speaks to underlying meaning that facts alone can't provide. How, for example could you describe the creation of humanity better than the story of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve?  To then turn around and require these events to be essentially factual is to make a joke of them.  When someone scales Mt. Ararat to look for the lost Ark of Noah, I wonder both at their faith and at their intelligence.  Certainly the flood is myth, and myth to tell truth.  The leading of humanity out of corruption by God's grace is the story of the bible.  To require it to be basically scientific and factual is to destroy it.


        
    

Baptism of Samson Rodgers Popivchak

Tomorrow will be a wonderful day. At Mellon Park in Shadyside, I will baptize my great grandson, Samson Rodgers Popivchak. Sammy has been wonderful to watch in this first year of his life. His parents, Alison and Pete have done wonders with him. Leslie Reimer will join me as we begin his life as a Christian.

Infant baptism has been something that the Christian Church has done for eons. It is a statement that God cares for each of us, forgives each of us, even as we grow into our bodies and our lives. Sammy is a year old today and is well on his way to becoming a wonderful person. He laughs and smiles well, can't take his eyes off me and behaves always with a twinkle in his eye that says that he enjoys the wonder of being a baby in a household that values him. We value him too. There will be lots for him to go through -- teenage years ought to be fascinating, but what he is after this baptism. Thank God for the possibility of hope that we vest in Sammy. Thank God for all that he will do and be, and thank God for our involvement in his life.

Religion

The news is full of reports of Pope Benedict XVI and his travels in England and Scotland with and emphasis on the disruption of community by those who want to protest the Catholic church's response to the sexual problems that have embarrassed the church for many years. The Pope has tried to respond to these, but is himself implicated in some of it from his time as an Archbishop in Germany. I also have seen a number of articles about the Vatican Treasures that are travelling the world and will be in Pittsburgh at the Heinz History Museum shortly. Religion is in the news again, and certainly not favorably. The focus of the news media seems to be on the transgressions and the wealth of the church, not on its mission.

Jesus created controversy also. His love of the poor, the sick and the outcast outraged the religious of his day. They were so upset with him that they eventually nailed him to a cross. We don't seem to create the same kind of outrage in our own time. We are more focused on the "Vatican Treasures", or pedophiliac clergy than we are on what Jesus taught us about the poor, the sick and the outcast. That is really an outrage.

Returning to the Pulpit

The past two Sundays, I have had preaching assignments. On the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, I preached at Heather's parishes, St. Mark's and St. Luke's in Cleveland. It was a fabulous time. I loved the whole process of reading the scriptures for the day and reflecting on them. I know that I love to preach. The Gospels speak to me particularly about the poor and the outcast. Certainly St. Luke's is a prime example of what Jesus was talking about when he told us to care for the poor.
They have a dinner for the homeless and the poor in the neighborhood every Wednesday night and they distribute clothes and other things to them almost weekly. They create awe in me with what they do. Preaching to them is to lift up their work and celebrate it. There is obviously a lot more to do. When the neighborhood comes to St. Luke's to worship, some of them are thugs who do their thing during the worship service. If this isn't inviting everyone to the altar, I don't know what is. Who knows who will be changed by this community experience. That is one of the things that is in the category of the unknown, but also one of the things that can be reformed by community. Also in that congregation were a number of older people who are available to be mentors to the kids who show up. That needs to be organized and focused, but not ever required.

Last Sunday, I preached at St. Brendan's in Franklin Park, the mission that Pat Carnahan and I started when I was the rector of Christ Church. This is a suburban mission, short of money, but not of spirit. I saw a number of the people who I knew at Christ Church and had a wonderful time sharing life with them. The scripture was about forgiveness and it was great to preach to them about that. They have been through hell with the way that the Diocese of Pittsburgh dissolved over the past couple of years. They feel like survivors, and they are. Forgiveness is something that they are not ready to offer to those who left the diocese, but I didn't advocate that. I simply talked to them about forgiving themselves and each other. That is also not too easy, but it can be done.

Wealth

Every place that I look, there are invitations to make a lot of money. Sweepstakes rule retail and lotteries are everywhere and growing. Each night the balls are chosen for the state games and there are winners of millions. One could get the impression that making a lot of money is the primary goal of life. Daily, the mail brings offers of great rates on credit cards, sales in stores and many chances to spend and save. Spend is the operative word here.

Rosie and I just spent a wonderful week at the beach with our extended family. The purpose of it was to celebrate our fifty-fifth wedding anniversary and to enjoy each other. We certainly did. We had a love filled dinner one night as the kids made a fabulous fish taco meal. I played golf with two of my daughters and one grandchild and had a wonderful day. On the night before our anniversary, the kids took us out to dinner and we celebrated the week with a feast for the Gods.

What we discovered during this week is the identity of real wealth. It certainly isn't money. What we seem to have created during the fifty-five years that we have been married has been a marvelous family. They have grown up to be incredibly responsible people who have created their own lives full of valuable work and relationships. Jennifer is a tenured professor at Penn State's New Kensington campus; Melanie is a nurse practitioner, and Heather is a youth worker in the inner city of Cleveland where she makes a difference to many families who are in deep stress. I preached at her church one Sunday and saw for myself the makeup of that congregation. I got the feeling that if Jesus had created a parish church, it would have looked like that one. The man next to me as I preached was homeless and many of the others there were in great need. The parish hosts a supper each week for the neighborhood and serves over a hundred people. They distribute clothing and other necessities to the families in their neighborhood. This places does an immense amount of good. I discovered again this week how very much I love this family of ours, and have pride in them. We are richly blessed by their lives and their work.

This is what wealth is about. It only marginally has anything to do with money, and then only as it is distributed. It has more to do with love. Love is what makes us all wealthy. Love can be easily given away and accumulated, and we all benefit from it. Thank God for all of the people who joined us at the beach for our celebration, and for all that they do.

Being with my family at the Beach

When we had our beach house, one of the remarkable benefits was the spiritual grace that the place provided to me. I could sit on the deck, watch the ocean, the gulls and the pelicans and be in the presence of God. It was something that happened almost as soon as I sat down with my book or just sat down to wonder at the beautiful surroundings. When we lost the beach house, I lost the wonder of those spiritual moments. It took me a long time to find them again. They came back to me in the middle of writing sermons and having conversation with my family.

We have returned to the beach with the family to celebrate our 55th wedding anniversary. Rosie and our kids, Melanie, Jennifer and Heather; our grandkids, Alison, Lindy, Taylor and Casey and Alison's husband Pete along with our great-grandkid Samson Rodgers are here. Melanie's Beth has come with us and Jessica Varrone, a buddy of Alison's came along. Stephen Wood with his friend Robin and her son Noah have joined us, and my brother Geoff and his wife Rosie will be here later today. It is an elegant gathering of this whole clan and the spiritual moments are returning to me. I love watching Sam play on the floor, listen to the whole gang talking about nothing and witness the industry of everyone trying to make the whole of us happy. The kids cooked dinner last night, a fancy feast of flounder tacos and specialty salads and sauces that made our mouths water. We are very lucky people to have all of this love surrounding us.

We played golf on Tuesday, Heather, Taylor, Melanie and I drove around nine holes at the Oak Island Country club and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We lost some balls, had horrible scores and even broke somebody's window on one of the holes. I don't understand why the build homes so close to the fairways. We will fix the window and make it all right. The nice man has our phone number and we will be in contact with him as soon as he gets an estimate on the repair of the window.

The great joy of all of this has been the companionship and the wonder of being together. If this isn't the work of God, it isn't anything. What wonder relationships hold for us all.

Anticipation

This is the middle of July and we are getting ready to take our daughters and their families to Long Beach, NC where for many years we had a beach house on the ocean. That place was eaten by the Atlantic in 1993 in a terrible winter storm, but the intense beauty of the ocean and our spiritual encounter with both it and the town has stayed with us.

I can still, in a few moments, recapture the wonder of the sound of the surf and the breeze in my face. It is like the breath of God. I can hardly wait to feel it again in the reality of the beach.

The occasion this time is our Fifty-fifth wedding anniversary. We will celebrate it with a dinner and toast each other. We have all been a part of this amazing odyssey. I can't imagine life without our family and their friends. It is amazing what all of these people have brought into our lives over the years.

I'm not sure what it is about the ocean that captures my spirit. I think it has something to do with the presence of the sun and the wind, the gulls, and the wonder of dolphins playing a hundred yards from the shore. When we first saw them, we thought that they were sharks, but it didn't take long for us to come to an understanding of the real nature of those wonderful mammals.

We will have with us all of the things that we will need: our beach towels, and everything our new great-grandson Samson Rodgers will need for his first encounter with the ocean. He will be fun, just by himself.

Books will also be with us. I love to read at the beach. It somehow makes the stories come more alive. I will soak in the books as the ocean keeps its sound in my ears. I thank God for the opportunity to take our kids there.

Getting Settled

Here we are in our Pittsburgh condominium, more or less settled, starting to put pictures on the wall, still with a garage-full of things that we brought with us, but still haven't found places to put them. Our daughters have been wonderful through all of this, getting their parents ensconced in their new home, making frequent trips to this place to help and comfort us and giving us great advice about what to do. We are very fortunate to be in this place with this family of ours.

Finding stores and places is easier since we have been in this area before, but in the eleven years since we left Pittsburgh, there have been many changes. We drove around the other day and discovered many things that we didn't know about.

Our condominium complex is comfortable and is full of many widows and single women. We are one of several couples in this place and are looking forward to getting to know our neighbors. We went to the Memorial day pool party that the people created, but we didn't stay long. It was good to see a few people and put some faces to the names that we have come to know.

We went to a Pittsburgh retired clergy luncheon in Monroeville and got to see a lot of old friends. George Werner, Charlie Martin, Bishop Walter Righter, John Thomas and many others. It was great to reconnect with them. I told Bishop Ken Price, our interim bishop, that I could do some supply work. I would love to do that.

Change and adjustment

Change is never easy. We think it will be easy, but it never is. There are always unresolved issues that disrupt everything. Our move is one of these things that we at first thought would be rather easy, but has turned out to have many hidden problems that we never anticipated. We thought at first, "Good Lord, this is our 26th move! What can go wrong?", but as things have evolved, we have discovered lots of things that have worried us silly. Happily, we have our kids, who have been gems in all of this. Heather was here last weekend helping us to pack. Melanie and Jennifer were here earlier doing the same thing. Now, as the time to move approaches, we are discovering that much of our lives are tangled up in all of this. We can hardly wait to get to Pittsburgh, to be twenty minutes away from two of our children, but getting there is the hassle.

The closing on our house is April 30, and the closing on the condo will be May 11 or 12. We will load our things on May 10, after getting back here from Washington, D.C. where we will attend Mitch and Gary's wedding, and I will assist. We barely have 24 hours before the moving truck arrives. Not much time to get all of the last minute things done. It will work out just fine. It is the timing that is the problem, not what we are doing. We have to keep that all in mind. I remember when we arrived at our Alpine Lake Cabin after retiring from Christ Church that the place was full of boxes and we had to create pathways to the chairs and the bathroom. It was a silly mess. We solved it by getting in the car and going to Hilton Head for two weeks. When we came home, we had clear heads and a willingness to attack the boxes and get ourselves settled into the cabin. It worked out wonderfully. The break was essential. We will probably have to do something similar this time. We will see how it all works out when we get to Pittsburgh and have the condo furnished what our spirits are like. We will probably need to take a break and go somewhere to settle ourselves out. When this happens, I know that we will be just fine, and our move will be complete. Fortunately, we have kids who will help us in all of this. Thank God for family.

Packing and Moving

Heather came down from Cleveland to help us with our packing over this weekend. We have been very busy packing dishes, pictures and whatnot from our closets and cupboards. I have been trying to get the lawn lugs to cut the grass all week, and finally they agreed to come on Sunday afternoon. I hope that works out all right. We still have to close on these two places, get a mortgage and move. That ought to go very well, but I will certainly be glad when it is all over at last and we can settle into our condo in Pittsburgh.

It is amazing to me how much energy we expend with all of this. I pulled nails, spackled and painted in the living room and kitchen. That ought to make our buyer happy. Some of the holes were large enough to create a problem, but they are now filled and look great.

We are going out for breakfast this morning. We deserve it after yesterday's effort. I look forward to eggs over easy, sausage and a couple of pancakes. That ought to fill us up for the day. We might get little more done today before Heather goes home. I really appreciate her work with us. It is so great to have wonderful children.

Facing another move

Buying a house is never easy. We began this process after Christmas when finally we heard what the kids were trying to tell is, to move back to Pittsburgh where our roots reside. We put our Charleston home on the market, and waited through the summer to see what kind of offers we would get. We got none, and we decided in September to take the place off the market. In the meantime, we had bought a condominium in Pittsburgh that we loved, but the woman who sold it to us called and said that the places where she was trying to find to live had dried up, and she wondered if we would sell the place back to her. We agreed, and went through a second closing that gave the place back to her. We were called saints by our kids, but we were confident that what we had done was the right thing.

We put the house back on the market on the first of March, and immediately had a stream of people coming through the door. Ultimately, we got a rather low offer from the one of the lookers and we haggled a bit with him, and eventually arrived at a price. We went back to Pittsburgh over Easter to look for a place to live. Wonderfully, we found an even more attractive condominium in the same plan that the other one was in., It has two larger bedrooms and two full baths and a double garage. We couldn't be happier with our housing situation. All that remains is to close on both of these places, get a mover and transfer everything to Pittsburgh.

We can hardly wait to get back to a place where we will be twenty minutes away from both of our older daughters and only two hours away from Heather, who lives in Cleveland. We hope that this will be our last move before assisted living. We are no strangers to moving, but it has become more tiresome the older that we have gotten.

Changes after Easter

We drove to Morgantown today for Rosie's appointment with the dermatologist who took care of the small spot on her nose. This went well and we drove home in a driving rainstorm that was not easy to navigate. We stopped several times at rest stops and got some hamburgers at Wendy's, so it was a trip that was necessary, but not really pleasant.

Life is full of days like this. We endure them and we get through them and they in some ways nourish us. I am really glad that Rosie's nose got attention, and the rain drive was worth it. I can see the beauty in that, which makes it all worth while. We are home again and we will see what the days ahead bring. We have two closings to deal with: one on this house, and the other on the condo in Pittsburgh. We are really thrilled that life has dealt us some goodness in the past couple of weeks. It isn't only Easter that brightens our lives, it is all that is going on in them. We will have lots of time to settle down, and we will know a wonderful peace in our new home.

Easter and beyond

Rosie and I went to Cleveland to have Easter with our youngest daughter, Heather and her family. It was a marvelous time. Over the weekend time, we stopped in Pittsburgh to look at some condos that were available. We found one that we liked very much some twenty minutes from each of our elder daughters. We are looking forward to closing these real estate ventures, packing up and moving to our new home in Pittsburgh over the next couple of months. We have talked about little else.

The homily at Heather's Easter service was about discovering life that comes out of death. That is a great insight, one that we have all preached about over the years, but yet needs to be planted in our brains again and again. New life will come for us in Pittsburgh, and we will love it beyond belief. We are already planning our packing and getting ready for a move again. We have moved some twenty plus times since we were married. We were in Pittsburgh in our rectory for 18 years, and we have been in this house for six, but a move is a move. Time is staring us down now with both of us in our seventies. and we are looking forward to having these next years closer to family. That, after all is the point of all of this. Our family is extremely important to us and we love them very much. May God bless us in this move.

House Selling, etc.

We sold the house yesterday. This has been quite an odyssey and I'm glad it is over. We will close sometime in the next two months and get ready to move back to Pittsburgh. Getting ready means sorting out what is in this place and what we will take, what we will give to the kids, and what we will try to sell. We have a lot to do. I am thrilled at the prospect of getting close to our daughters and our grandkids and our new great grandkid, Sammy who we will baby sit this weekend. We are continuing the theme of the roaming Woods that we have kept up over the last several decades beginning in Indiana, PA in 1955 when we were married and continuing through several places in Texas, West Virginia and Pennsylvania and then back to WV. Getting back home to Pittsburgh is of the highest priority to us. It will be a wonderful experience. Our kids are ready for us, and we are certainly ready for them.

Forgiveness

When I was a kid, I sang in the Trinity Cathedral choir in Pittsburgh. When Palm Sunday came, when it was time for the Gospel, we all sighed when we discovered that it was so long. This was before the time when the Gospel was dramatized and members of the congregation took parts, sometimes dressed up, and made the Gospel come alive. the problem was that the church didn't take the Gospel as seriously as it might have. Us "little ones" just had to listen to it. I guess that they hoped that by constant repetition over the years, it might sink in. Well, they were right, it did sink in, but not by constant repetition. I learned that the Gospel for Palm Sunday was significant when I went to seminary and came face to face with the reality of the Passion. The very idea that God came to earth to live as one of us, and we killed him was not something that I learned in Sunday School. Jesus' death on the cross was always for me something that "they" did. "They" being the Pharisees and the other religious leaders in Jesus' time. When I discovered that it was me who killed Jesus, it put another face on it. I began to understand what forgiveness really meant. It wasn't simple "sins" that were being forgiven, it was my arrogance in believing that everything was about me. That is what Jesus' passion is all about. When I think of that, it brings me up short every time. On Palm Sunday, I like to think that Easter isn't necessarily going to happen. All of the Easter preparation that we do, the baskets, the bunny, the eggs, the candy are all ways to dress up this holiday so that we don't really need to think about what it means. The Resurrection of Jesus is an incredible event. It means for us all that we are forgiven the arrogance that makes us the center of the world.

I have known so called "born again" people who don't know this. They make their faith the center of their lives and push it forward as judgment on the rest of us. They need forgiveness too. We all do. The beautiful thing is that they have it. Jesus died for them as well as the rest of us. In terms of the real horrible evil that there is in the world, Jesus died for that too. Those with evil at the core of their being are loved and forgiven also by God. That little core of goodness that lies at the heart of every created person is exposed and loved by the God who created us all. That is what "heaven" is all about.

The Radical Expectation of Easter

Such a beautiful day. Sunshine, birds chirping, lots of hope for a wonderful season. This is great with Palm Sunday coming and Holy Week on the horizon. I love this time of the year religiously. I have already said something about Palm Sunday, but Holy Week is a particularly special time. The theme is forgiveness. We walk through Jesus last week, the anxiety that he feels, the coming loss of him to the disciples, the last supper, the betrayal, the arrest, the crucifixion and the agony of the death of God for three days. This culminates in the glory of Easter, but we kid ourselves when we assume Easter as a certainty. We need very much to experience the death of God at our hands. We kill Jesus in our collective arrogance. We have disobeyed the commandments, dismissed Jesus' teaching and we go on trying over and over again to have our own way. That is the root of all of the evil in the world. What is necessary for all of us is to look inside ourselves, at our hate, our prejudices and our tendency always to put our own needs first. It isn't always that blatant, we find ways to excuse ourselves and to explain why we are probably all right. That is why we need over all things to find forgiveness. It is what God gives us absolutely in this Holy Week.

We always had a Seder Supper on Maundy Thursday and celebrated the Eucharist in the context of our meal. That was a wonderful evening for all of us. After supper, we would process to the nave of the church where we would strip the altar and dim the lights and get the place ready for Good Friday. That, for me, emphasized my sin and prepared me for the truth of Good Friday and got me ready for the radical expectation of Easter. It was always a wonderful surprise when it came.

Spring and Summer

We have sleet outside this morning. Temperatures in the thirties. I need to go get new tires for the car today. I know somehow, deep inside, that spring is here and that summer is coming. I can't deny this even though the harshness of the winter that we had this year stays with me. We have a yard full of squirrels and the guys are coming to cut the grass this weekend. We rented two beach houses for our 55th anniversary family gathering this summer. Summer at Long Beach is a wonderful thing to think about. We will have the kids and the grandkids as well as Sammy, our Great grandkid. It will be wonderful. What have I done to deserve all of this? Well, nothing at all. We are a grown up family that needs each other. That is the wonderful part about what we are doing.

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is an incredible day, and a metaphor for our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It begins with a procession through Jerusalem with Jesus on a donkey, or on two horses if you wish, with people strewing palms and branches in his way and great shouts of Hosanna! following him on the road. The day progresses to the end with the palms turned to crosses as we remember the horror of Good Friday which will come at the end of Holy Week. Most churches have some sort of enactment of this Gospel on Palm Sunday with parishioners taking the parts and acting out the passion of Jesus. I remember Judas coming down the center aisle and throwing the silver pieces at the high priests and running out of the place. What I remember more than all of that is the scene of crucifixion where Jesus is stripped and nailed to the cross and lifted up over all of us. In that moment, the whole of the day comes home to me and I know the purpose of it: to make sure that I know the depth of the love of God to send his son to die for all of us. God himself come to earth to suffer and to die for all of humanity. With that in place, how we treat each other, and our petty judgement of our neighbors bores into my soul. I can hardly imagine what this depth of love has created and how the pain of God for all of us must intrude on that love. But it doesn't intrude. God's love for us produced out of the exquisite pain of Good Friday the elegance of Easter. The Resurrection is God's answer to our cruelty. That is a wonderful answer that we all need to tuck into our hearts. Think of the last time that you were cruelly treated and think of what a gracious response might have produced. That can change my life, and it might change yours.

A reflection on Health Care

Passing the health care bill has to be one of the most momentous events in recent history. But it wasn't easy watching the sausage making as it went through the process. I am pleased that more people will be covered and that the beginning of insurance company regulation has happened, but I am not yet sure what will be tried to derail this thing. Like Social Security and Medicare, we have only begun a process that will work itself out over the coming years. Thank God for the beginning, and may God bless the coming years.

Some Reflections on the coming of Spring

We had an open house with the realtor yesterday and one couple came. I hope we can sell this place soon. We want to move back to Pittsburgh where our kids live and our grand kids. We also have a new Great Grandson who will need our attention. We are really pleased with all of this. The kids are as anxious as we are. For Easter, we will go to Pittsburgh and to Cleveland, spending some time with all of our kids. This ought to be wonderful. I can hardly wait for Spring to get into full bloom. The winter down here has been rather harsh, much more snow than anyone ever thought would come our way. A series of Southern storms dumped lots of white stuff on our driveway every couple of weeks. I gave our snow blower to Heather, who lives in Cleveland and has much more need of it than I do. I hope your winter was not harsh. Life is hard enough without shoveling snow.

Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent, 2010

This is a blog to let me reflect on my spiritual life during the season of Lent, and to continue after that. I look at Lent as a time of cleansing, cleansing of the sin that infects everything that I do. Ash Wednesday was a day of forgiveness, when God touched me and wiped away the sin that is so much a part of life. I don't think of sin constantly, I am simply aware that this is a constant part of everything that we do. I know that God's intention for me is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, his son and to do the best I can to emulate him and his life. I believe that Jesus' life is what we need to look at, not his death and resurrection, although those are significant events. His life was a life lived in the middle of people who were poor and downhearted. He asked his disciples to spend their time with them also. The stories in the Gospels are about the way that he shared his life with the poor. The 25th chapter of Matthew's Gospel talks about how we are to feed, clothe and visit those who are in poverty, in prison and who are sick. When we do that, says our Lord, we do it for him. I think that is what Jesus has in mind for all of us. Unfortunately, our selfishness and pride get in the way of this. That is what I mean by sin, and my sin in particular.