Autumn watch

Across the street from the fast food joint at County and Elm Streets, there’s a house that has a beautiful copper beech growing in the yard. I was walking down Elm Street when I heard an odd rustling sort of sound coming from the copper beech. I looked over and saw that brown stuff was dropping out of the tree, and I realized what was going on: the beech nuts were ripe, and some squirrels were sitting up in the tree shelling them and eating them as fast as they could. The sound was the squirrels cracking open the beech nuts, and the brown stuff coming down was beech nut shells. Squirrels almost always get to beech nuts before we humans do. I can only remember once when I got to eat any beech nuts:– a warm evening in October, 1999, while sitting outdoors reading theology on the back steps of the library of Andover Newton Theological School. The steps were covered with beech nuts that had fallen from the two big beech trees that grew nearby, and half of the beech nuts I picked still had the kernels in them. I cracked them open and ate the kernels, which tasted very good indeed; and I finally understood why the squirrels rarely leave any for us humans to eat.

Volunteer management for churches: outline

Of all the things I do as a minister (and used to do as a Director of Religious Education), I’m best at volunteer management. The basic principles of volunteer management in churches are not complicated — no, volunteer management is not rocket science. However, the the devil is in the details, and there are many details in volunteer management. For years, I’ve been meaning to write out some of those devilish details of basic volunteer management principles for churches. I have lots of notes on the subject, and even an outline….

At this point, I’d love to have some feedback from my readers. Many of you are long-time church volunteers yourself, many others are involved in some aspect of volunteer management, and the rest of you are just plain smart people. Below, you’ll find my outline for a Web-based resource page on volunteer management. I’d love it if you, dear reader, would look it over and tell me what I’ve forgotten.

Once I get some feedback on the outline, I’ll start writing. And I’ll post what I write here so you can comment on it further. For now, here’s the outline…. Continue reading →

It’s snowing on Mars…

Yup. The Phoenix Mars mission has discovered that it snows on Mars. News release on their Web site. They also have this video showing clouds on Mars — and although they don’t claim it’s snow, in the video you can see occasional white schmutz blowing by the camera.

I grew up on science fiction stories that talked about life on Mars. Planetary science long ago demonstrated that the Martians of H. G. Wells, Stanley G. Weinbaum, and Ray Bradbury are nothing more than fairy tales. Now science is showing us something even more fascinating than the old science fiction stories:– the existence of frozen water on Mars, and the possibility that Mars have have seen liquid water in the past; all of which suggests a possibility that Mars once had life forms of some kind.

Autumn watch

This year, I’ve been so busy that I’ve been watching the emergence of fall colors through car windows. Two weeks ago, the trees along the highways here in southeastern New England were almost entirely green. But as I was driving into Providence this afternoon, I saw lots of maples tipped with red or orange, and I saw several trees that were completely red.

I don’t particularly like the fact that the only time I get to look at fall color is when I’m driving. That is a sure indication that I am too busy — busier than I need to be. No one is so important that they can’t take a few hours each week to walk around a park, or out in the woods if that’s possible, and look at trees. No one is that important, yet somehow I have managed to set up my life so that the only time I get to look at trees is when I’m driving madly to get somewhere else.

Festival

I spent this past weekend at the Nutmeg Dulcimer Festival, an annual gathering of mountain dulcimer and hammered dulcimer players. I have to tell you, a whole festival with nothing but dulcimers is too many dulcimers. This time, I brought my guitar as well as my dulcimer. When there are ten dulcimers playing in one room, another dulcimer is too many, but a guitar is welcomed like rain in a drought.

At lunch today, I was talking with Chuck about this phenomenon. I knew he’d understand because he plays hammered dulcimer and guitar. “Yeah, I do know what you mean,” he said. “The last two years, I never took my hammered dulcimer out of its case.”

Yeah, there’s a metaphor here, or a moral, or whatever — you can make it up to suit whatever ideology you’re trying to push. Or just take my advice:– if you go to a dulcimer festival, bring a guitar, not a dulcimer.

“Do not re-use!”

Sometimes you just have to catch up with filing. For the past five years, I’ve been stuffing my sermon manuscripts into a file drawer in rough chronological order, but the file drawer was getting full and it was time to put all those manuscripts into three-ring binders so I could actually refer to them if I wanted. What’s the point of keeping all those manuscripts if I can’t use them?

As I sorted through all those manuscripts, things would catch my eye. I had labeled one sermon, preached five years ago at a church which shall remain nameless, “DO NOT RE-USE!” in big purple letters. Oh yes, I remembered now — that was a real stinker, probably the worst sermon I’ve ever given. Another sermon was labeled “Blah” — not surprisingly, I have no memory whatsoever of that one. A dozen pages of handwritten manuscript were labeled, “Never finished, never used” — I have no idea why I kept those pages, but under the assumption that I must have had a reason I dutifully inserted them into the appropriate time slot in one of the binders. Another sermon caught my eye, because I remembered that when I wrote it I thought it was pretty good — I re-read it, and it was not very good at all.

But who cares if it was the failed sermons that caught my eye. It has very been satisfying to get all those manuscripts organized. For someone like me, a good filing system is its own reward, regardless of what the files actually contain.

Good neighbors

Here in Massachusetts, come election day we’re going to vote on Question 1, a ballot initiative that proposes to eliminate the state income tax. Opponents include everyone from business people like the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce (“it’s irresponsible”) and union leaders, cops and hippies, the Republican leaders in the Massachusetts House and Senate (“it goes too far”) and Democratic lawmakers. Even so, it could pass. The same ballot initiative appeared in 2002, and got 45% of the vote.

Tonight, I went to a meeting here in New Bedford to begin to organize against Question 1. It was a real mix of people: people of all skin colors from dark brown to pale white like me; people of all ages from self-professed elders to teenagers; people dressed in everything from suits to baggy hiphop pants. I said hi to the people I know, and then the speakers started up. Nurses, cops, teachers, the county DA, people in the non-profit world, human services people, all spoke at this meeting, telling us to vote against Question 1. Some of them spoke well, but basically all they were all preaching to the choir.

Then a firefighter stood up. “I’ve lived in New Bedford for 55 years,” he said. He spoke briefly about why Question 1 would be bad for the fire department. Then he went off in a different vein. “Over the years, in my house up at —— St. — it’s a matter of public record where I live, you can look it up because I’m registered to vote [laughter] — over the years, I’ve put up lawn signs every once in a while. But not much, not often. Then a couple of years ago, I put up a lawn sign in front of my house for my friend Scott Lang, when he was running for mayor. And people, neighbors, they came up to me — are you really going to vote for Scott Lang? — I’d be out in front of my house — tell me why you’re going to vote for him? All these people asking me. And you can do the same thing. The people in this room tonight, you’re the kind of people who are out there picking up trash, being good neighbors, shoveling snow off the sidewalk so the elderly woman down the street can walk — you’re the kind of people who your neighbors respect. When you put a lawn sign outside your house, people are going to pay attention to it.” Then he pointed out the lawn signs at the back of the room, and he was done.

I was standing next to Jose. We turned and looked at each other. “He was good,” said Jose. “Yeah,” I said. Then it was pretty much over. People began to drift out. Lots of people picked up lawn signs; those of us who are apartment dwellers got smaller signs we can put in windows. As I picked up my sign for our front window (“Protect Education. Vote No on Question 1. It’s a reckless idea.”) and headed back home to eat a late dinner, I decided the firefighter was right — the people at that meeting are the kind of people who shovel sidewalks and pick up trash and understand that tax money goes towards helping other people — in short, they’re good neighbors, the kind of people you want to live next door to.

Blah

Carol went up to Maine to sell her books and composting toilets at a fair. She came back with a sinus cold. I’m worried she’s going to give it to me. I don’t have time to have a cold! Work is crazy! I need to spend long hours working!

What’s that you say? Overwork can cause increased vulnerability to illness?

Uh oh.