What a Weekend

My last post was "Slow me down Lord"

Now it is Sunday morning and I am getting ready for church. There are clothes in the dryer for packing for the mission trip today and I am checking out my bills electronically before I go and - oh year, there is preaching this morning.

As I ruminate on the weekend, I am thinking a Mission Trip might prove restful!

Friday night we watched the movie "Doubt" at church. I had already seen it and knew it was an important film with much to discuss. We stayed late to talk about it.
In the middle of the movie I got a call from my brother Geoff who told me that he had heard from my cousin Natalie about her mom, my Aunt Shirley. It seems that her colon cancer is inoperable and there is nothing they can do and she is going immediately into hospice with maybe 72 hours left! Her husband, my Uncle Sam, died last month. This seems unbelievable. Geoff later spoke to Aunt Shirl via a speakphone and said goodbye for all of us. I feel like all weekend I am internally reverberating with this information.

On a practical level, my cousins will do a memorial service for her in August and my brothers and I will attend that. Somehow. It is alot to consider.

Saturday Marnie and I went to the Gay Pride Parade downtown. I have always wanted to go and was wondering how many churches participated. I heard that there were 17 churches that had representation in the parade. My dream would be that next year our church will have some way of being in the parade. We will see. It was quite a day - happy to run into Nikki there and we saw Neil from BG who was on roller blades. There was such a variety of people that I wanted to just sit and watch everything.
Glad I went.

Saturday evening we had two weddings. I officiated at Sean and Amanda's. Sean is the grandson of Mescal, a saint of the church who passed away a month ago. They lean toward the "Pagan" and so it was my first wedding where the bride wore red, the groom had a black scarf on his head and there were many tattoos in evidence. Sean wrote the service using mine as a reference and gave it to me in final form an hour before the service. Not really my way of doing things - but there were a lot of extenuating circumstances. The wedding was in the garden of our church and supposed to start at 7 - but Sean thought more people might come, so we waited 15 more minutes. That kind of gives you a sense of how informal it all was. However, no matter what the differences, love is the same and the moment that the bride and groom recognize that this is it - is always tender.

At the same time David Koomson and Flo were getting ready for their African wedding in our fellowship hall. David and Flo are from Ghana. It was supposed to start at 6:30. We had talked about what doors for their guests to use so that they did not disturb the wedding in the garden. Both groups were "fluid" with time - so of course, as the wedding in the garden was taking place - in the background there were guests to the African wedding entering with lots of food. It was different to say the least.

Part of the African wedding was that David and "his people" were to stand outside the building and ask to come in. And Flo and "her people" would eventually let them come in. At :15 as I was leaving David came to my office and introduced me to his "Elders" they were now ready to begin. Chuck and I decided to go out to get a meal and then maybe return for the dancing - but we were so tired that we just came home and went to bed.

All in all, it was a day full of different experiences which represents the wonderful diversity of my life living in Columbus.