A spot of rain

My dad had a wall hanging or some such thing in his old darkroom, a "letter from an Irish mother." It was kind of funny, talking about mundane things like the weather, saying: "It only rained twice this week. Once for three days and once for four." We had the same situation here. The weather cleared briefly on Wednesday afternoon, and all you could hear in the neighborhood was the sound of a hundred lawnmowers roaring up and down front yards, mine included. Then the skies closed in again, and it’s been coming down ever since. Even this morning Kodiak and I were drenched during our morning constitutional. And him fresh from the groomers yesterday, too. Nothing like the smell of wet dog to invigorate a person.

The other day Kathy looked at me and said in such a way that it seemed she could hardly believe it herself, “I’ve been a nurse for forty years.” No wonder she wants to retire. We didn’t feel like going out to celebrate, so I picked up takeout at Mavis Winkles, and bought a card on the way to the restaurant and placed it in the bag to present to her. This morning we’ll go out to breakfast. As you can see, food figures prominently in celebration here.

Max's dad has been taking him out to the national park by the old canal to walk in the woods there. They did see Bambi’s mom one day, but Max wasn’t that impressed. I think maybe the whole world is a zoo to him. It might serve him well to maintain that perspective as he grows up.

I went to a meeting at church this past week for our Vibrant Parish Life committee. I used to belong to the committee for a while, but when Kathy’s mom was getting worse, I quit. Also, I was annoyed when I figured out that “vibrant parish life” really meant “do more with less”. There really is a shortage of priests that is already impacting the church, in fact, our new bishop came from Boston where he closed 70 parishes. I’m sure he’s been brought in to do the same thing here. There are lots of old ethnic parishes, some with only 250 families in them, and those sorts of places will be closed and merged. There are already parishes that have administrators, not pastors, and there are parishes who only have a priest on the weekends. Those parishes with fewer than 2800 families won’t even have a second priest working in them.

We have about 2800 families in our parish, so we warrant having two priests, but we will be “clustering” with other parishes for certain activities. For instance, for years kids from a neighboring parish have been playing on our elementary school football team. We no longer have a pre-Cana program for engaged couples—that is done somewhere else.

Anyway, the upshot of the meeting was that they wanted—you guessed it—volunteers to do two things: study which parishes we might cluster with, and educate our parishioners about the problem and our future. Of course, I went to the education group, since the politics of the other group did not appeal to me. Two degrees in political science, but I stay away from politics on that level. So, we will be going forth to talk to people about ideas for the future, preparing them for who knows what.

Hope you have a good week!