I rose before 8, and it was mixed clouds. A good day to plant flowers, and being Mother’s Day, that was likely what would happen all over the US, not just the Greater Portland Area. This was another Sunday School morning for me, and church at 11. I started on the blog after making coffee, finding some yogurt still in the fridge (it had been pushed to the back), and toasting a bagel and then adding cream cheese.
I assembled a memory of Saturday and realized I had missed part of Friday’s blog, but couldn’t really fit it into Saturday’s story. This happens. I miss something, it comes to me the next day, and I let it go again (I sent some requests to my bankers at US Bank). I continue to invest the morning in getting the blog done.
I finish the blog, the Quicken uploads, and read more email and news. Today’s news (and many emails) is a study in doing the wrong things and getting lost in the mundane. Mostly, I ignore the news and get the blog done and my day in order. It is a tie and red sweater vest for today.
I head to the church in Air VW the Gray and arrive around 10:25, with Emmaus winding down. I find my class notes in the service’s bulletins. I take my place as an usher, as usual, and we have a new likely homeless guy, Ray, who says he is there as ‘higher power’ sent him to us. He has a lot of mismatched bags, suggesting he is a street person, but I point out the coffee and donut holes (leftovers actually from Emmaus), and he settles in. I believe he is waiting, as many who show up do, for the Beaverton Library to open at 1. Ray is mostly invisible and is welcome to the sandwiches I provide for Sunday School.
Dondrea gives the sermon and covers how we often wait for something in our lives. In the text, Jeremiah tells the captives that they will not be released for 70 years (three generations — everyone who was carried off will be gone, as will anyone who met them and heard them tell the stories). We need to temper our expectations to be focused on community and social justice in our area now. Do not try to recall some previous time or look for some distant promised land. We need to live now. The community now is what we need to build. Go ahead and plant an oak tree for some distant time, but remember, you will be the one watering it now, and you will need a community to live in.
The service closed, coffee and sandwiches were served, and soon I was teaching Sunday School. Attendance was lower on Mother’s Day due to other issues. I covered the ending of The Book of Revelation and then some of the controversies in the Catholic Church (a group seeking to return to Latin and to undo the reforms of Vatican II). We also drilled into some of the language and translation issues in the text and how some words have been substituted, creating different meanings, many of which we see to exclude people when quoted by churches. Again, my lesson is that the Greek has issues that are hidden by the translators, and it is important not to hang one’s belief on specific words or statements; it is important to take the Apocalypse of John at a higher level.
With that done, I headed home, and Corwin came over, and we heated up the pre-made Irish Strew from Costco. Deborah reminded me that since Corwin’s address is still the house, we can get him a matching Costco card to get cheap gas and so on. We will try to get this done this week (thanks, Deborah)! I did not have any Irish-style bread on hand, but I did find my frozen bread machine bread and toasted it. The homemade bread went well with the stew.
Corwin left, and I was back to preparing for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5E (or 5E 2024). I managed to get there ten minutes early with some roses cut from my garden for the women we play with (I also cut one from Pink Moss, since it looks like a torture device, with all the moss/thorns, for M@). The game is a mix of role-playing genres, with a crashed spaceship in a High Fantasy setting: S3: Expedition to Barrier Peaks from the early days of D&D. It is now redone as a 5E adventure (giving M@ some challenges as he has to balance between the two versions). And being the usual wandering sorcerer, Carter the Great (named after an American Magician, the first to perform on TV, here), I managed to get irradiated twice (rolled a 1 on the save, and then a 2) and played with damage and exhaustion for the night. The battle, which took much of the evening, was chaotic, and until Carter went with an invisibility spell, he was beaten down to almost death. After that, Scott could protect the other characters, and soon we started to reduce the bad guys and nasty displacer-like beasts.
With the conclusion of the battle (and survival, in my character’s case), we finished for the night. Flowers were sent on, and Scott and I talked about gaming for a while outside. I then headed home, read some more, and then went to sleep. The dreams have faded, but I suspect I, as Carter, was wandering the spaceship and somehow seeing the creatures of John’s story in his book. “Look at the!” I imagine Carter said in my dream.
Thanks for reading!
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 