SIT AND BE FIT continues every Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. in the Conference Room. PJ Isaac is the instructor. Come and enjoy this exercise for the rest of us!

WEDNESDAY BIBLE STUDY meets every Wednesdayt at, 7:00 p.m. We gather in the Conference Room for study of the text for the following Sunday’s sermon as well as a time of sharing joys and concerns. Come join us.

SPECIAL OFFERINGS the rest of this year include Peacemaking on Oct, 3^rd; Thanksgiving/Barium Springs Home for Children on Nov. 21^st; and Christmas Joy on Dec. 19^th.

Tom’s Tidings

Tom was on vacation during the month of June and wrote the following when he returned.

Dear Friend,

One of the things I love about vacation is the relationship I have with time. Vacation is somehow more about “being” than “doing” and more about listening than speaking. And one of the ways I find I listen is through reading.

Barbara Brown Taylor’s book of practices for people of faith, An Altar in the World, subtitled “A Geography of Faith,” proved a wonderful vacation companion. I was hooked with the table of contents with chapters that include, The Practice of Paying Attention, The Practice of Wearing Skin, The Practice of Walking on the Earth, The Practice of Getting Lost, The Practice of Encountering Others. I was on vacation because I knew I needed to grounded in the new reality of my life. And here was a book, recommended to me by an old friend just days before I took off for Seattle, that celebrates where we are. Try this on

In The Practice of Walking on the Earth I read the following: “When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this where I am.’” (p. 56) I was beginning a carefully laid out month of vacation at that point. And it became a celebration of every moment, of where I was, of the people whose company I enjoyed, of the places we walked.

Bethany took me to walk in the parks where she usually runs or plays volleyball. In Seattle that means you walk in the rain, of course, but it could not have been better. Jessica thought I was up for the “Billy Goat Trail” near Great Falls, Maryland. I guess she was right since I made it to the end of the trail and back home again, but it taxed every ounce of my will. And I would not trade the experience for the whole world.

By the end of the vacation I understood my need for what Barbara Brown Taylor had said in the introduction. “If you have run out of breath yourself – or out of faith – then this book is for you.… My hope is that reading [these pages] will help you see the red X under your feet. To put it another way, my hope is that reading them will help you recognize some of the altars in the world – ordinary-looking places where human beings have met and may continue to meet up with the divine More that they sometimes call God.” I return knowing that one of those places is here with you. Grace and Peace!