Good morning! It is nice to see you. I hope you had a lovely week.
Bit of a blustery morning here, but we’ve an incredible week in the forecast, with reliable summer weather predicted to last more than one day in a row.
I figured you’d be here this morning, so I’ve prepared the tea and mugs already.
Grab a comfy seat. Let me pour.
Let’s catch up.
Nice for both of us
They look so cozy together, don’t they? Kitty is on the left. Bubble is on the right.
Kitty was already enjoying this spot in our living room when Bubble decided to share it with her. Bub loves to cuddle with Kitty, and he often seeks her out so he can cozy up beside her.
Bub has not quite figured out that cuddling needs to be nice for both parties. Poor Kitty’s “help me” eyes say it all.
A nice walk
I dropped Erin off at work yesterday in Robert Cotton Park in Stratford. I had a few minutes, so I strolled around the park’s trail, part of the network of Stratford trails.
It’s a nice little park. People have done some wonderful work adding some artistic flair to trees that fell during Hurricane Fiona a few years back. I threw rocks into the Hillsborough River, I spotted a number of nice birds, I waited for a family of Canada geese to cross my path.
10/10. Would walk again.
On skipping church
A few weeks back, I confessed that I’ve been going to church. (I’ll link that issue here, and assume if you want to know my motivations, you’ll click and read.) We’ve been attending Trinity United in Charlottetown. I like the people. I like the politics. I like the big tent.
A funny thing happened last week. We took the week off church. This, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t a big deal. I spent my entire adult life not going to church, so you’d think missing one Sunday wouldn’t make much of an impact.
We decided to take a week off the week before. This spring has been pretty hectic, and Erin and I were looking to find a little gap in our schedule to spend with each other away from the mad rush of life. So we decided to skip church.
The Saturday evening before we skipped, we went to the movies. And wouldn’t you know it, we ran into someone from church. We had a nice chat, and I dreaded her ending the conversation with “see you tomorrow!”, because I knew I’d have to blather something awkward. In the end, she just said “see you!”, and the problem was avoided.
And we had a lovely Sunday together. It was a nice gift of time. We chatted. We rested. We sipped our coffee a little slower.
And we missed something big. A beloved member of the congregation died. They announced it in church, and we missed it.
I’ve often said the thing that makes me still feel like I’m “from away” on this Island, is my lack of relationship with the obituaries page. I know many Islanders who check the obits every day, who turn to that section before they read the front page.
Because I didn’t grow up here, the obituaries page is mostly meaningless to me. There aren’t people I grew up knowing who have entered their older years. There aren’t friends of my parents or grandparents kicking around. There aren’t old teachers or professors. There isn’t a kindly older lady who lived up the street when I was a kid, because I didn’t grow up here.
This week, a funeral for a person I see every week at church came and went, and I was oblivious. I missed it, because I didn’t even bother to check, because I didn’t think the obituaries page applied to my life.
Another thing happened when I skipped church: people missed me.
This is a novel concept for me. Growing up, I always felt like we went to church every week, because we worried people would judge us if we didn’t. It was that negative motivation that really turned me off church in the first place. Tuesday evening, I went to a meeting at the church. More than one person quite sincerely told me they’d missed me.
I’d… just not considered that perspective before.
Going to church and belonging to a church are two very different things. I have all sorts of conflicting feelings about the theology of it all, but to me, it doesn’t really matter, because I feel a sense of belonging to the people I see every week.
Yesterday, I got an email from a church friend who asked if I would mind meeting and older woman this morning when she arrives in the shuttle from her long-term care home. She asked if I could sit with her in church, since she doesn’t have family. She has dementia and needs someone to sit with her for assurance and company.
I was so tickled to be asked to do this thing. Of course I said yes. It made me feel like I belong in that community, in the most supportive way that people belong to each other.
I don’t have a good closing thought here. I thought something would pop in to my head when I got to this point of the story, but it didn’t. All I can say is it feels nice to belong.
The photo above is Clifton United in Stratford, which is part of the Trinity Church. Built in 1848, it has no running water. It’s tiny. They only hold services there in the summer months. I’ve not been yet, but I’ve come to think of it as if my church has a cottage.
Clifton is just a short walk from Robert Cotton Park, so I walked there yesterday on my stroll. I walked through the quiet cemetery for quite a while, thinking about belonging. It was a peaceful moment.
Dunnock Bay
This week in Dunnock Bay, Mindy the librarian is trying to rush through the farmer’s market on her busy Saturday, but she runs into someone who slows her down a bit. Go read it!
Thanks for hanging out with me for another Sunday morning.
I hope you have a great week.
Someone did an awesome job on that tree art ! Wow….
Robert Cotton Park is such a gem. I walk a few laps on the trail most days with my dog. Some days I even go twice