A Busy Weekend

When spring comes late to these northern climes, it seems to come with abandon. And why not? We've waited long enough. This last week the trees went from bare to lime-y to fully leaved, and the flowering bushes/trees were groaning with blossoms. We planned on going to the Tulip Time Festival Friday evening and Saturday, but the weather people were predicting another cold, rainy Saturday, so we scurried out of town Friday afternoon. That way Karen got to experience the Klompen dancing and the fair-like atmosphere in the sunny warmth late Friday, and Jenny and I got to work in her garden (and C to golf with an Ohio math buddy in Holland for the TT Festival) in the cold and rain Saturday. An observation: Klompen Dancers are primarily women, but while they are also primarily blonde Dutch folk, they come from many ethnicities.

We scurried back Saturday afternoon in time for a new friend from church and his son to cut down two dead trees in our backyard woods. How fascinating to watch skilled workmen doing what they do so well. In one astonishing move, when one of the dead trees got caught in another, Mark cut it further up and dropped it straight down, so it looked as though that's where it had been rooted. Chuck stacked the firewood that Mark and Jon cut and will give it away to any neighbors who have fireplaces. (And he planted my rhodendendron bushes the girls had gotten me for Mother's Day.)

This morning we joined Church of the Servant. The sermon text was I John 2: 1 - 11, about obedience and love as evidences that we know Jesus. Love, said our pastor, curtails autonomy, seeks to create a "we," is alert to the needs of others, and can only be exercised about and should enhance the particularity of others. The music was, as always, magnificent, including a hymn written by my new friend, Coni Huisman.

And now there's a week before I leave for Texas where I'll be mother of the bride for a week. It's going to be a full one, with an extra ESL session and some intake work for Karen's summer program in addition to the normal busyness.