Summer Stage #4, Sunday 19 June 2016–Who doesn’t prefer natural sounds over noise?

(One of our computers is getting repaired and that prevents me from downloading photos from this week. I’ll add a few from the file to this shorter blog.)

On Friday’s walk we heard birds singing, water coursing over a creek dam, a breeze soughing through trees.

By contrast, where we had to walk next to traffic we heard engines, road noise, sirens, and some loud mufflers. One driver had the audacity to toot her horn at us  as she was turning into a service station and we were already passing on the sidewalk. Thankfully that never happens, never being this once in many years.

So the birds sing: “Never care, never care, listen to our chorus sing. Listen up, listen up, hear how our many soundings ring. Take delight, take delight, let your cares find flight.”

High points of the week’s reflection include inspiring sessions at Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference held at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, visits with friends, Sunday worship services at church and conference, celebrating the 80th birthdays of Jim and Thelma Bixler at an open house their children organized, taking part in singing for Annie Yoder at her home since health prevents her from going out, and a scheduled visit to the dentist that’s over with.

We live in a disturbing world. I think of the song by the 1960s classic folk singers Simon and Garfunkel, Sound of Silence.  The lyrics had something to say about how we neutralize our minds, starve our minds, like let our minds follow injurious paths.  I’ll have to listen to the song again.

At the start of a new week I say “Thanks for the newness that helpfully mixes with the past.”

This May Fly may have been looking for breakfast. No such luck.

At home on the Elkhart River.

Hello there.

Best! -John