Featured image: It’s the season for roadwork in parts where snow and ice seem far away.

 

Cogitation 33 Saturday 18 August 2018   August flows on like a river, each day a tributary of the ever-flowing, changing, sometimes churning stream.

People connections stand out in this coursing month. Such as coffee and a donut with friends from Grand Rapids, Michigan two weeks ago at Rise and Roll Bakery in LaGrange County. Also, lunch this week with friends at Bent Oak Golf Club in Elkhart. None of us golf, so our conversation took other links.

We had a genial exchange with Steve Thomas who has joined our pastoral team as transitional pastor for the next year. Pastor Steve is meeting with as many households of current members and former attendees as possible.

We continue to meet regularly with Marty’s family. And we’re looking forward to lunch with friends from Ypsilanti, Michigan next week.

Each of these in-person tributary connections bridge family, friends, and church with the world at large, helping us make personal connections in the middle of too many division-laden and toxic elements that need mending in contemporary society.

To the point: I look at recent photos, mostly from our walks, to get the pulse of the good that is happening. The photos tell me summer is passing, quickening in its seasonal cycle, pausing for no one, reveling in goodness.

The photos below, for me, are full of the sensation of having experienced something tasty, precious, wild, life cycle-rich, timely, timeless, real. I offer them as worthy signs of the season, a testament to hope.

 

 

A pause of past and present

 

Migration in the wings

On one of our walks we heard Canada geese honk and saw them fly in a sort of V-formation. Same scene later in the week over Oliver Lake. Migration is in the wings.

 

Look, touch, taste, smell, listen. Past, present, future. Live it now.

john