Working with Wood

     I was pretty thrilled to wake up last Saturday morning (the 12th) and feel normal once again. I still went to the doctor's on Tuesday and got bloodwork done on Friday to make sure my kidneys are functioning properly. Beth and I made a quick trip up to the market on Saturday and the wood (10 pieces of 14' red oak) for our baseboards got delivered that day.

     After church on Sunday I headed over to my friend Dan's to work on planing down the wood. It took a lot of passes through the planer before it was even, and then we needed to cut it to the proper width (and then plane those edges too!). Dan's amazingly handy with this kind of stuff, like my friends Frank and Steve too (I'm often in awe of these guys and their abilities). The defining moment with Dan was when his skill saw stopped working. Without missing a beat he climbed into the storage space above his garage and pulled out a box containing a brand new saw ("I bought this on sale a few years ago, just in case I needed it sometime.") We finished putting a 'profile' (the shape at the top of the baseboard) on the wood, along with sanding each piece, this past Saturday. Then Beth and I took Dan & Ellen out for supper to thank him for all of his help (plus it was their 25th anniversary this week).
     Last Monday we celebrated Mom's birthday at our house and it was great to have everyone together in one place, since it so rarely seems to happen now. Everyone seemed to have a good time and it was a nice, relaxed visit.
     On Tuesday Beth and I went to see the movie "In Time" which was just okay but was still a good escape. Wednesday night we headed to the library to hear speaker/author Anna Rains, who I had read about in the paper. She's from the Ottawa area and has written a book about her older sister's experiences with tuberculosis and spending many years at the sanitorium as she was growing up. She made an excellent presentation and we bought the book, but it was unfortunate that only 5 people were there to hear her.
     Thursday was busy with after school/evening interviews and then small group. Beth went with Alison, Tina and Ashton to see the K-W production of 'The Sound of Music' at the Centre in the Square.
     On Friday we served at Ray of Hope with our Thursday night small group. I took care of getting the potatoes cooked and worked as a runner to make sure the servers didn't run out of food. Beth was in charge of overseeing the kitchen. It's always a busy job but is such a worthwhile thing to do.
     I read a thought-provoking article by Tony Jones this past week. We've heard him speak at Cornerstone and the Wild Goose Festival and I really liked his book "The New Christians". Plus I visit his blog pretty much every day. He's been involved in the whole 'emerging' church movement from the beginning and he explained it in a way that makes a lot of sense to me. Things really began when youth who were experiencing dynamic, relational youth ministry wanted to see that kind of thing replicated in 'big people's church'. It made me think of youth meetings and retreats, and how special they are - why can't church be more like that? It seems to me that the format of services has really changed very little over the last 60 or more years (the music has been contemporized in many, of course). Tony is part of Doug Pagit's (I wrote about him previously here and here) church, which really seems to try to think differently about how we 'do church' (See the picture? Looks more like a youth room don't you think? It sounds like Sunday morning sermons are more discussions than preaching). I really like how these guys think about the church and culture.
     I finished reading Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About Christianity" and found it had some great ideas in it. I also read a book called "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" which was a unique story about an autistic boy who lost his father during the 9/11 attacks. It comes out as a movie at Christmas.
     I've been listening through Randy Stonehill's discography lately and am really enjoying his songs. I wish I'd had time to do that before he played here in October - I would have had many more requests to make as he's written some great tunes over the years. Sometimes I wonder why I buy new music since I've got so much wonderful old stuff to listen to.