Lazy Summer Sunday

Forty-Four again in church today for another inspiring, high-quality lay-led summer service, featuring the music of jazz accompanist Gay Pearson and our five-voice ad hoc pick-up First Parish Summer chorale ensemble. Just delights me so much to see how the worship committee has risen to the challenge of year-round services, and inspires me also with a growing restlessness to return to the pulpit myself in September.

And then when I returned home, an e-mail from a seminarian acquaintance of mine looking for information about Henry Ware Jr. for a paper she is writing for a class offered by Rob Hardies this summer at Andover Newton. Best I could give her was the listing for my dissertation in the Harvard Divinity School library catalog, (although someone recently told me that the manuscript is actually missing and presumed stolen from the stacks). An odd form of literary immortality, to say the least.

Finally, a spur of the moment invitation to a simple backyard picnic lunch with my neighbor across the street -- salad, quiche, fresh fruit and fizzy water...light, yummy, seasoned with great company...even if we did end up talking way too much about church, and a recent USA Today article about why men are missing from the pews, and what to do about it. Old news to me, and a far more complicated prescription than "more cowbell." But maybe summer is the time to be thinking about these things too.

So much to do, so little time. Tomorrow the rest of the world is back about it's business, the 44 faithful souls who worshipped together at First Parish among them, hopefully inspired to confront whatever challenges the world may great them with, or at the very least with a song in their head to serve as a touchstone of their connection with our community. "We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we cary in our hearts until we are together again...."