Thank You - Retreat Info - Animals

Insurance Update:
First, a quick thank you to everyone who had suggestions for buying Wellbutrin online. I have a number of good leads, and I’m sure I’ll find something that works. Looks like any number of Canadian sites sell a month’s worth of my meds for $60 to $100. I’ll be working on finding the one to use today.

Again, thanks to everyone for your concern, suggestions, and thoughts.

Retreat News:
Regarding the Franciscan retreats that I wrote [1] about recently. [2] Here are the three dates. Tim and I looked carefully at the makeup of people who might want to come. We briefly considered having a retreat just for people who do not identify as Christians. But, as we thought more about that, we asked, “Why?” There wasn’t a good answer to that question.

So the retreat dates are as follows.

---June 6-8
---July 11-13
---August 8-10 (Clergy Retreat)

The first two weekends are open to anyone who wants to come. Clergy, laity, agnostic, don’t know who you are, you have your own religion that you made up in 1987...anyone.

The third weekend will be a clergy retreat. And I think we won’t define what we mean by clergy. So if you consider yourself to be clergy, whether Christian or other, you’re invited to the third weekend.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Don’t get a plane ticket yet. I’ll have details up by tomorrow with registration information, a tentative schedule, and some other information.

Paul Soupiset has a set of pictures [3] from our first Franciscan retreat. I was at SXSW that weekend. Grrr! This will give you a feel for how we will be together on these weekends.

Animals at our church:

[4]Deer by the front porch - Sunday morning

Animals and children keep us honest at church. Or perhaps I should say they do not let us forget who we are, nor nature of the world we occupy. There are lots of critters around our church, being in the woods as we are. Their behavior may or may not be convenient to us.

[5]Buzzard on the Sign

Yes, nothing says welcome to our church quite like a buzzard hanging over the church sign on a Sunday morning. The picture is rather blurry. It was taken at a distance. Buzzards are extremely skittish, and it’s hard to get close to them. I’ve decided to call this particular buzzard Tertullian. Not that I can pick him out of a crowd fluttering around a carcass.

I did notice attendance was very low on that Sunday. Do you think there might be a connection?

[6]Spider on the Guest Book

Or, if our buzzard sign doesn’t frighten you off, perhaps the little card inviting you to sign our visitors book will give you pause.

Maybe I should just hang a sign over the door that says, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

[7]Raccoon Buffet

Then there are the raccoons. Eight generations of local raccoons have decided that our dumpster is their own personal buffet. We throw the refuse from our church meals away. They break in, feast all night, drag trash out of the dumpster, and strew it about the parking lot. Some Sundays, if I pull into the parking lot well before dawn, my headlights reveal the lid of the dumpster raising slightly and glowing eyes staring back at me. I hit the gas and speed wildly toward the dumpster, laughing as they dive over the edge and head for the safety of the woods.

I love the raccoons. They make a mess, but we are are the ones who have intruded upon their world.

rlp