little joys Tori Amos may, sadly, never have had

bits.

Good reunion. Fifty or sixty people, of all generations (four and maybe five). How cool and rare is that? Me and several cousins also began working on a plan to fix the family cemetery for the long haul: clean it up, get it secured, and then deed it over, if the other families buried there agree, to the state of Missouri, which owns the land around it (for a state park, thankfully).

God keeps bringing people we haven't seen in years, people from the early part of our time in Dallas, back up into our lives. Sort of eerie, but also kind of encouraging. This spring I was ready to just write off a bunch of relationships that had petered out in one way or for one reason or another. But now half those relationships seem to be surfacing again, maybe for us to learn something, maybe for Dawn and me to have one last chance at some kind of worthwhile influence for Jesus's sake with them.

Apropos of "emerging church" hooha. There are more loops than one can be in, and the Tip O'Neill version (i.e., that "all politics is local") for us is being sure that the loop I'm in is more cool than the loop I'm not in. No problem liking where you are and being content with that. But contentment in America is often expressed in competitive terms--as if "I'm more content being content with my situation than you are being content with your situation" were a coherent comment. But ego stalks leaders like a vampire: it is an attack we both fear and secretly relish.

So in any case I at least had a big helping of Powdermilk Biscuits and sent emails out to a number of emerging "names." We'll see what happens. Those of you who pray can pray that when elephants talk, as the Africans say, something better will happen than when they fight (since when they fight, the grass gets trampled...).

I'm trying to decide whether to take "The Scarlet Pimpernel" or Stephen Lawhead's "Avalon" as my leisure reading on the trip to England. I've been reading "Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing" by Kierkegaard in my devotional time, and Hill's anthology on the doctrine of the atonement for my serious reading.

Little hopes and happinesses:

Steven finished his summer school courses in good shape. yay!
Dawn and I beat up on one of our monsters in the closet by getting some medical reimbursement applications off today. Yay (ugh) yay!
I hope Ruben and I get to go into Bath and see the ruins of the Roman baths for which the town is named.
I hope Dixie, the only German Shepherd on the block with a sports injury (torn ACL, no less), gets better without a surgery we can't afford.
Lovely Lucy McCauley took (unpaid!) time and effort to edit my next article for the organic church movement website. She is so fabulous. May her printer's paper feeder never jam.
My lawyer cousin in Missouri advised me of an urban legendary English headline: "74 degrees forecast again for tomorrow, with no relief in sight!" yukyukyuk.
I hope Jonathan's trip to Toronto is free of creepiness, is confidence-building, and produces worthwhile data for his senior thesis.
I've blogged for a couple of whole months now fairly regularly. yayish.