As predicted, there was absolutely no way to write a Blog post yesterday. There was barely time to brush my teeth, let alone sit down. We were all up bright and early (like 5am), my usually fairly quiet household transformed for the weekend with Thomas the Tank Engine tracks running across the living room floor baby seats scattered around and 6 people, a very happy dog and a not so excited cat all talking at once!
Then came the challenge of how to actually get to church, while attempting to circumnavigate the “Tour de L’ile” bicycle route. We were half an hour late, as were several other families. Sigh. We missed the dedication of baby Eloise but I made it just in time to head upstairs with the children and toddlers. Yay!
It was special to see my 3 Godsons all in one room with me, as we enjoyed a platter of grapes, which Lucille and Zaheer had provided for snack. Once the toddlers headed off to their room we had a good discussion around the story of Nicodemus, the Trinity Sunday Gospel passage. We talked about the Holy Spirit being the part of God living inside us and linked that with Baptism and being reborn by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Next we all worked together on a big card for Eloise and then each child made a hanging dove from white Bristol board. Just as we were clearing up we were told that the Service was ending so we hurried downstairs again to present the card to Julia and Charlie, Eloise’s parents. Then there was a special lunch with fancy cupcakes for the children at which time I enjoyed showing off my newest “Godson to be”, 7-week-old Andrew.
Back at the house, Victoria headed off for a short meeting with one of her SYC staff while Timothy printed documents for the AGM. I quickly made some advance High Tea preparations and then collected up my laptop and took Wil for a long walk ending up at Isaiah 40 in time to pull together the refreshments for the CTM AGM. Soon others started arriving and the meeting began just after 3pm. It went on until 6pm, quite the marathon! There was an excellent turn out and lively discussion and my fingers were flying as I tried to distil peoples’ remarks into coherent meeting minutes.
Dear Guylaine (my former & last secretary) generously offered to wash the glasses and clear up after the meeting so that I could speed home with Wil and lay out the Tea.
As it was it was almost 7pm when we sat down to eat and 830pm before they departed. After waving them off I did a bit more tidying up, walked Wil and crawled into bed. So please excuse his late post!And how did I extract Sabbath out of this seeming chaos? Well, I was fed in so many ways it is hard to just pick a few: – sitting on the floor with the Toddlers looking around at their innocent faces as we all ate grapes together, listening to my Godson William talk about how special it was to have “a piece of God inside”, holding a sleeping baby Andrew, the acapella singing of the old Hymn “Holy. Holy, Holy” at the start of the AGM with voices raised in beautiful harmonies, sharing High Tea around a big table and hearing William suggest that they all come and live with me (we adults had a good laugh but it really was a sweet and precious moment). Sometimes Sabbath is peaceful, offering much space for reflection, but yesterday was filled with some lovely snapshots in time, mental pictures to bring pure joy and a very thankful heart. “Food” for the journey through the week ahead.
Sounds like the AGM went well… – thanks be to God.
Nancy
much better than expected and the board is meeting this week to continue the conversations