A Summer Reading Friday Five

Rev Gals Blog Pal Songbird writes: Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children's Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer.

This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.

1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?
For the past dozen years or more, I have done most of my reading for enjoyment during the summer. I do so in part because our family vacations at a very restful place along a lake in Northern Michigan, and reading has always been central to our time there. I began reading the Harry Potter series to our family there years ago, and the reading tradition has continued.

2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach?
Yes, a few years ago when I was reading through a slow part of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Thankfully, I had lots of sunscreen on!

3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime?
Nancy Drew mysteries - started reading them when I was about 8 or so. Now as I look back at my sons' childhood, the evenings we spent reading the Harry Potter books aloud, sometimes with extended family there as well, will be cherished memories.

4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading?
I enjoy the First Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. My guilty pleasures include the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanonich, anything by Janet Cruisie, Maeve Binchy, or Nicholas Sparks.

5) What is the next book on your reading list?
I have several ready to read when we head up north- including the latest from the First Ladies Detective Agency series, Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich, as well as several others that friends have loaned to me. 21 days and counting!

A Garage-Saler's Friday Five May 30

Since will smama is preparing for a joint garage sale with her parents, and Songbird's church had a Yard and Plant Sale last Saturday, they have five enormously important questions for all of us Friday Five players:

1) Are you a garage saler?
No, I have never really been a garage sale host or buyer. I don't know why...it just has never been something to which I have gravitated. I have tended to donate things that could be sold to Goodwill and other organizations like them.
That being said, I am going to try to sell a few items next week at a neighbor's garage sale...so there's always a first time!

2) If so, are you an immediate buyer or a risk taker who comes back later when prices are lower?
I am neither, but our younger son is an immediate buyer and a regular shopper at local garage sales.

3) Seriously, if you're not a garage saler, you are probably not going to want to play this one.
(That wasn't really #3.)
3) This is the real #3: What's the best treasure you've found at a yard or garage sale?
My husband and I found an old (circa 1930's) gas stove at a garage sale in our old neighborhood. It was not anything we wanted, but just a few weeks before, my mother had said that she was looking for one for use in the bed and breakfast they run. Now mind you, all the while that my mother was going on about wanting this stove, my father was standing behind her, silently but furiously waving her idea off.
Which left us with a dilemma...do we get this stove for them or not?
We decided that we would call them, and if mom answered the phone, we would tell her about it. If dad answered the phone (which he usually does), we would know to pass the stove by.
Wouldn't you know it...Mom answered the phone. She wanted the stove, and so we proceeded.
My dad had no problem retrofitting it into their kitchen with its tin ceiling and 100+ year old wood cabinets and trim.
That was over 15 years ago...and it still works beautifully for them!

4)If you've done one yourself, at church or at home, was it worth the effort?
Members of our congregation hold a garage sale most every year, and it does net a lot of money, at least half of which we forward on to other ministries. It is definitely worth the effort...and it has built some new friendships through the years
5) Can you bring yourself to haggle?
I can, in certain settings...in the old city in Jerusalem's West Bank, in the street markets in the Caribbean, and on big ticket items!

FRIDAY FIVE - Gifts of the Spirit

FROM ACTS CHAPTER 2: 14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: "Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:17 " 'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. 18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. 19 I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 20 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. 21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'

Presbyterian Girl of RevGals writes...(My personal favorite in this passage is how Peter insists the men cannot be drunk because it's only 9:00 a.m.)

Anyway, it's Pentecost and my very first Friday Five! Thinking about all the gifts of the spirit and what Peter said of the "last days"......

Have you or anyone you know

1. ...ever experienced a prophesy (vision or dream) that came true?
I had an amazing dream about a home that I ended up buying before I had even seen it. The dream was of a house whose main staircase split and went in two directions halfway up the stairs. When I walked into the house and saw the staircase of my dream there, I knew this house would be my home. I waited over 9 months to take possession because of title issues, but it was well worth it.

2. ...dreamed of a stranger, then actually met them later?
I am not sure that I have every had a dream like this..but then I don't remember very many of my dreams as a rule.

3. ...seen a wonder in heaven? (including UFO's) I count the Northern Lights and the Southern Cross as two of the many wonders in the heavens I have been blessed to see.

4. ...seen a "sign" on the earth?
I guess I'd point to some amazing communities of faith who've truly and profoundly lived the Gospel...signs on earth pointing to the reign of God.

5. ...experienced knowledge of another language without ever having studied it?
I wouldn't say "knowledge" of - but I am easily able to pick up accents and dialects. I've fooled a few people along the way - they thought I'd grown up in Japan and in Greece because my speaking in those languages sounded so authentic. It's a gift...

Bonus Question: What would a modern day news coverage of the first Pentecost have sounded like?
I think RevDrKate said it best - not sure the press would have caught the Spirit of the event!

Wait and Pray Friday Five

Sally from RevGalBlogPals writes Part of the Ascension Day Scripture from Acts 11 contains this promise from Jesus;

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Then he was taken from their sight into the clouds, two angels appeared and instructed the probably bewildered disciples to go back to Jerusalem, where they began to wait and to pray for the gift Jesus had promised.

Prayer is a joy to some of us, and a chore to others, waiting likewise can be filled with anticipation or anxiety....

So how do you wait and pray?

1. How do you pray best, alone or with others?
I like to pray together with others, but I pray most deeply by myself. I have been intentionally growing into more of a contemplative prayer over the last year or so.

2. Do you enjoy the discipline of waiting, is it a time of anticipation or anxiety?
I don't really enjoy waiting as a rule, but the waiting that is a part of prayer is becoming more comfortable. It's more a time of anticipation than anxiety.

3. Is there a time when you have waited upon God for a specific promise?
Yes, and I can remember it as if it were yesterday. The first parish and community in which I served had a culture was clearly shaped by marriage - that is to say, you reached maturity and respectability in the community when you were married. It was a difficult place to be a single female pastor.

So I prayed long and hard for a life partner. Not just to fit into the community, but also because I believed that God had promised that I would have one...someday. Sometimes I cried as I prayed. I just couldn't believe that I would have to carry out this ministry entrusted to me without someone to share my life. Though I knew God was close, I needed someone with skin on!

I met the man who would become my husband as I began the process of accepting a new call. And because he was a member of the congregation, my initial response was "Oh no, God, this isn't supposed to happen this way!" Finally an insightful colleague and mentor told me to stop questioning how God seemed to be answering my prayer. We were married late the next year, and have shared 18 precious years together.

4. Do you prefer stillness or action?
Because there is so much noise and activity in my life, I crave stillness.

5. If ( and this is slightly tongue in cheek) you were promised one gift spiritual or otherwise what would you choose to receive?
I would welcome the gift of hospitality. I feel as though this is something I have to work at, and I wish instead that it just flowed from me.

An Old Versus Modern Friday Five...

Singing Owl writes...Yesterday I had two separate conversations in which people were musing about how much change is occurring. The WW II generation, of which my mom is a part, went from horse and buggy to automobiles, saw the lessening, or even the end of many diseases, went from widespread use of kerosene lamps and outhouses (in the country, and most folks were rural)) to a totally electrified and plumbed society. The fastest means of communication was a telegraph. The second conversation--gulp--was about MY generation and how much change occurred in the last half of the 20th century. The person said his 13 year old had not seen a vinyl record album until a few days before, couldn't remember a time without cell phones, and on and on. As for the questions!

1. What modern convenience/invention could you absolutely, positively not live without?
Well, I would have thought it was the computer, but I have discovered that I can do well without it...at least for awhile! I think it would be the car. There are so many wonderful places I would never have seen if it were not for the automobile that enabled me to get there.

2. What modern convenience/invention do you wish had never seen the light of day? Why?
I think we could do without cell phones...I certainly could do without them ringing in the middle of worship. Because we don't seem to know how to turn them off or to vibrate, they interrupt our efforts to have meaningful face-to-face conversation.

3. Do you own a music-playing device older than a CD player? More than one? If so, do you use it (them)?
I still have a cassette player here in our den, and I can't remember when we last used it. I think it may be "out of there" by the end of the weekend! Our turntable went out with the unlimited pickup last year after sitting in a closet for a few years.

4. Do you find the rapid change in our world exciting, scary, a mix...or something else?
I am mostly excited by it, but when I wonder what is ahead for our children and grandchildren, I get a little nervous that our ethics are not keeping pace with the rapid change.

5. What did our forebears have that we have lost and you'd like to regain?
Since I wasn't there, I can't be sure. After all, just about anything that my forebears have told me about the "good old days" has been filtered through their experience.

I think I'd like to regain the sense of community that people once had in their neighborhoods. I live in a neighborhood that has more private decks than front porches. We added a front porch to our home several years ago, and we enjoy visiting there with neighbors who are walking their dogs...or watching a summer storm pass over.

We are in the infancy stages of a vision for reclaiming community in our neighborhoods in our congregation. Our hope is that teams of 3-4 households in each geographical area will be salt and light where they live...coordinating help for people who need little things done around their homes, and sponsoring some kind of community-building event like a block party or holiday open house. We call it "Neighborhood Care-ring".