Unsettling the Walls

Ephesians 2:11-22

"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall”

 

We are wall builders. 

They take various shapes and degrees of visibility.

From the Grants house on Charlestown Rd.,

I walk down Stebbins Rd.

And on my way down to the beaver pond

that I love to visit,

I notice walls intersecting the woods –

stonewalls,

some places kept quite well over all the years,

Other places disheveled.

I notice places where the walls used to

clearly separate two areas –

perhaps mowing from pasture,

or tillage from orchard?

But I wonder about these walls.

They speak to a time

when this space was imagined differently –

and used differently – than now.

Making Change

Ephesians 1:3-14

Not too long ago, I visited a small rural town,

not much bigger than Acworth

and had the opportunity to sit at a table in the church’s parish house,

and listen to some of the community leaders,

a nurse, a pastor, a funeral director, a state representative among them,

as they talked about the issues that their community faces.

They told a story that grieved them and grieved me to hear it.

How a teenage boy a few years before had overdosed on heroin and lost his life.

And this was a wake-up call for the whole community.

They grieved together, they held a memorial service for him,

But then they did something more.

They gathered together in the school gymnasium.

People from the church, people from the school,

people from the community who were not connected with either church or school. 

And they talked. 

They talked about how awful it was that this happened in their community. 

This young man who played soccer on the team that this neighbor coached. 

This boy that the community had watched grow, suddenly and senselessly gone.

They gathered, and they talked, and they listened.

Lifelong Learners and Lovers of Others

Mark 6:1-13

Rachelle and I set out on a Saturday night a month or so ago

and headed out of town on 123a towards Marlow. 

I had heard a strange noise just after we left the driveway,

slowed down, rolled down the window and then decided it must not have been anything. 

So I rolled the window back up and off we went down Hill Rd. 

Well it was just past Echo Valley Farm that I started hearing a more constant noise,
but I continued on, thinking that when I got to our destination I would take a look.

But then further down the road as we passed Tucker Rd.,

the noise had gotten louder and the car was driving with great difficulty

and it became clear that I was and had been driving on a flat. 

I pulled off to the side of the road just past the small bridge that goes over the brook. 

And I got out of the car and looked, and sure enough the tire was pretty near useless. 

So, knowing that I had AAA, since my in-laws had given me a subscription for my birthday,

I got out my cell-phone and called the number I had saved there. 

Only problem was – there was no cell service.