Terrapin Station

Friday Five: Summer Camp!

Mother Laura says at RevGals:  We're settling into our new new apartment, and after a lifetime at Montessori Katie is having a fantastic summer at YMCA day camp. Meanwhile, Nicholas is packing up for a week at Camp Julian, shared by the Episcopal dioceses of Los Angeles and San Diego. His lists of supplies and rules--except for the ropes course available to the teenagers and the ban on IPODs and cell phones--bring back memories of my own happy times weeks at Y camp Ta Ta Pochon, funded by selling countless cases of butter toffee peanuts. So, in celebration of summer, please share your own memories and preferences about camp.

1. Did you go to sleep away camp, or day camp, as a child? Wish you could? Or sometimes wish you hadn't?  I went to day camp once...didn't like it.  Went to Girl Scout camp once, 2 weeks - the longest I'd been away from home!  when I was in 2nd grade.  As an elementary and jr. higher, I went to Camp Allen, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas Camp and Conference center.  I camped there from the first year it was open...several years...and remember my mom writing a check for my registration dated 7/7/77.  That seemed very portentous, somehow.  We also had many happy Parish Weekends there, both from my childhood church (Ascension, Houston) and my first home church (St. Francis, College Station).

My favorite camps so far have been knitting camp, which my mom, niece and I have attended for the last 2 years (2006 here, 2007 here and here) at Camp Tyler.  Unfortunately, we aren't going this year, due to them going to Florida at that time.  : (  Boo, hoo!  I'm very sad. 

2. How about camping out? Dream vacation, nightmare, or somewhere in between?  I've done tent camping but not wilderness camping.  Now I prefer RV camping, where we can go into the AC and avoid the mosquitoes when it's time to sleep...but hike and swim and cook breakfast outside over a fire.  "The best of all possible worlds."

3. Have you ever worked as a camp counselor, or been to a camp for your denomination for either work or pleasure?  No...never did that. 

4. Most dramatic memory of camp, or camping out?   The time that my college roommate and I and her sister went camping at Spring Break, at Double Lake near Coldspring.  We got all set up, and it started to get cloudy.  We ate dinner, and it started to rain (it was cold out, this was March).  We got in the tent and played cards, and it rained and rained and rained...we discussed sticking it out vs. going home, and finally flung EVERYTHING in the trunk of the car and ran.  Yuck.  What a mess to clean up later! 

5. What is your favorite camp song or songs? Bonus points if you link to a recording or video. 

This isn't strictly a camp song...but I remember it so well.  It was at the closing Eucharist of one of my teenage camp sessions at Camp Allen, and we were singing the gospel version of "Amen."  Our sadness at leaving the community we had made, exhaustion from not sleeping the last night, and joy at the time we'd shared together coalesced in a manic session of singing and dancing in a conga-line around the area where the church service was.  Parents arriving to pick up their kids were...very surprised. 

Word Association Friday Five

Singing Owl says:  Sorry for being a bit late. The power was out here for a few hours.

I am feeling like playing hooky, and I'm putting off sermon prep till tomorrow. It is a beautiful, sunny day at my place. So come on outside and let's play a summer Friday Five!

This post is loosely based on previous "wordy" Friday Fives from Reverend Mother and Songbird. I liked the results, and so we are doing another word association . Theirs were based on words from a lectionary text. Mine comes from the Lovin' Spoonful song, "Summer in the City."

Think summer......are you there? Below you will find five words or phrases. Tell us the first thing you think of on reading each one. Your response might be simply another word, or it might be a sentence, a poem, a memory, a recipe, or a story. You get the idea:

1. rooftop
2. gritty
3. hot town (yeah, I know, it's two words)
4. night
5. dance
 

1)  hahahaha!  One time when my parents still lived in the house in Houston, and money was tight, and the house needed a new roof:  my sister Sarah and I decided that Sarah, Nancy and would re-roof the house.  I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. 

Fortunately, my father (who had been a general contractor at one point) refused to begin to consider such an insane idea.  Our thought was "How hard can it be?"  If you have watched anyone do roofing...you have some idea of that answer.  Many thanks, Dad, for not letting us even try, and that I have spent no real time on a rooftop.  OMG. 

2)  The beach house in Florida, before my parents moved in and carpeted part of it...always had cement floors.  And they were always gritty.  And we always went barefoot.  At the end of the day, we would wash our feet in the sink on the back porch.  I remember my dad kind of laughing at me one time because I didn't wear shoes so I had to wash my feet, and my Bigdaddy said, approvingly, "That's how her Memamma does it, she washes her feet every night."  So there, Mr. "that's what happens to little girls who don't wear any shoes!"

3)  Any of the Texas cities I've lived in becomes a very hot and unpleasant town by about August 1.  There was the summer of 1998 though, when Ken and I had first met, and we were over 100 degrees for 40 days straight (and no rain).  Eeeeyuck.

4)  Our nights cool down some, but not much.  I really do enjoy night time walks and sitting out in the side yard...if only it weren't for those dadgum mosquitoes...

5)  The word dance reminds me of when Ken and I went to see my parents in Florida that time.  We went to the only local nightclub, which was in ... Carrabelle?  Panacea?  I can't remember.  It was very tiny and dive-y.  The only people dancing were an interesting couple:  a girl of about 18 and a man of about 65.  The girl danced like the little person on Peanuts who did the Zombie and the man danced like he was doing The Washing Machine.  It was very amusing.

What's your summer like?

Friday Five: Beach Trip

Mother Laura says at RevGals today:  "The Grimes-Honkanen bunch is settling in after a challenging move, and bubbling with gratitude for our new "cozy cottage by the beach": a tiny rented condo on Pacific Coast Highway.

We're five minutes on foot from Sunset Beach for my daily choppy-but-gorgeous swim or prayer walk, often with dolphin sightings. Ten minutes south by car is downtown Huntington with its pier and window shopping, and the same distance north is Seal Beach, much calmer for family swimming.

Nicholas is equipped with shorty wetsuit and boogie board, and game to learn mastering the local waves from Mom--though I need to get a big softy and learn to surf before he does to maintain my cool cred. But Katie is still learning to swim confidently in the pool, and Midwestern-raised Matt prefers something more like his beloved Great Lakes. "No waves, no salt?" "Yes, darling, and no worrisome wildlife." "Except for the water moccasins, dude." You get the idea...it's all a matter of taste.

So in honor of summer, please share your own beachy memories, plans, and dreams with a "Beach Trip" Friday Five.

1. Ocean rocks, lake limps? Vice versa? Or "it's all beautiful in its own way"?"

I am definitely a confirmed ocean girl...I grew up swimming, playing, and fishing in salt water, and only rarely forayed into lakes or ponds.  Find them just nasty.  There is mud in there, folks!  The ocean, now that's nice and clean and salty!  Logic, no.  Cultural conditioning, yes.  :) 

ML's question points out a very interesting subdivision of the question, though:  there's a very specific place that I love, and it's on the Gulf Coast, in a quiet little North Florida place called St. Teresa Beach, Alligator Bay, where I grew up going.  Big waves?  No.  It's a private beach, so you either know (or are related) to folks, or meet them soon. 

And my husband?  Well, he thinks it's as uninspiring and as un-beachy in its way as ... as a lake!  He'd rather go someplace with big waves...like in ML's video.  Hum.  I don't mind other beaches...they just aren't the RIGHT beach.  You see?  This beach: 

 

2. Year round beach living: Heaven...or the Other Place?  Oh, I'd LOVE it.  LOVE. IT.  In my fantasy, anyway.  ;)

3. Any beach plans for this summer? Not yet, but you know, yesterday (Yesterday!) I decided that I must get to a beach somewhere, sometime, soon.  So I'm working on it. 

4. Best beach memory ever? I loved our childhood beach trips to my grandparents' home, but the last few years when we have rented the Daly home on the home beach and taken a big extended family group have been the best, I think.

5. Fantasy beach trip? Getting there and having all the food and supplies laid in already.  Having everyone in the family together in a great big house with plenty of room and plenty of clean towels.  Having the garden come in so we can have "mater sammiches" with real tomatoes for lunch (breakfast, snack).  Playing "high low" at dinner time.  A Sunfish sailboat readily available. 

Bonus: Share a piece of music/poetry/film/book that expresses something about what the beach means to you.  I have a card with this on it that Mom gave me a long time ago:

"Walk the Beach... To find a treasure. To exercise the limbs, to soothe the soul. To praise God and to admire His handwork, To marvel at the birds that play against the sky and clouds. To watch the waves as they dance their way over and around the rocks. To feel the sun and the wind pressed against my face and to run from the foam grasping for my feet. To think ... to reflect. To see a million years of conflict and realize that life is as simple as ... 'THE LAND AND THE SEA'. To walk hand in hand with nature and draw upon its energy ... which is never-ending and as constant as the stars. And no matter how far apart my visits might measure ... I am always free to renew an old acquaintance with myself."

By Peter Dueber©

Friday Five: How's the View from Up There?

Sally says at RevGals:  This week I took some time out to stop and walk and take in the view; my son Chris is studying in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, too often we simply drive up there, turn around and come home! This time Tim and I took time out to take in the view. It occurs to me that we need to do that more in life....

With that in mind I offer you this weeks Friday Five:

1. How important is the "big picture" to you, do you need a glimpse of the possibilities or are you a details person?  I am so far on the big picture end of the spectrum, it's scary.  I am in fact working on this part of my personality...it can cause significant er, challenges. 

2. If the big picture is important to you how do you hold onto it in the nitty gritty details of life?  With a slippery death grip?  Not very well?  Really, with little routines and rituals I've designed for myself.  I think of these things as "the rules:"  "The rule is that I have to sort ALL the mail before I sit down to read any of it, and no fair putting it down anywhere!"  "The rule is that I have to clean out the sink before I go to bed."  I do break these rules a lot, you need to know.  BUT, when I do things according to "the rules," I get a sticker! on my calendar (because I'm really three years old) and I say, "Yeah for me! Yeah for me!"  Sometimes I make Ken say, "Yeah for you! Yeah for you!"  He thinks I'm wacko (which I am) but perhaps that's just part of my not inconsiderable charm. 

3. Name a book, poem, psalm, piece of music that transports to to another dimension ( one....what am I thinking....)  Mozart's Requiem.  Also the Fauré "Cantique de Jean Racine" (Psalm 84). 

4.Thinking of physical views, is there somewhere that inspires you, somewhere that you breathe more easily?  The thinking place.  The beach.  The yard under the trees. 

5. A picture opportunity... post one if you can ( or a link to one!)        
This picture is of Brandon and Josie on the way home from Galveston...at least 6 years ago. 

They are both much more grown up now; and as of yesterday, Brandon is A COLLEGE STUDENT. 

Yes indeed, he and his mom went down to our local community college and got him tested and registered and signed up for an online US Government class in the second summer term.  I'm sure proud of him and glad he's taking the step. 

Go, Bran!  Look out, world!

Friday Five: Vacation Thoughts

Sally fabulously pinch-hits at the Friday Five, saying:  It is a holiday weekend here in the UK, and the weather forecast for much of the country is not good!!!  But we can still dream and so with that in mind I bring you this Friday Five.

1. Getting ready for summer, do you use the gradual tanning moisturisers ( yes gentlemen you too can answer this!!!), or are you happy to show your winter skin to the world?  I guess this means fake tanner?  I never use that because I'm not clever enough to get it on evenly and I end up looking like a tawny sort of zebra.  I just go out and slather on a lot of sunscreen the first time...not very evenly (see above) and end up looking like a rosy sort of zebra (see above also). 

2.Beach, mountains or chilling by the pool, what/ where is your favourite getaway?  Beach, beach, beach. 

3.Are you a summer lover or does the long break become wearing?  Break!?  What break!?  The heat, that's what becomes wearing.  That and the mosquitoes.  :) 

4.Active holidays; hiking swimming sailing, or lazy days?  I am mostly a read in the hammock sort.  I'll walk the beach, sail, or swim, but that's the odd and brief interlude. 

5.Now to the important subject of food, if you are abroad do you try the local cuisine, or do you prefer to play it safe?  Oh, yes, I like the local cuisine.  What's the point otherwise? 

No bonus this week unless you can think one up!!!  Never mind the hypotheticals above, where am I really going for holiday this summer?  Well...nowhere, so far!  Can you feature it? 

I am getting a new boss as of August 1, and I have a busy summer ahead; and we are buckling down with the home business in many ways.  Maybe we will finally get our side yard waterfall built?  We could have a little oasis at home.  Also, Ken has mentioned a motorcycle rally he'd like to go to on his new Harley-Davidson next Saturday (our anniversary) so watch this space for all the details!!

Friday Five: Grand Tours

Over at RevGals, Songbird says:  One of our original ring members, jo(e), wrote yesterday about a trip she and her sisters are taking overseas with their parents, to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Many other RevGals are headed for the Festival of Homiletics in the coming week (click here for information on a RevGals meetup!!). In honor of these upcoming trips, herewith your Grand Tour Friday Five.

Name five places that fall into the following categories:

1) Favorite Destination -- someplace you've visited once or often and would gladly go again:  As I have said many times in this space:  St. Teresa Beach, in NorthFlorida. 

2) Unfavorite Destination -- someplace you wish you had never been (and why):  don't mind if I don't get to Los Angeles again.

3) Fantasy Destination -- someplace to visit if cost and/or time did not matter:  New Zealand.  We have friends there and have been invited many times...but the time and $ have prevented us from going.

4) Fictional Destination -- someplace from a book or movie or other art or media form you would love to visit, although it exists only in imagination:  Narnia.  No question.

5) Funny Destination -- the funniest place name you've ever visited or want to visit.  How about Sopchoppy?  A Seminole name for a place not far from my Florida beach...my parents used to get their mail there.  There is a potter there whom I love dearly; he lives and works in the middle of the Apalachicola National Forest.  One of the local seafood dealers has a portable sign out by the road reading:

$hrimp, Crab, Mullet
Je$u$ i$ Lord!!

Bonus:  This is my grand tour for this weekend:

View Larger Map

Friday Five - Gifts of the Spirit

FOR PENTECOST THIS WEEKEND:

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 Gal says:  (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 have had a couple of dreams that have informed the way I live my life...so not sure if that fits.  But...maybe it does.  I dream often about those who have gone before.  Maybe it's just me wishing, and maybe they do have something to tell me. 

2. ...dreamed of a stranger, then actually met them later?  Not that I can recall.  Is THAT in the Bible?

3. ...seen a wonder in heaven? (including UFO's)  We used to call it sheet lightning or heat lightning...in the summertime.  Pretty darn amazing! 

4. ...seen a "sign" on the earth?  Go back to the last post and look at the bird pics I posted.  I have bird watched for 2 days now...you may not believe it, but that is the first redwing blackbird I have ever seen in my life!  Not the first scissortail, but the first time I ever knew they were pink on the underbelly.  And everywhere I go now...gas station, driveway, looking out the window...birds are suddenly all I see.  I think it's a matter of stopping, sitting still, and saying "Good morning, God, and thank you God.  I am listening."  God is talking if I am listening.  It is absolutely blowing my mind. 

5. ...experienced knowledge of another language without ever having studied it?  No, but  when I studied Greek in college it was like I was coming home.  Spanish wasn't even like that, with all the Romance language root words I knew from English and Latin.  It was a pure joy. 

Friday Five: Waiting

Lisa Herrera, oil on canvas.  Please visit her gallery.

I have missed the RG Friday Five for a few weeks.  Thanks to Sally for this one:  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?  Interesting.  I'd like to do more praying with others...but I do more praying alone and I enjoy it.  I get several prayers for the day by email and they are a big part of my morning start-up.  I pray a lot in the car too.

2. Do you enjoy the discipline of waiting, is it a time of anticipation or anxiety?  NO, I don't like to wait.  Who does?  look forward to reading about it if they do. 

3. Is there a time when you have waited upon God for a specific promise?  I've been affected by depression my entire life.  I think I was about 7 the first time I told my mom that I was "so depressed."  I've had excellent therapy and medication through the years, and I have been very fortunate in friends and support, and in the fact that I live in this time, when there is not the stigma attached to it that there has been.  And that there is even something to be done!   

There are days...sometimes longer periods...when I am in the funk though...and I hold onto the promise that God will be my strength and song.  That one day,  I will again feel like singing. 

4. Do you prefer stillness or action?  Action, which may mean moving but also may mean mental action, like reading a book.  It's very hard to be still when I'm absorbed in something.  What this means to me is that I need more stillness.   

5. If ( and this is slightly tongue in cheek) you were promised one gift spiritual or otherwise what would you choose to receive?  Miracles, specifically the food multiplication one.  I would like to be feeding hungry people in God's name.  (Many millions more than I currently am).  I'm worried to death about the world, y'all.  Guess I'd better get still with it.  And wait.  And, oh, pray.

Friday Five - For Just 24 Hours

Poor RevHRod!  She says:  Yesterday I had the 24 hour flu. I had been told by the people who had it first that it really was a twenty-four hour bug. And so while I dealt with all the blech of the flu, I kept reminding myself that morning would come and I would feel a lot better. 
This is certainly a strange way to start out a Friday Five but it made me think about what I might like to do if I knew it would only last for 24 hours. There are no reality boundaries to these imaginings. So here are the five things for you to consider...

1. If you could dramatically change your physical appearance for 24 hours, what would you do?   I'd like to be African-American and see how that feels. 
2. If you could live in another place for 24 hours where would you go?   Washington State, on the coast.  I've never even been there!
3. You get to do somebody else's job for a day...I've always wanted to be a nurse.  24 hours might be all it'd take to cure me of that...!
4. Spend the day with another person from anywhere in time and space...My high school boyfriend.  He is dead now but I'd love to spend one more day hearing his inimitable laugh and getting his take on things. 
5. A magical power is yours. Which one would you pick?  Healing physical and emotional ills. 

Friday Five - Revelation

With this Sunday's gospel reading in mind, that wonderful revelation of Christ to the companions on the Emmaus road. I wonder where you might have been surprised by God's revelation recently.

So with no further waffle I offer you this weeks Friday 5:

How has God revealed him/herself to you in a:

1. Book:  Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon.  I have missed Father Tim!  He is learning some deep and hard truths about his past.  A lovely book. 

2.Film: I can't think of a film I've seen lately, so will leave this one.

3. Song:  "The Summons" by John Bell (Iona Community):  Tune - Kelvingrove

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind, if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare, should your life attract or scare?

will you answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?

Will you set the prisoner free and never be the same?

Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as the unseen,

And admit to what I mean , in you and you in me?

Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

Will you use the faith you've found, to reshape the world around,

Through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I'll go where your love and footsteps show

Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

4. Another person:  Rooming with Elastigirl on the BE cruise.  Her listening and sharing. 

5. Creation:  The spring happening all around.  The oak pollen everywhere.  It makes me so sick with allergies, but I realize that new life doesn't come without a cost. 

Bonus answer: your choice- share something encouraging/ amazing/ humbling that has happened to you recently!   Realizing that the BE trip was a space away I badly needed, as evidenced by:  I knitted a freeform piece while we were in meetings, and realized afterward that never once were my arms, hands, shoulders sore or numb.  When I START knitting from a relaxed place, I apparently don't have those problems!  In the past, yes. 

Tuesday I worked with my bodywork therapist to "bookmark" that feeling of looseness, freedom, peace in my body so that I can regain it when needed.  Practicing that this week. 

Aaaahhhhh.