I've stumbled across a discovery that I think will completely shake up this year's presidential election. It turns out that Arizona Senator John McCain--now brace yourself, you'll never believe this--is NOT a candidate! You see, ever since his opinion somehow became the official position of the entire American electorate, I've just been assuming that Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry would simply defer to him come November, believing that only by aligning themselves completely with him (i.e. selling their souls to the10% of American voters who haven't yet made up their minds about this election, in many cases because they don't really care) could they possibly be elected to the most important office in the nation. Bush parades the guy around on the campaign trail as much as is humany possible (hmmm, I wonder if McCain too will be missing some committee meetings this fall as he campaigns for the White House?), and the Kerry camp constantly expresses its disbelief that President Bush has not specifically denounced the Swift Boat Veterans' ads even though McCain has asked him to do so.

I think it is high time in this country that we begin valuding leaders who can think for themselves, who have a true understanding of the people they're serving (or even that they're first and foremost public servants) and who can articulate and defend a vision for the next four years without simply appealing to the party platform or to the most popular man in the Senate. McCain has been the centerpiece of the Republican National Convention and of Kerry's search for a Vice President, and thus these campaigns have avoided the national dialogue that we so desparately need on issues of war and peace, economic and social justice, education and health care rights, and so much more.

Undoubtedly, Mr. McCain is a worthy and admirable leader, whose values are truly his own. And perhaps his independent stances, with regard to financing campaigns, waging wars, and approaching politics, are reflective of what Americans are most looking for in a President. But doesn't anyone else notice the great irony in these candidates' appealing to McCain's positions in order to persuade us to give them our votes? And shouldn't we find this both insulting and unacceptable?

Let's move on to some real debate . . . or else just declare John McCain Lord Emperor of the United States.

Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church, 29 August 2004

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely...When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.l For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." --Luke 14:1,7-14

Let us pray: Eternal God, Creator of all that is known and unknown, Host of the heavenly banquet, in this place, at this time, we are bold enough to believe that you are present. Open now our ears and our eyes and our hearts, that we may be transformed by your Word living among us. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Not too long ago, I was at the CVS in the Barracks Road Shopping Center, of all the places to encounter the holy, dropping off some film from one of our youth group’s summer activities, and I ran into Frances and Vernon Walton, who were having a somewhat uproarious conversation, in the middle of the store, with the Reverend Jim McDonald. Jim, as you may know, served for twenty years, from 1968 to 1988, as the Director of the Wesley Foundation at UVA. He has since served as the General Minister of the Virginia Council of Churches and as a strong and fearless advocate for the Virginia First Freedom Forum and for the Pan-Methodist Council, as well as for folks here in Charlottesville who find themselves poor and oppressed, or just in need of his ministry of relationship.

Jim’s closest connection to our faith community at Hinton Avenue, however, is that, while he was serving the Wesley Foundation, he also taught an adult Bible study class at our church on Sunday mornings. Basically, he facilitated and guided honest discussions as a group of folks got together to talk about those social, political, and theological issues that were foremost in the life of their church and community at the time. And, as best I could tell (I think because they both told me this), Vernon and Jim never agreed on a single controversial detail during the years this class was meeting. But they both remember this class that they shared together with great fondness, as a time when they looked into the eyes of another human being and saw not an enemy to confront, or a challenger to rebut, but rather a person formed in the image of the God who made and loved them.

Jim McDonald has held onto this experience and understands it as a glimpse of what abundant life is like in the kingdom of God, that is not coming in some far-off unfamiliar future, but that is already here and available, for those who have eyes to see and hearts to accept what God is doing around us. In our gospel text this morning, Jesus too provides insight about what the reign of God will be like in our lives and in our communities. Just as this brilliant, progressive campus minister came and opened channels of dialogue in a new community, Jesus tells his followers to go and have conversations with people who do not look like them or think like them or live like them.

The image that Jesus uses for this connection between persons, and that the Church has historically adopted for its mission of fellowship and discipleship and witness in the world, is that of the table. At the most sacred moments in the life of our faith community, we gather around the communion table and remember that last supper that Jesus had with his disciples. During moments of great celebration with our sisters and brothers in Christ, we express our gladness with a feast. Last week, when this church welcomed Edward and Janet and their family back for another year of ministry, it was around the table. When our youth mission team came to share the work they had done and the experiences they had had in West Palm Beach, Florida this summer, it was at a common meal. Similarly, we come to table to cope with seasons of grief and turmoil. When someone passes away and joins that great communion of saints in the church eternal, we join that person’s friends and families here at the church or in their homes for a meal. When the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church was searching for a vision statement which would articulate and guide its understanding of ministry, it settled on one which began by insisting that our churches be places where all God’s people are, first and foremost, welcomed at the table of faith.

In Christian scripture and in Christian tradition, both traditions of the ancient Church and of faith expressions today, we draw from a wealth of rich and developed table imagery. It is a recurring theme in that imagery that the diverse and conflicted people who come to table together are folks who, aside from what God is doing in their lives, aside from the work of reconciliation and hope which comes through Jesus Christ, would never sit down to share a meal, or much else, with one another. They’re people with different backgrounds and upbringings. They are rich and poor, they are fit and lame. They bear a kaleidoscope of skin tones and native tongues and life philosophies. They are, in short, all of God’s people. As unpredictable and unfaithful as we often are, we’re each included in the feast that is the center of all our being.

But alas, in Jesus’s day it was not true that everyone had discovered the grace of sharing table fellowship not only with their political and social allies (they got that part pretty well and loved to do it), but also with the poorest and most down-trodden of their society. So Jesus told them stories about what the kingdom of God looks like when it is realized. He gave them practical advice: If you regard yourself too highly and so take a seat of honor at a party, you might end up humiliated should one more worthy than you arrive. Instead, humble yourself, take the lowest of seats, eat with the servants and the outcasts, and then the master just might honor you and lift you up.

And then he offers a prophetic challenge to those who would hear him. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors,” (in other words, all the people whom it would make the most political sense for you to invite), because “they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.” And then where have you gotten in the work of the kingdom? In the work that, for Jesus, is the most urgent and the most important we ever do. Instead, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Invite to your table of celebration the people who won’t even have a meal that day unless you provide it. Invite the person that nobody else wants to eat with, and find in that one all that you need of love and grace. Find in that one the Christ who lives in the most unlikely of places. And know that these people can never repay you. Know that your effort will require time and energy that you’ll never regain. Be aware that it might seem like nobody else in the whole world understands what you’re doing. And maybe no one will. But be assured that, at the resurrection of the righteous, your table will not be forgotten, nor empty.

Jesus made all these proclamation about what God’s table looks like because people hadn’t quite gotten it yet. Friends, let me suggest to you that Jesus is still telling this story. He’s telling the story because of the 13 million children in the United States who regularly miss meals because there isn’t enough food in the cabinets to feed them and because of the more than 800 million people worldwide who go hungry each day. He’s telling the story because of a worldwide gap that is growing constantly between those who have the economic and psychological resources for survival and thriving, and those who do not. He’s telling us these stories about the reign of God because in too many cases, as a society and as a Church, we have not learned how to invite to the table of faith anybody who isn’t already there. You see, one can be poor or crippled or lame or blind in many ways.

If, as a first-year student at the University of Virginia, where classes begin this week, you enroll in our basic course on the History of the American Civil Rights Movement, the march toward equal treatment both under the law and in practice, for women and men of African descent in our country, the course reader that will guide you through this journey is titled, “Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table”. The welcome table, in this tradition, is the place where all the people can come, where the folks who have food and privilege share with the folks who don’t, and form a sense of community. This idea takes us all the way back to slave communities in the American South, where bonds of kinship and solidarity upheld a people enslaved by greed and ignorance. It’s present in the martyrs of the Underground Railroad and in the nineteenth-century progressives who dared claim that God’s will was not, and never had been, for any human being to own another. Through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, through lunch counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides, through Alabama bus boycotts and Marches on Washington, D.C., the song of the welcome table is sung proudly in our history.

And the truth is that it was the people who were fighting for their rights, not the ones oppressing them, who already knew what it meant to sit at the welcome table, who were already modeling the banquet of the kingdom of God. They were quite simply calling the rest of us, through their witness of faith and hope, to catch up and join the feast. At the banquet of our Lord, the food isn’t served, the new wine doesn’t come, until all the guests have arrived. And, sisters and brothers, for all our rhetoric of inclusiveness and all our best intentions, that day has not yet come.

So the question for us, in our families and our communities and our churches, is how can we better embody the spirit of Christ’s call to invite to our table the least and the lost? How can we, as the writer of Hebrews encourages us in the epistle that Caitlyn read earlier, “let mutual love continue” in ways that offer witness to the love of God which has gripped us and formed us as people of faith? It’s happening around us. In the soup kitchens and food pantries and homeless shelters of our area, God is doing a new work. In the programs of Christian education and Bible study at our church, God is doing something new. Through the gifts of their time and energy that our youth bring to Sunday morning services and Sunday evening gatherings, to visiting the sick and praying for one another, to finding their voices within their religious identity, God is reconciling their lives and the entire world to God’s self.

The invitation is there, for all of us. To make our table God’s table. To participate in that which is of the kingdom. To include the poor and the blind and all who have too long been left out in our worship, in our fellowship, and in our very lives. We’re invited to share in the poverty that we see around us and thus transcend and transform it. From this “meal of shared poverty,” writes Eastern Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov, “the banquet of the kingdom springs forth.”

And the promise in all this is not that we’ll ever agree with the folks whose life experience is wholly different from our own, who belong to groups we don‘t understand, who come from places we can‘t comprehend….in fact, the promise is that we won’t. Jim McDonald and his Sunday School class here did not see eye to eye, but they found ways to listen with their heart and grow together in Christ. It may not feel easy or natural for us to invite all God’s people to the table of faith, but the life and teachings of Christ offer hope that, when we do, we can remember those experiences, in Barracks Road CVS’s and in the most intimate places in our souls, with deep thanksgiving.

Hallelujah and Amen.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. --Ephesians 4:4-6

Alex tells people I have a theory about the beginning of an academic semester. I'm not so sure it's quite that developed, but my observation is that the first weeks each semester are the most hopeful times in the life of a University. Incoming students are convinced that they can fully recreate themselves in this new home, joining countless clubs, making limitless friends, and fixing all that is broken around them. Returning students are able to make a new start, actively engaging the community around them in exciting ways and making the very most of their college experience. In these first weeks, friends are easy to make. Everyone is warm and friendly as you walk down hallways, through dorms, and around Grounds. We truly share the sense that we are living together in Mr. Jefferson's academical village.

And then the grind of classes sets in. And Greek life begins its periods of rushing and pledging. And each on-campus organization begins to demand so much time from its members that we're forced to choose between our passions so as to be full, committed members of anything. And in the midst of all this, it's not difficult at all to detect a change in attitude among strangers at the university. I have my friends now, and you have yours, so now there's little reason for us to chat in the classroom or at the bus stop. I'm no longer worried that I'll have to eat alone in the dining hall, spend Saturday night in my room by myself, or miss out on much else, so I needn't reach out and connect to the faceless mass around me.

So I'm convinced that the first couple weeks of each semester is the time to make friends, to invite others to become a part of your cause or orginization, and to follow all your dreams. By no means do I give up hope for a mid-semester friendship to be sparked or for folks to swim upstream to new discoveries about themselves and their community, but I do read the signs and realize that now is the optimal time for such connections to occur.

As such, today is a tremendously hopeful one for me, but with a slightly ironic touch. You see, I spent my morning helping first-year students move into their dorms and greeting other folks with cookies and invitations to join us at the Wesley Foundation for our first evening worship services and our kickoff picnic on Thursday afternoon. And I'm planning to play host to the folks who come to the Dwelling tonight to watch the USC-Virginia Tech game. But I'm also spending my day writing a sermon for tomorrow morning's Youth Sunday service at Hinton Avenue and planning for the Charlottesville District Youth Rally which we're hosting in our fellowship hall tomorrow evening. In truth, all these faces of ministry are related and even one (one Lord, one faith, one baptism . . .), but that is not always my immediate reaction to the planning and prioritizing which these *complementary* positions require.

In any case, on this day of great hope and great responsibility, I draw inspiration from two sources, an old friend and a new (to me, that is) prophet:

Guildenstern (angrily): Then what do you expect? (unhappily) We act on scraps of information...sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

Rosencrantz puts a hand into his purse, then both hands behind his back, then holds his fists out.

Guildenstern taps one fist.

Rosencrantz opens it to show a coin.

He gives it to Guildenstern.

He puts his hand back into his purse. Then both hands behind his back, then holds his fists out.

Guildenstern taps one.

Rosencrantz opens it to show a coin. He gives it to Guildenstern.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Guildenstern getting tense. Desperate to lose.

Repeat.

Guildenstern taps a hand, changes his mind, taps teh other, and Rosencrantz inadvertently reveals that he has a coin in both fists.

Guildenstern: You had money in both hands.

Rosencrantz (embarrassed): Yes.

Guildenstern: Every time?

Rosencrantz: Yes.

Guildenstern: What's the point of that?

Rosencrantz (pathetic): I wanted to make you happy.

--Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

It's a thin line that leads us and keeps a man from shame
And dark clouds quickly gather along the way he came
There's fear out on the mountain and death out on the plain
There's heartbreak and heartache in the sadow of the flame

This love will carry
This love will carry me
I know this love will carry me

The strongest web will tangle, the sweetest bloom will fall
And somewhere in the distance, we try to catch it all
Success lasts for a moment and failure's always near
And you look down at your blistered hands as turns another year

This love will carry
This love will carry me
I know this love will carry me

These days are golden, they must not waste away
For our time is like that flower and soon it will decay
And though by storms we're weakened, uncertainty is sure
And like the coming of the dawn, it's ours forevermore

This love will carry
This love will carry me
I know this love will carry me

--Dougie MacLean, This Love Will Carry

Like people around the world over the past couple weeks, I've found myself being swept up in the excitement and sheer vastness of the Summer Olympics in Athens. In fact, I think there's much to be learned from the (at least theoretical, if not always genuine) peace and goodwill with which nations from all parts of the globe come together, setting aside social, political, economic, and military differences and celebrating all that we share in common. This may, indeed, offer us a glimpse of the peaceful reign of God prophesied by so many women and men of faith from so many cultural and religious traditions.

And while I think some serious reconsideration is in order in the way we view and groom our athletes (18-year-old gymnasts who weigh 90 pounds and still haven't started their periods and swimmers who move away from home at age 11 to pursue Olympic dreams ought to give us all pause to weigh some pretty important issues of health and justice), I am an unabashed rooter on of our American teams. I cringed when our men's basketball team was crushed by the mighty international forces of Puerto Rico, shouted when swimmer Brendan Hansen lost his bid for a gold medal in the 100-meter breaststroke on what seemed to be a questionable judge's call, and rejoiced with the members of our victorious diving, volleyball, and softball teams this weekend.

If I were myself a person of charity and goodwill, I would perhaps devote this post to highlighting and celebrating that which is the most symbolically meaningful in these Olympic games. Or if I were a mildly talented writer or astute scholar of history, I might offer some musings on the similarities between our interconnected global community and that world which gives us the brilliant stories of Zeus and Apollo and Poseidon and Athena and the other figures of Olympian allure. But alas, as my ratings depend entirely upon my stirring up as much controversy and dissatisfaction as possible, I will instead offer some (hopefully) impartial observations which might nonetheless best be classified as rants:

Rant the first: Michael Phelps is an amazing swimmer, maybe the best our country's seen in a lifetime. He's also an articulate, well spoken individual who devotes great amounts of time to charity and is apparently a generally great guy. And for all those reasons and more, he's made a great hero for all of us at home to root for. But he was never going to break Mark Spitz's record. And to say, as ESPN and seemingly everyone else in the world is, that his "quest for seven gold medals" has ended when he's only 1/3 so far in these games is grossly premature and presumptuous. Like other Americans, I hope he sweeps the rest of the races. But if that doesn't happen, I hope the story will be not that he lost but that some other athlete has just achieved Olympic gold and deserves credit for years of dedication and hard work.

Rant the second: As you can probably imagine, some of my favorite moments of the Olympic Games are the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. They're rich both in international symbolism and in passionate enthusiasm. They embody that global coming-together which I so admire, and thus I find it important for the women and men who are representing us at the Games to participate, inasmuch as they are able, in these ceremonies. Which brings me to the US Men's Gymnastics team. They decided not to take part in the Opening Ceremonies on Friday night because they had competitions over the next couple days and "didn't want to be on their feet" all that time. We are to imagine then, I suppose, that they stayed in their hotel room for those couple hours soaking their precious feet....they must, further, only walk when they are accompanied by their coaches in the act of training or competing. The oft-criticized men's basketball team, for crying out loud, with its collection of overpayed and overpampered NBA superstars, made the walk, while these guys stayed home and watched. The Greek gymnastics team faced a similar dilemma this week when they were asked to carry the torch for part of the journey into the Olympic Stadium. They had an early morning meet next morning and knew that this would keep them out far too late. But, in the end, they decided that this was far too high an honor to pass up, so they sucked it up and participated in the most important celebration of international athletics (and Greek culture) we've seen in years. I'm proud that our men are coming home with a historic silver medal, but disappointed that they chose to place their comfort ahead of the Games.

Rant the third: Events that depend on judge's scores to determine which individual or team has won should not be considered sports at all. We watched more synchronized diving on Saturday than I ever imagined I would (which may not have taken much, but we really did watch for quite a while) and discovered something very important about the results. Before the competition started, the announcers told us that the Chinese and the Russians are the best at women's synchronized diving. When the events happened, these ladies certainly were better than some of the others (teams from Canada and Great Britain, for instance, weren't even in the same league) and probably deserved the gold and silver medals they received. But at times their scores for equally difficult, technically sound, and well-synchronized dives were simply higher than those given to folks from Australia, Germany, and elsewhere. Thus, it seemed to me that they were the best because they were given the highest marks....and they were given the highest marks because they were the best. This makes a nice circle, but doesn't necessarily reflect what actually happened in the particulars of the competition being judged. Now don't get me wrong---I very much enjoy watching diving, gymnastics, and figure skating competition, and recognize that success in these events takes years of commitment, preparation, and effort. However, call me a cynic if you will, but I just don't trust the motives or knowledge of judges' panels enough to think that any sort of objectivity is achieved in these events.

Rant the fourth: By no means I am hoping for the demise of our men's basketball 'Dream Team', but isn't it rather nice to see basketball TEAMS succeed over a group of highly-talented-but-not-entirely-unselfish INDIVIDUALS? It's like the Detroit Pistons go international----only with so much irony!

Rant the fifth: How on earth does the nation that produced 'Field of Dreams', Ted Williams, the New York Yankees, Little League, and (oh yeah!) THE ENTIRE GAME OF BASEBALL, not even qualify for the Olympics?

Rant the sixth: American vegetarianism is a privilege of the affluent. Okay, so that doesn't have too much to do with the Summer Olympics, but it's an observation I re-discovered during our youth group mission trip that my roommates have been demanding I post here for weeks. A word of explanation may be required though, with a caveat. Said caveat being that I spent three and a half years, practically my entire life as a high schooler, as a vegetarian myself, and many of my closest friends today do not eat meat for a variety of health and ethical reasons. Another caveat is that, in much (if not most) of the world, vegetarianism is the most culturally and economically feasible way of life. A quick trip to the local grocery store in a poor community (where you will never find Boca Burgers or other vegetarian dishes) or to a summer children's camp which serves FDA-approved meals (which often consist primarily of meat entrees) or to soup kitchens where hungry people can receive free hot meals (and where it is not uncommon for the menu to be hot dogs and baked beans with bacon) bears witness to the fact that underprivileged folks in most American communities, however, simply don't have the nutritional option of abstaining from eating meat. This is neither good nor bad, it simply is. But it was enough, during our youth mission trip to Florida, to quiet some angry vegetarians, who are often far too vocal in their disapproval of their peers' culinary choices. And it's enough to confirm my own understandings of the hospitality and thoughtfulness of omnivorousness (gosh, we need a new word!).

And thus concludes an awkward, rambling post which must surely sound angrier than it isintended. Remember the old grain of salt, and know that (believe it or not!) I count both the Summer Olympics and vegetarianism among the great cultural witnesses being offered in the world today. Blessings on you!

Candler School of Theology at Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
The Divinity School at Duke University (Durham, NC)
The University of Edinburgh School of Divinity (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Harvard Divinity School (Boston, MA)
Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX)
The Vanderbilt University Divinity School
Wycliff Hall at Oxford University (Oxford, England)
The Yale University Divinity School

Thoughts?

(Unfathomable as it seems, I managed to lose my calendar for two entire weeks and have only recently recovered it. As a result, my entire sense of time and order fell apart for a while, and this post, which I began on August 9, didn't appear until August 16. There is something of the eternal in the way everything seems to be happening at the same time here, though, and for that I'm deeply grateful. So for those of you who've scrolled back to find this post, thanks and enjoy!)

For the next few days I'll be eating canned food and drinking bottled water. . .

No, this is not a sign that I've gotten especially lazy or run smack out of money. While both of these unfortunate things may be true, I'm partaking of these delicacies this week because they're the leftovers from our youth group's weekend camping trip on the Rock Fish River in Nelson County.

There's lot to recap before we get to those adventures, however. Last Sunday, eight of the faithful from Hinton Avenue braved the rainy weather (and even in our deathtrap of a church van!) to gather with the annual conference for 'A Service of Thanksgiving and Farewell' for Bishop and Mrs. Pennel at Reveille UMC in Richmond. The worship itself was moving and good, if slightly inward-looking (perhaps having every single church that has been planted, moved, or renamed during the past eight years bring a 'symbol' of its ministry to present at the altar during the processional was a going a shade too far...) and celebrating the Eucharist with so many fellow pilgrims there was a joy. It was also (as always) great to renew friendships with so many folks that I don't get to see very often and to enable several of the youth (and adults) from our church to get a taste of what is going on in the life of their Church.

To continue the theme of new beginnings and traveling to Richmond, this was my last official week as the Summer Intern/Assistant to the President at DeColores!/Top Associates, Inc. While there, I have worked with a number of churches to get quality, well-designed t-shirts for their youth group,VBS, etc. at the cheapest cost possible, worked with the volunteer ministry of Sargeant Santa with the Richmond Police Department, traveled to the Catholic Marketing Network show in Somerset, NJ, taken care of the lawns at Trinity UMC, St. Giles Presbyterian Church, and several individual homes, and sperad more mulch than I care to remember. It's been a great break from the constant planning and responsibility I usually experience, and it's allowed me to be a part of a unique and invaluable ministry in our conference. Geri Speidel would, I think, be proud---although it's often felt far too busy and stressful, I have NOT wasted my summer!

After spending all day Thursday with the youth group sharing lunch and fellowship as is our tradition, I planned to take Friday completely off. Well, of course, this dien't exactly go according to plan. I did, however, have a lovely breakfast at the Italian Villa with April, before heading to the office to make a few *short* phone calls. Several hours later, I emerged somewhat weary, but feeling quite accomplished, and April and I decided that Tom Hanks's lastest movie, 'The Terminal', was worth traveling to Midlothian. This turned out to be a great decision; the movie is sweet and smart and very funny, but also highly thoughtful and even profound in many ways. Famished, we stumbled out of the theater around 10:30 and headed straight for Extra Billy's, an amazing barbecue restaurant and brewery just off Midlothian Turnpike. We had an amazing dinner there, and April made an insightful, and quotable, observation that I'm convinced teaches us something important about the Fall: "In a good world, broccoli would be fattening, and cheesecake would be a . . . (pause here very important) vegetable."

We returned to Charlottesville very late, which meant an extra early morning grocery trip for David, so that I could get home, pray, pack, and meet the youth at church for our 10:00 departure. Gary and Vicki Bibb played host to us for the weekend, chaperoning the youth as we camped on their beautiful riverfront land near Howardsville. After arriving at the site, we had lunch and set up camp (If you've never watched four rather green teenaged girls try and assemble a tent, you've missed a true wonder). Then we took a serene, relaxing rafting trip from our campsite, at Wells's Landing, to the public peer at Howardsville. Aside from Gary's raft busting about ten minutes into the trip, too close of a call with a snake, and a few bumps and bruises from the rocky bottom of a shallow river, this was a wonderful and flawless ride. We returned to camp tired and hungry, had a dinner of Dinnie Moore beef stew (and other assorted canned goods), enjoyed s'mores, conversation, and games around the campfire, and retired to our tents fairly early.

A beautiful sunrise, the sounds of animals heading to the river for early morning drinks, a relaxed breakfast as the youth staggered out of their tents for the day, a hilarious and profound 'standing dialogue' game by way of a Sunday School lesson, and a wonderful service of morning praise and prayers marked our Sunday morning. After worship, we changed back into bathing suits and went for a shorter (an hour and a half or so) rafting trip down the river. This time we put in and landed on small areas of the riverbank that didn't even have formal names, but it was again a tremendously relaxing and inspiring experience. Since everyone seemed to float at different speeds, Vicki pointed out for us a couple places along the route where the fastest of our group could stop and wait for the others to catch up before continuing downstream. The first of these was what she called the 'H Rock'. Having no idea what she meant by this landmark, the girls who were at the front of the pack must have called back to me twenty-five times to ask if a particular jutting log or rock was the H Rock. After reassuring them so many times that we were not yet there, I began to wonder myself if we hadn't already passed it unaware and was about to yell back to Vicki for direction when I heard several unmistakable shrieks of comprehension in front of me. The H Rock, as it turns out, is a massive projection in the middle of the river, with a large 'H' clearly etched in its side.

Needless to say, we had little trouble recognizing this landmark and gathering around it for some swimming and chatting before continuing our journey. I'm thinking there may be an important lesson for us in the way everyone was becoming so stressed out about that which was beyond their control, when the natural signs were themselves so clear, if only we could exercise a little patience and a little faith. I'm preaching at Hinton Avenue in a couple weeks for our Youth Sunday service, so perhaps we'll get to explore this latest youth ministry revelation.

We soon made our way back to camp, prepared a quick lunch of all the leftovers we had from the weekend, broke camp, and headed back toward civilization, both renewed and transformed by our time together with one another and with our creating God.

Thus may it be for you today and all days!