kar0ling

The fatgirl has been ready to go for a month already and I've taken her out a few times when I lacked the effort to deal with a puncture in the rear of my skyline. It has been unseasonably, blissfully warm. However, I'm surprised to discover, looking back, that I'm only bringing out the winter bike slightly later than last year (Nov. 12). I was on the skyline tonight, hoping the snow wouldn't fall till I got home. Alas, icy shards pelted my eyes (okay, the fatgirl couldn't have helped with that), and slippery, snowy roads bore me home. Time for cold and ice. So, tomorrow the fatgirl will be on the road for good, just a few days before her birthday, November 22. *****Update: mild weather returned so we didn't have snow and nasty roads in earnest until a major dump Dec. 16 that strewed mashed potatoes and brown sugar all over the roads.

I should be happy every time I open another church bulletin or see another facebook post that says a church is considering sponsoring a refugee family. Instead, I’m disgusted. Really, you're merely considering it? Only now ? Your congregation is so busy running your little affinity groups and holy huddles and going on your personal enrichment “mission” trips that it took the secular newsmedia’s outraged publication of a heart-rending photo of a dead child washed up on a beach to get you to even realize there's a refugee crisis out there?! And, so moved, you still wonder not when and how to respond but whether ? When did the church stop believing itself in some way responsible to care for people outside our own doors? Why is the church not ashamed that it took wider culture to wake us up to a tremendous need? (It’s not that the news hasn’t been out there. For example, my church magazine has been running articles from MCC on the dire situation in Syria since 2012....