Sugar Cookie

I have been searching for the perfect sugar cookie for many years now. I have found recipes and tried them and sampled the baking of many others. I have looked far and wide, seeking out the best bakeries. I have even found and used the best ingredients for my own, like real vanilla. For a while I thought the key was a pinch of nutmeg. It has been a hard and demanding task, but I am not going to give up. I started this because I remember a cookie from when I was growing up. When we were kids, after Dad took us to church, we would stop at the Quaker Dairy a couple blocks away. We would get two bottles of milk, glass bottles—this was from before plastic cartons—of skim milk in a metal wire carrier, so skim that it looked kinda blue and you could almost see through it, and bread they would slice right there in the store. And a sugar cookie. I still remember how they tasted. They were perfect and I have not tasted anything like them until I had Margaret’s cookies.
Last time I was in my home town, I saw a building, the Quaker Bakery. I stopped with great joy and found out that it was the corporate office, not a retail store. Also they make hamburger buns now. I am sure they are good buns. Things are different now. Time moves on. Every now and then I begin to wonder if the cookies were that great or whether my memory of them is better than they actually were. The present can be a disappointment, if we cling too tightly to what the past was like. My disappointment was short-lived. I would not want to return to those days just for a sugar cookie. Things are lost and things are gained. I have things now that I did not even dream of as a kid. The computer that is so important to work was not available then. Now I can even send mail to friends across the country without a postage stamp. Many of us carry phones in our pockets. The modern world has brought many valuable things. Nostalgia for the past can keep us from seeing what we do have.
We are that way in many of our churches. We remember the way things used to be and more than that, we remember the way we used to be back then. Things nowadays might not please us like our memories do. We might face many challenges now. The problem with the past, though, is that it is the past. We can remember it as we want to and that can give us great comfort, but we do not live in the past, we live in the present. The past, our past, will never return. To manage the challenges of the present, we have to live in the present. And we might miss new possibilities by looking only at what was and not thinking of what life could be.

219th General Assembly

According to the news service, while at the General Assembly a couple weeks ago, when the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Gradye Parsons, was visible on the monitor, it looked like a statue of John Calvin was watching over him. When he was asked about it, he quoted the thought of Calvin: We each have our own calling assigned to us “as a sort of sentry post, so that [we] might not wander heedlessly through life” (Institutes, III. 10.09). The many commissioners and staff, committees which gave reports, people who came in support of one viewpoint or another to General Assembly in Minneapolis all were responding to God’s calling to serve the church in this way.
I liked Gradye’s comment because one of my jobs as a volunteer with the Committee on Local Arrangements was guarding a committee room so they could take their lunch break. It was at pole #9 (the columns that hold up the Convention Center). My post was literally a post. But it is a good metaphor that we each have our unique task and calling in the church. God’s wisdom is to include us in what God is doing.
I enjoyed being up at GA for a couple days although my role in it was slight. I ran into at least 30 people I knew, could hear some of the discussions, and stopped by the exhibit hall (the Presbyterian idea of swag, by the way, is bookmarks with the Great Ends of the Church on them). Normally I don’t pay a lot of attention to General Assembly. This GA is far more real to me because I was a part of it, however small. Joy comes from participation.
In many churches, one of the reactions people have to anxiety is to become less active in the life of the church. That is almost a natural reaction to uncertainty. When they do that they forget two things. The first is that we have been given a part in what God is doing in the world. The church is God’s project, God’s great adventure, and God places men and women in roles to share it with them. Sometimes we see the idea of calling as a task or responsibility, and it is that, but it is also much more. The second is that once a person finds that place and is part of it, only then will they experience the joy of being a part. It is easy to be a bystander and critic. It is harder to fulfill one’s calling. But there is no question which is more satisfying.

The other week I was at a conference in Toronto, as I said in my previous blog entry. My trip was somewhat unexpected. The group I went to Spain with some years ago had hoped to attend a Continuing Education event together and we saw the notice for this event, but our schedules did not allow it to happen. I saw the promotional material on it again, some months later, and decided to go. I had been to Toronto last year for a Stewardship conference and got to know my way around the city and where budget accommodations were.
When you go back to a place, you can do some of the things that you were not able to do in previous visits. I brought my camera this time and got some pictures of Toronto, the highlights, so to speak. I was fortunate to have some nice days to see a few of the sights. There is much in Toronto, things for all sorts of interests.
When you know a place, you know what is good in it and can make use of those things. I like cities with subways systems—Washington, DC, Boston, Chicago, Madrid. That allows you to get around all over the city quickly at minimal cost and avoid taxis or driving in an unfamiliar city. Generally they are clean and usually safe, at least during the day. I stopped back at a couple stores I spotted last year. I went past the Prada, Louis Vuitton, Armani, Cartier, and Rolex stores. I even went past Adam & Eve, a chocolatier (Get it? Temptation!). I stopped at L’Atelier Grigorian for their great selection of Baroque Classical music CDs and the Anglican Book Centre for the religious book bargains.
Last week in worship I posed the question to the Parish of what was good in it. It is my hope that we have an ongoing conversation as a part of worship. What are those things here we go back to? I polled those who were in worship on Sunday, July 4. A picture of the Parish, what we enjoy in Chatfield:
We eat well and feed others
Friendship
Good music
We work together
It feels like home
A long history
It’s good for your soul
Good messages
Good base to build on for the future
At Utica and Lewiston they are:
Fellowship
Worship—how it all fits together
Sunday School
We are close
We know each other
Comfortable
A History with families
Lunches
Continuing learning
That is a good picture.