Hope next summer is different!

Received this from family on the Green Isle. We're saving our pennies to head there next summer as Keith's wonderful Granny turns 100!!!

Don`t touch me till October

That was the refrain I heard all summer long in my teen years at Lake Geneva Youth Camp from a dear friend Bob Carrera. Bob was a mountain of a man and had the sense of humor to match. People would go to give him a hug and he`d say `Don`t touch me till October` - it would always make me laugh.

New Brunswick has just gotten the heat wave the rest of the world seems to be suffering from and I`m hating it. I just melt, sweat and whine. Our computers are giving us problems too - nothing major, Keith just doesn`t have the time to fix them yet, so I am solving two problems at once today - blogging at the library and soaking in their lovely air conditioning. I`m sure it will make going back outside into the heat even worse, but for right now it is glorious!

Hope you`re getting through the heat!

Never Gonna Happen Dinner Meme

Marko has blogged his dream dinner guests and turned it into a meme of sorts. Here are the rules:

- the person has to either be a) dead, or b) alive, but no way you’ll ever have a chance to have dinner with them.
- real people only. no fictional characters.
- it’s not 6 individual dinners. it’s a dinner party with 6 people (plus you). think of the mix.
- assume no language barriers. in other words, it doesn’t matter if they speak or spoke another language than you and your other guests. you have magic instant translation technology.
- Jesus doesn’t count. it’s a dinner party. therefore, 2 or more are gathered. therefore, Jesus is already there.

I've been in a blogging blah so I thought maybe this would shake something loose.

1. I'd have to start with Joan Chittester, Sister Joan has been a wonderful voice in the wilderness for me in these past few years. Her social conscience and prophet's tongue get to the heart of the matter very quickly. Keith & I have been working through her Rule of Benedict for far too long now! She understands deeply about being a woman in the church under that stained glass ceiling and still fully uses her voice and gifts. I just love her.

2. Parker Palmer - His book Let Your Life Speak changed my life. Understanding that "in and through" the emotional landscape instead of the duck and cover that I had learned growing up gave my life a richness and depth I never understood before. His authenticity and articulation of big thoughts shakes everything loose in me and helps me put it back together.

3. Anne Lamott - the kingdom doors blew wide when I first read her work. I grew up being told Methodists weren't conservative enough to go to heaven, let alone Philistines like Anne. And yet she loved Jesus in such a fresh new way, and He loved her right back. Her humor on this journey spills into my own and makes me look at life in a way I had never done before. She is an inspiration to me and I adore her.

4. Stephen King - I hate horror movies, but this man has a rich soul. His prolific writing always captures my imagination and I would love to pick the brain of a man who struggled with his own demons in Delores Claiborn and found redemption in Shawshank & the Green Mile.

5. The Apostle Paul - no, not to be spiritual - I really want the straight goods - untarnished by translators. I want it from the horse's mouth. Give him a chance to set the record straight. I also think he'd be a much better story teller in person than he was in scripture. I'd really like to see his heart and find out what he thinks of the mess we've made of the church today.

6. Hadewijch of Brabant - she was a Benguine mistress martyred for her work with the poor, orphaned and sick. The church despised these amazing women, working outside of their power, but doing the work of Christ. She is one of my heroes and I long to pick her brain and sit and listen to the way they did the hard work of caring for the forgotten.

So there's my list - all authors, storytellers and saints of some strange distillation - I could make a dozen more lists - but this one I think would be a marvelous blend of insight and clarity. Three women, three men - all with great passion and prophetic voices. All have influenced me deeply and I fear one dinner just wouldn't be enough to find the answers to every question I have.

Thanks Marko - great challenge! I'm going to tag a few:

Dan Wilt - Conversations on Emerging Worship

Mark Peterson - Open Hands

Bob Carlton - The Corner

Renee - Ianua.org

Hope - A Song Not Scored for Breathing

Lisa - Author Intrusion

and anyone else who'd like to play! Just leave a comment if you do and I'll link to you!

This is the truth

Found at Vanguard Church blog where Bob found it from Granger Community Church - it really does turn things upside down.

Home again, home again

Jiggity jig... my mother said that almost every time we drove into our driveway when I was a child. I have no idea where it comes from, most likely a nursery rhyme that I've lost the words to.

Well, the Turner Family Vacation and Mechanics Tour of the Northeast has ended and we are all home safe and sound. What a wonderful trip. What an exhausting trip. We realized on the trip that we have never taken a two week vacation before - what we have missed! It is the perfect amount of time to really disengage and withdraw from life and revitalize ourselves.

Here are some of the memories:

• Two weeks on a double air mattress!
• Two flat tires, one leaving and one returning (it wasn't the quality of the tires, but of the valve - somehow the right side valves both cracked (need to get the left side checked!!)
• 3 U-joints needing replaced in Ontario (one was bad, but we decided to get all 3 replaced)
  
• Stretched cable from the transmission to the engine causing the car to rev and not change gears in the stretch from Niagara Falls to Pennsylvania
• Two very happy campers who adored Rock Mountain Bible Camp
• One incredible week reconnecting with my sister, Denise and her family - especially my lovely, adorable niece Marybeth.
• A piddling, leaking radiator that we needed to babysit like a rebellious teenager and can hopefully replace now that we are home - maybe they'll be able to locate the missing part that didn't come in the two that were ordered before we left...
• The most amazing mechanic in Pennsylvania who fixed things on the Volvo that we didn't even know were wrong - and the wonderful assurance that our transmission is spotless and we should get years left our of her!
• Amazing fireworks on Canada Day right out the front door of my in-laws home.
• Getting to know my niece Olivia & nephew Clark. I will never hear the word "cousins" and not think of the adorable way in which she says it - it's like a great big sigh.
• Enjoying their gorgeous view and home and being mesmerized by their 150 gallon fish tank. If I wasn't so dang lazy and afraid I'd kill the investment of the fish I'd really think about replacing our TV with one - it was so relaxing to sit and watch them swim.
  
• A wonderful night stay at The Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, ON (and a real live bed to sleep in!)
• Camping again for a week reminded me just how very much I love civilization - although we were treated royally by the amazing camp kitchen staff and I was never once required to cook or clean ANYTHING! God bless Rock Mountain Bible Camp!
• Waking up to an incredible, peaceful view of the lake every morning right out our front zipper. Sitting with our coffee (yes, we brought our Cuisinart coffee maker on the trip to grind our beans every morning! We're addicted)
• Two dousing rainstorms that we enjoyed as they played on the roof of the tent knowing we were dry and safe.
• IKEA - do you think it's fair people in the Toronto area have THREE while the rest of us do without??
• Reconnecting with Keith's family and having brothers & sister in the same place at the same time - nobody gets a word in edgewise!
• The mini-reunion with Deb, Erin & Lynne - it was so sweet to spend time with those amazing women!
  
• Seeing Alinea & Jacob with their grandparents is such a beautiful thing.
• A last night stay in Saco, Maine just minutes away from Ocean Park where we worshipped Sunday a.m. at the Temple. A round wooden structure built in 1881, singing old hymns and having my kids hear Tony Campolo for the first time - and having him kiss and hug them on the way out of church afterward. He is my hero and I was reminded again why. He is the best storyteller and his love for the real Jesus and his unabashed ability to challenge each and every one sitting under his teaching to fall madly in love with that Jesus and live a life of sacrifice. It was the icing on the cake for me. No, really it was the cake, and the rest was the icing. Such a wonderful end to a wonderful time.

Thank you so much for your prayers while we were away - it helped us face the mechanics and car trouble with a much brighter attitude and made family interactions much richer I'm sure. It's good to be home again. Jiggity jig.

Whew, what a trip!

Finally have access to some real time in front of a computer with internet access. This trip has been incredible! We loved our drive here through the New Hampshire and Vermont mountains and quickly cut across I-90 in New York to celebrate Canada Day with Keith's mom Dorothy & step-father George. They live on the Hamilton Bay and we are so impressed with the beauty that is being restored to that part of the city. What we didn't enjoy at all was the noise that our 20 year old Volvo made as it chugged into their driveway.

Not knowing much about cars we assumed it was the transmission and the death of "Vanna" (our endearing term for her as I just couldn't get the term "put this in the van" out of my vocabulary after driving a van for 10 years, thus we called her "Vanna"). We feared the worst and knew that having to find another vehicle was going to be a more expensive proposition that we wanted to consider. George has a good friend who has a large mechanic shop in Hamilton and Vanna was towed in. Great news, it was the U joint. They decided to fix all three (Volvo's have three - who knew?) and after $410 and many phone calls and impatient waiting for it to get done we were back on the road yesterday and spent last night sleeping at the Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

This was our touristy reward for camping. It is water slides and wonderful touristy time together. Alinea & Jacob are in their glory.

I am so excited to be able to spend time with my family as my father is already in South Gibson, PA (near Scranton) with my sister Denise & her husband Andrew and their beautiful baby girl Marybeth. We have not been all together for years. Ali & Jake are attending camp for the week and Keith & I are camping on the grounds as they have a camp ground attached to the camp property.

We sure do appreciate the prayers and are so enjoying our family and friend time.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was Thursday night when I was able to spend the night in Oronto, New York on Lake Ontario (yes, the gorgeous house was RIGHT on the lake) with my blogging/Path friends Deb, Erin & Lynne. We had such an amazing time together and it felt so good to just be "me" and not "mom" for a night.

Hope you're all enjoying your summer too!