Last Night at Vestry

The second item on the agenda under New Business, was “Interfaith Hospitality Network,” a group of churches work together to provide shelter for homeless families. People in the churches volunteer to cook, spend the night, help children with homework. Each church hosts three families for a week every three months.

Vestrys are all about discussing issues at length. Immediately the questions:

What about showers? There are none at St. Dunstan’s.
What time do the children have to get up for school? Where will they bathe?

We’ll have to work out those details, Patricia agreed.

What if we got them on Christmas week or Holy Week, when things are crazy around here?

Where will they sleep? Should we bring our children to meet the families, and if so, what is appropriate to say or not to say?

We’ll work it out, Patricia said. Those are details.

We found out the families leave early in the morning—the children have to go to school, the parents are either working jobs or working with social workers to get back on their feet.

We smiled at each other as we asked these rather mundane questions. The larger issue—opening our home (St. Dunstan’s) to strangers in dire need of shelter and us. Did we want to do that?

It was unanimous—we did. But there was still one last question: Can they use the washer and dryer?

Patricia didn’t bat an eye: Yes, she said.

Carrying Water

It’s about 20 steps from the front porch to the kitchen in the back of my house. I know this because my thirsty plants are in the front yard and the sink from which I’m drawing their water is in the kitchen.

I don’t own a professional watering can. Something that is not a 100-year-old pitcher, literally a cast-off ceramic piece when it was made with misshapen mouth and other unevenness, basically what I’m using.

When the water spigot was first knocked off the side of the house by a visitor a couple of weeks ago, not long after I put in my small garden, I immediately became philosophical. Now that I just planted all of those seeds out front, thereby making an unwritten promise to feed and nurture and take care of them, this would be a good first test.

Low and behold, nasturtiums and pole beans and moonflowers are insanely drought resistant. They would have done better with a little extra watering and pampering from me, but they did not need me to survive.

Watering (on my 10^th pitcher now) made me notice that it’s time to start training the little bean plants up strings to the top of their poles. When I planted them in their giant clay pots, I thought they’d find the pole on their own and then nature would guide them the rest of the way. I was wrong. 

The sunflowers, in which I had placed great confidence and hope to wall-off a swing (in which I also have great confidence and hope that I will possess one day) never got past thimble size. There’s one pickle/cucumber plant and one cucumber/pickle plant—I can’t tell which is which.

Now, I haven’t finished tying up the beans—perhaps tomorrow. I got everything watered and stopped to pick up twine, odds and ends, and sweep off the porch. I think what I’m looking through at this time of day is called a “vesper” light and in it, just before I turn to go inside, I catch a glimpse of my original vision—minus the sunflowers.