Entries this day: adam_beach_house cluster_kickoff

adam beach house

10 May 1998

This Sunday at church was the 8th graders' Affirmation Sunday, honoring their place in the church and welcoming them into the high school program.

We had a slightly different preparation process this year; the youth paired up with adult mentors who worked with them in various fields of growth, from creating a personal view of God and religion, to doing some service work for the community.

The youths' speeches were beautiful; I could hear sniffling noses in the audience behind me and my sniffling nose.

After the sniffling, we had pizza! Yay! Pizza for all and then even better, a trip to the Woods' beach house down on the beach.

We piled into 3 vehicles and cruised down there, talking, laughing and playing silly mind games with one another. ("Ceiling Wall Floor" and "Name That Famous Person" were the most played) Oh, we also sang, "I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves" and "This is the song that never ends" to pass several minutes..

Dang. Now the song is cycling through my brain.

I'll be right back.

19 May 1998

Their beach house is pretty cool. It's dome shaped, and is made up of like 50-some-odd wooden triangles. There is an upstairs and downstairs and living room and kitchen and 2 bedrooms.

We chilled for a bit and after all the youth ran out to go swimming, a wandered out there and began to bury my feet in the sand.

Each time I go to the beach, I dig some kind of hole, usually until the water come sloshing over it from the surf, or bubbling up from the bottom.. in either case, flattening the hole into a gentle puddle on the beach.

This day I simply stood and dug a hole with each foot, burrowing slowly down into the sand. After not too long, I had them buried up to my ankles.

I chilled for a bit like this, closed my eyes and felt the wind and sun. (I was smart enough to wear long sleeved shirt and pants, some great sunscreen!)

This didn't feel deep enough. So I wrenched my feet out and dug deeper, fully covering my ankle bones and everything. That was fun for a bit. I tried to jump, which stretched my back in a weird way that made me remember why I didn't like to jump while my feet are buried in sand.

How much deeper could I go? I still had not used my hands to bury my feet, so I let my hands help with the holes this time. While I was digging, a particularly ambitious wave reached my excavation site, beginning the puddle formation. This just helped me dig deeper so I did.

Finally I had my feet buried fully 1 foot deep.

I closed my eyes and meditated like a tree. Just experiencing the beach and nature around me. I decided I would not open them until someone came up to me, or until the surf reached me 3 times.

I peeked when I heard Wende's voice off in the distance. Oops. I closed my eyes again, aware that she was approaching. I didn't expect a gentle kiss on the lips from her. Mmmm.

"HI" we both said.

She was as tall as I, or something; she seemed to appreciate the extra foot the sand gave her. The weird thing for me was that as I scanned the horizon, everything looked fine. Then as I looked at the ground closer and closer to me... Yeowzers! I'm suddenly short!

I was probably out in that spot for a bit over an hour.

The youth had come by twice, and were playing out in the raft when I decided I had been a tree long enough. My feet tingled after I pulled them out of the sand; my hypothesis is the sand smooshed the blood out of them, so they kinda went to sleep.

The raft was fun; I helped them pull it out toward the breakers and against the prevailing tide, and once we were a ways out, let the waves whhhhhaaassshhh us back toward shore, sometimes tumbling one or two youth out of the raft.

A wonderful fun time was had by all.

We were soon called in for dinner, hotdogs, and meat or vegetarian burgers. I had a veggie burger and sat by Anna, giggling with her about rally stories and a joke.

I told the joke to the group.. it's my favorite entirely clean joke lately. Maybe I'll put it in here. Probably not.

Anna and I enjoyed it more than the rest of the group, and I'm glad about that.

Pretty much after that we packed it up and went home. On the way back I rode with Wende, who had driven up separately because she had to go to work for a bit.

I don't remember what we talked about.

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cluster kickoff

10 May 1998

Today was Flower Communion at my church. The service stems from way back in Czechloslavakia when Norbert Capek (The 'C' character is actually a C with a v on it.) a Unitarian minister, wanted to have a communion but not using bread and wine.
That's the short version of the story.

But that's not why I'm writing.

Today after church, Mary McCuen and I, en route to Einstein Bros. Bagels, talked about activities for the summer. This Wednesday for our LRY dinner, we're going to invite all the youth from the seven local UU churches to meet so we can plan some dates for meetings during the summer!

I'm super excited about actually doing to cluster level stuff, getting the group together doing stuff together... I'm excited about the possibilities.

So I called Christina Branum-Martin and she said she was interested in having youth worships during the summer. We now plan to have a worship in the evening of each first Sunday of the month. Yay!

I'm doing the smiley bouncy dance just thinking about it!