8 years ago...

...Wes and I got married in this little chapel on Lake Wawasee. This picture was taken last month as we walked Oakwood park for the first time since the ceremony. Yesterday (our actual anniversary), we spent the day in true 'Anna and Wes' style: great local food, a long afternoon in an indie bookstore, reading by the lake, ice cream, and a good film. A huge thank you to Granny Becks, who came down to stay with the kids for the day - if you see or talk to her, give her a pat on the back!

Lately, we have been daydreaming about our own future version of these way-cool barn conversions...

Hospice medical care for dying patients: newyorker.com

Our mail woman pulls up to our nearly decaying mailbox in her nearly decaying red Jeep and inserts The New Yorker. Then, Anna or I go to the box and take out this one little magazine. It doesn't seem like much, but for someone like myself who lives outside the realm of DSL and cable television (or antenna television!) and inside the realm of small town parochialism this one magazine becomes something like a link to the outside world. It helps me gain a broader picture of the larger movements and events of our nation as well, which I find particularly important as a minister living both locally but called to think globally.

Sometimes the articles are hilarious; sometimes they are enlightening. Often they are thorough and probing on issues that I've long thought about, but don't know how to explore further (like the article I recently read on the fishing industries and the sustainability of our seas).

Occasionally, some of the articles - in my opinion - are prophetic in that good biblical sense of taking away a veil and showing the reality that is truly present in our culture.

This article I am posting below is one of those articles. It addresses many things - including the issue of health care which many people are eager to discuss or debate these days. But, it also goes much deeper to our age old enemy as human beings: death.

It's a long article, but I think you'll find it profitable and enlightening. I hope so.

~Wes

Hospice medical care for dying patients: newyorker.com

Ripe

Perfect for picking ... and picture-albuming.  

Here is a little peek at some of the berries we've been picking over the last several weeks - usually in the fading hours of daylight following dinner, after the kids have gone down for the night and the dew is beginning to collect on the grass again.

We've got a whole row of thornless blackberry bushes that stretch from west to east for about thirty yards.  They've been coming on heavy recently, which means that we should have some good baskets of berries to bring to market this Saturday.

Just as I am excited for the blackberry haul ... I am also excited about this post - created from start to finish by the iPhone:

Picture taken with the great 5.0 megapixel camera ...

Saved and easily accessed in the Camera album, which allows you to select any photo to share via email ...

And published to our blog by simply typing an email that Blogger converts into the post.

Voila!  

If only berry picking was this quick and easy.

Wes

The Sweet Surrender

We've returned now from vacation up near Syracuse, Indiana. For one whole week we immersed ourselves in the splash of water, the radiance of that high summer sun, the fresh breeze that goes the length of Lake Wawasee, good wine, sweet corn, and time to "be" as people and as a family.

High upon my list of favorites from the vacation was the discovery of a great local ice-cream shop: Joe's Ice-Cream. They served - much to my delight - a custard that came in both lemon and orange dreamsicle. I took the rare opportunity to get a scoop of each tucked nicely into the friendly confines of a waffle cone. It went to the realm of cream combinations not reached since the days of taro and green tea from our old favorite, Fosselman's.

Now that we're back, we're into the thick of it again. We were so literally when we returned on Saturday - our garden and yard overrun with crab grass and squash vines and sunflowers reaching eight feet in the air. Was it Parker Palmer or Wendell Berry that spoke of the obscenity of summer - with its ridiculous proliferation of life in amounts too abundant to handle or control.

Sometimes there's just too much goodness in life to enjoy.

Wes