It looks like the faculty have a lot more fun these days than way back when Corrie and I were students. Check it out. All three, Harvey, Peter, and Diana, were important influences during my  M.Div. career and later.

The internet is wonderful! I mentioned in service this morning one of my favorite epitaphs in a Boston graveyard. But I got several of the details wrong. First, it was in the Copps Hill burial ground. Second, the phrase I remembered was not the end of the epitaph. But you get the idea. Here’s the whole of it:

Here lyes the mortal part of William Clark, Esq. An Eminent Merchant of this Town and an Honourable Counsellor for this Province Who Distinguished Himself as a Faithful and Affectionate Friend a Fair and generous Trader Loyal to his Prince Yet always zealous for the Freedom of his Country A Despiser of Sorry Persons and little Actions, An Enemy to Priestcraft and Enthusiasm, Ready to relieve and Help the Wretched, A Lover of Good Men of Various Denominations, and a Reverent Worshipper of the Deity.

I didn’t do more research than that. I know it’s eighteenth century, and from the details, it probably derives from the colonial period (“loyal to his prince” suggests pre-revolutionary). But it does provide some interesting religious info: an enemy to Priestcraft suggests he wasn’t Anglican/Episcopalian, the mention of Enthusiasm implies he rejected the Great Awakening (i.e., Methodism), and “a Reverent Worshipper of the Deity” implies that he was moving toward Unitarianism, or at least Deism, as were many in the eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson, for example.

This past Sunday was the culmination of another incredibly busy week at St. James. I thought things were supposed to slow down in the summer! We had at least six visitors at the early service–hardy souls! Among them were a couple from Kansas. They were in town for a church and synagogue librarian conference. That in itself raises all sorts of interesting questions.

After the service, they made sure to meet me. She was carrying a book in her hand. They introduced themselves, saying they were from Lawrence, KS (home of the University of Kansas). The book she gave to me was one that had found itself into their church’s library, but had a bookplate identifying it as property of St. James, Greenville.

It wasn’t very old, having been printed in 2000, but I am very curious how it got from here to there. Any ideas?

By the way, I’ve been wondering about the usefulness of church libraries. Ours at St. James seems to be used primarily as a meeting room. Few of the books circulate and most of them are decades old. I remember when I was a child reading many of the books in our church library. There were lots for young readers, but they were carefully censored. Even the Laura Ingalls Wilder books had all the dirty words like “gee” and “gosh” carefully blacked out.

I’ve spent much of the last week working in the garden and yard. It’s a wonderful escape after Summer School and we are in the middle of harvesting vegetables. All of our kitchen counters are covered with tomatoes in very stages of ripeness. We planted a number of heirloom varieties that don’t do well if left to ripen on the vine completely. We had some great discoveries, too. An variety that is bright orange and has great flavor, and the copia, which is striped yellow and red. I’m tired of eating green beans, but we’ve got a couple of pounds in the fridge and a bunch more still on the plants. The zucchini seem to be winding down, and we picked our first four melons, but we haven’t tried them yet. And now Corrie is planning what we’ll put in the fall garden.

I’ve also been weeding the beds: crabgrass, various kinds of clover, mimosa, and the pernicious buttonweed. Yes I know about roundup, but as I mentioned in a previous entry, we try to avoid using pesticides and herbicides, and besides, we’ve got so much in most of the beds, it would be hard to keep from spraying plants. I enjoy weeding, except for the toll it takes on my knees and back. It’s mindless and one can gauge how much one has accomplished just by looking. Sure beats teaching, or the ministry, in that regard.