Scheduled Start-ups

Dearest Rachel –

I woke up this morning, feeling a little dismayed. Not because it was too late to get up and out of the house right when the gym was opening. Sure, I could always stand to do that, especially since I’m two pounds heavier this morning than yesterday, despite having had little more for dinner last night than a large spinach salad and two slices of garlic toast; and while I’ve actually gotten below my license weight this week, I haven’t managed to stay there. Not that a workout gets me to stay at a certain weight, since I’m often losing water weight that I put right back on by drinking, but it does leapfrog me down to a lower level that actually takes time to climb back to – and ideally, I shouldn’t be able to climb back up to before I hit the gym the next time. It’s glacial progress, from some perspectives, but it is observable, which is why I’m starting to want to go there, as opposed to ever actually enjoying the process. But at six in the morning, it’s a bit late to get up and do that, while being too early to get up otherwise.

And that was the other dismaying aspect of the moment; I didn’t want to get up yet, but could not get back to sleep. And I certainly couldn’t find my way back to my dreams, which were incoherent at best, and not something I could relate to you even if I tried. So I was lying there, without any real inspiration as to what to tell you about this morning – and you know me; I want to start the day by talking with you like this before I get started on my other daily tasks I’ve set myself to.

That’s when it struck me that I need to get back to telling you about things that are actually going on in my life, as opposed to the dream sequences and philosophical ramblings of the past few days. To be sure, there’s not been anything spectacular going on in my immediate orbit – Megumi hasn’t shown up and made herself known, and while there have also been no disasters or tragedies I’ve been beset with, either, the last week or so has felt like the proverbial situation where there’s literally “nothing to write home about” – from a slightly more distant vantage point, there’s a lot going on, even if it’s all the usual stuff (and not all of it is, come to that).

You see, for all that we think in terms of calendar years (or, back in my day, fiscal years), it’s the school year that’s just getting started right now. Now, that’s not been a thing that personally affected us since I retired and Daniel graduated (both in 2019, allowing us all a full year together – and in the closest proximate sense, thanks to the quarantines prevalent in that following year), but it affects so much of what goes on around us that we’re still peripherally affected by it. This is when things begin because they’re scheduled to; there are many things that start without our preparing for them – and that’s a completely different topic that I’ll probably touch on sometime in the near future – but this is the season for scheduled start-ups.

For us, most of these things are at church, as opposed to school, but they are based on the fact that, with the school year starting, people return from vacations (another thing I probably should tell you about, but not yet), and everyone is set in place for the next nine months or so. Now, not everything has actually paused over the summer – the men’s study on Saturday mornings, for example, has been going on basically uninterrupted throughout the vacation season. It helps that there are two guys who spearhead the whole thing, so that one can take over when the other isn’t in town – although there was one week when the one was under the impression that the other would be gone the following week, and only found out his partner would be absent that particular week with thirty minutes notice, so he didn’t have a lot of actual ‘lesson’ for us. Fortunately, we had the sermon notes from the previous weekend, which we discussed for the hour or so that we were allotted without much difficulty. We are starting a new series, separate from the current sermon series, this coming Saturday, though, so there’s that – I’ve started to make my way through the book, and I have to admit that I’m not sure about its applicability to my own personal situation. But that’s another topic for another time, I think.

On the other hand, there are studies that are just resuming this week. The ‘theology’ class (which even Pastor Joel admits sounds grandiloquent, but also claims is because we don’t the term as often as we should – ‘theology’ being ‘the study of God,’ so any study of His word should rightfully be considered a theology class; it shouldn’t be just for seminarians), in particular, is just firing up tonight. Obviously, I haven’t anything to tell you about it just yet – not for another ten hours or so, anyway – but you’ll recall what it was like. This time around, I’ve actually run into people who have expressed interest in attending who I’ve never seen there in the past; it might just be a bigger deal than it ever was.

And on that note… I haven’t told you about Sparks, which started up on Monday. I mentioned last week that it looked like we would have enough leaders to keep the kids under control, but at the time, we weren’t entirely sure how many kids we would have – and therefore, whether that assessment was valid. Turns out, we were dealing with a lot of kids – just shy of eighty, although there was a moment of panic when Diana and I couldn’t agree on the exact number, and we had to re-count the list several times, as we didn’t want to run the risk of losing any of the kids in the chaos (it turned out that I had skipped over a name in my count, and we actually agreed in terms of names, much to our relief) – but we also had a lot of new volunteers serving as leaders, so it looks like we’ll be fine, unless the crowd grows by a ridiculous number throughout the school year.

Indeed, with numbers as big as they are, we’re actually starting to outgrow the facility at this point; there’s some talk of making this a multi-campus thing in the near future, possibly as soon as next year, which sounds absolutely incredible. Then again, God has been blessing us with growth; we might as well be good stewards of it by giving it the room to expand that much more.

Which brings me to the one scheduled beginning that I will absolutely not be a part of, despite being affected by it (well, sort of); the new campus. And I should point out that, despite the emphasis in that last sentence, I have nothing against our current expansion plans. Far from it; the area we’re bringing a branch to is woefully underserved, despite being in the midst of a rather upscale group of neighborhoods (perhaps too many folks there worship the Almighty… dollar), and the facility is enormous in comparison to any of our current locations, so we have plenty of room to grow (and if the past is any indication, we’ll need all of it). But the seed congregation will be primarily coming from our particular location, and while I’m also not terribly bothered by that – we’re nearly at capacity where we are, and could use a bit of our over-population siphoned off – someone needs to stay and keep things running back here while many of the most enthusiastic members head off to get the new location up and running.

It’s weird – for all that I bemoan the fact that I’m not a front-lines type of Christian (I’ve literally referred to myself as an “REMF,” a term of contempt which goes over the head of all but the most seasoned military vets in our congregation), this is one time where I’ve actually been able to seize on the fact that every army needs those in the rear echelon, if only to hold the positions we’ve already taken while the main corps continue its advance. It’s actually exciting to watch, even as I know I’m doing so from a distance.

Then again, what am I saying about distance, when you’ve got me beat by countless leagues? Can you see what’s happening, honey? Does it excite you? Are you looking forward to meeting the people who you will one day be able to welcome where you are from these efforts? I rather hope so, even as I hope it will be a long time before any of them have to join you there.

In any event, keep an eye on all of us, honey, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.