Memories
I’m on vacation this week. We traveled back up to the town where I grew up in the Catskills Mountains of N.Y. My sister and her family who now live in Boston met us there. It was very nice, I don’t get to see my sister and her family usually, but once a year. We’ll often talk several times a week on the phone throughout the year, but this is normally our one chance to get together. Lydia and Sophia get a chance to spend some time with their cousins and we all make sure we get together with my cousin Teresa and her family. Today we went canoeing on a river through the mountains. Bald eagles flew overhead, a river otter crossed in front of us, the water was so clear we could see schools of trout swimming underneath our boat. It was a wonderful trip that hopefully we’ll all remember. We spend a lot time when we are together remembering experiences we’ve shared from our past times together. As we sit on the porch in the evening someone will start by saying, do you remember that time…or you remember when, or I’ll never forget that time …. and with that the laughter and memories start to flow. The stories I’m sure get a little bigger, a little more dramatic, and the details get lost, but that’s okay. Our lives have been shaped by the memories of the times we have spent together. Some of those memories wind up in my sermons, some of the memories, which can be embarrassing for me, are best left in the minds of my nieces and nephew. It is hard to say how much longer we’ll all get together. Kids grow up, lives get busy and the house you grew up in and have gone back to for so many years will one day get sold. But as I sit on the porch tonight I think of how my life has been shaped by these experiences and memories and I am so thankful that my children have these memories that have shaped their life as well. I’m driving back to Virginia on Friday and so I hope I’ll see you on Sunday. Many of us, we share our own memories of times spent together at Wright’s Chapel and those memories have as well shaped mine and my children’s lives. For that I am very thankful.
