Friends,
Welcome to my new weblog, or blog.
I want to issue a special thanks to our web head, Geoff Gould, who went to the trouble to put this together and then to show me how it all works! It has been a yeoman's task, and it is appreciated.

This space won't pretend to an authority its author doesn't posess. It won't pronounce or announce. But hopefully, with grace and God's love to light the way, there will be some sharings of worth; some observations.

Today, May 28th, places us on the edge of Memorial Day. For me, the day is - appropriately - chock full of memories. Memorial Day would always start with going to the cemetery, where my Mom would place flowers on my Grandparents' grave. She would take quite a while at this, while we ran back and forth among the granite rows, playing tag.
Until I spent time putting flowers on her grave, I never understood why she took so long.

From the cemetery we would move, then, to the parade. How I loved that parade. It was, for me, the highlight of the yet unborn summer. The Memorial Day parade in Ballston Spa, NY was, for my six year old eyes, a spectacle unmatched in time and space. Riders on horse back would canter past in full cowboy regalia. The fire trucks and the marching band from the high school; the veterans all uniform'd and proud would all saunter by. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts and Brownies would also stumble along craning their necks to find where their families were sitting. We crammed together at curbside with our aluminum folding chairs and sticky sweet gobs of cotton candy, and much too soon for my taste it was over.

I was much too young then to attach importance to grave yard visits or symbols of sacrifices made. It never occurred to me that the rifles the old vets carried by could actually end a human life. But I know different now. And while my memories are no more or less important than your own, I do note that the time for remembering has come 'round again. And it comes when there are many, many dead to honor.

My hope and prayer, as we fire up the bar-b-q and take off for long weekends in the sun, is that our memories of the dead and soon to die will spur us to actions for peace.

My fervent and soulful wish is that we will honor the dead enough to make sure that no more will die, that no more mothers may have to weep beside their children's caskets; that no more barely bearded young men will show up on the late night news as "killed in action."

It's Memorial Day weekend. Perhaps we can come together to create the most fitting memorial of all. Peace.

Keeping you all in prayer for the long haul....

Pastor Schuyler Rhodes