Unitarian Universalists of Sterling

The Vacation

This is one of my favorite Wendell Berry poems, and perfect for this time of year:

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation. / He went flying down the river in his boat / with his video camera to his eye, making / a moving picture of the moving river / upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly / toward the end of his vacation. He showed / his vacation to his camera, which pictured it, / preserving it forever: the river, the trees, / the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat / behind which he stood with his camera / preserving his vacation even as he was having it / so that after he had had it he would still / have it. It would be there. With a flick / of a switch, there it would be. But he / would not be in it. He would never be in it.

Summer Lists

Time has a way of sneaking up on us. Have you noticed it, too? June is halfway over as I begin writing this column (my first as president of the UUS Board of Trustees!), and July is right around the corner. I have already begun making a list of things I want to do this summer because I know that July and August will go by really fast and if I don’t make a list, summer will be over and I will be left wondering what I did with all the time. Why am I sharing my compulsive nature with you? Because there are two items on my list that include you!