Mt. Gretna musings

Okay, so here we go, my first foray into the world of blogging... :) I was sort of talked into it by my roommate Joanna to begin with the other day when she started her blog. I wanted to comment on her postings, but couldn't unless I signed up myself (which she has since changed). But anyhow, I decided to create a site but wasn't planning on posting anything, since I don't know what to write, don't know many people who would be interested in reading it, and generally didn't want to feel like I had to post anything on a regular basis, just for the few people who might actually read it! but that's digressing.... so this post is a specific response to somewhat of a challenge or an interesting idea that came out of this afternoon's discussion at the Jigger Shop in Mt. Gretna. John and Joanna and I were chatting, and the subject of blogs came up. I can tell that John has a really high opinion of blogs (ha ha :) and the joke evolved into seeing what a person really thought of something, someone, or some event by reading their blog. So then it was decided that each of us should post our thoughts on the afternoon via blog. Of course I can't resist a good challenge, so I figured I'd take up the task at hand. Plus, we had a really great conversation on the way home, it's a nice evening, and I'm home by myself sitting on the porch, so I'm in the mood to just chill out and discourse on the discussion of the afternoon :) And, amazingly, the past 15 minutes have flown by, since my spinach casserole is now beeping at me from inside. MMM, Spinach Fandango! An amazing recipe courtesy of my Messiah roommate Suzanne. Yum!

Okay, so I'm back. How to distill this afternoon down into a blog posting.... it started out as an idea Joanna had of going hiking this afternoon. I've never been to Mt. Gretna, though it is not too far outside of Hershey. She insisted that I had to go, since it was a cute place, and she couldn't believe I'd never been there! And I'm glad I went :) It is a quaint little town, very New Englandy feeling to me. Reminded me a lot of upstate New York, and the cabins that are around Lake Ozonia that my dad's family goes to each year. It really reminded me a lot of summer vacation for some reason, probably because of the way the houses were, the fact that there was a lake to swim in, and the little walking paths and stone steps going places. Oddly enough, it reminded me of an artisan community I visited in Taiwan! There were a lot of places with steep stone steps leading places in that town in Taiwan, which might be why I was reminded of it.

The whole afternoon was really nice, and I enjoyed walking around the lake and everything. But for me, the afternoon really picked up soon after we had finished walking on this little path that was connected to the main parts by those stone steps I was mentioning before. When we came down and out onto the main part again, we were by the Mt. Gretna Playhouse, which was performing a musical review of Cole Porter. For some reason, that just really tickled me that we were outside of it, watching part of it through the curtains. A lot of the places looked Victorian/dollhouse like, and it just highly amused me for some reason! Then we went to the gift shop, which was also fun. I like poking around in them and looking at all the different stuff they have. So I went inside, and when I came out, I found that Joanna and John had discovered a rack of puzzles! Wow, how funny! We have a thing for puzzles, and it was just so much fun being random and looking at all of these old puzzles and the comments written on them. So we ended up buying these puzzles, since they were only like a buck apiece. The funny part looking at these puzzles is that John and Joanna bought puzzles that had no picture on the front of them! while the one had an interesting name (golden harvest), I'm not sure I could have bought a puzzle with no picture on the front! Of course I had to look it up on google also, just to satisfy my curiosity! :)

so then we went from there to the Jigger shop to get some ice cream. John and Joanna were completely "puzzled" as to what to get (of course bad puns are par for the course, at least when John and I are around...) But they finally settled on something, and we sat down to commence quite a long but interesting conversation, about everything from Rachel's going away party to what we're doing on the 4th of July to blogs themselves to what we would put on our business cards to what would be something to define us, to the discussions and meetings that have been going on at Hershey Free - you name it, it was mentioned!! But that was the cool part about the afternoon, and it's just what I'm all about. Friends sitting around and having a good time with one another, giving each other a hard time but not too hard a time, discussing what's important in our lives, whether it be what to do for a good friend that's leaving, how to make a potato themed meal without potatoes, or how do you walk as a leader of the church and discern God's calling as well as remaining sensitive to and taking into account the church's feelings in the matter as well. It was just really neat. This evening when I was talking to Rachel, she was talking about leaving the group and she said "this group has a different feeling to it than other groups of friends I've had. you just feel peace when you're with this group". Wow. that really meant a lot to me. It's so true for me, and it's what I wanted God to accomplish through this group when it got started. I don't know that I could have articulated it that way back then, but it's so amazing to think that's what He's done for us. It will be hard to move on whenever God calls me to move on, but right now I'm just so thankful and so humbled by what he's done, that I'm just trying to enjoy every moment that I have while I have it.