the unlikely orange

coming to you live tonight from the air mattress on the floor of my new bedroom, just to let you know that we made it safe and sound to sunbury, and are once again residents of the great state of pennsylvania. i'm not going to lie: there were a few tears in my eye as i left my old new jersey home, but sitting here on this air mattress with my family in this new house, i feel ready to begin a new venture. the first venture will be unpacking all our stuff which will arrive on the trucks tomorrow. thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. grace|peace, greg.

as usual, the brady bunch says it best....

a few more pics from maine.  this is about all i can sort through right now with the move and all.  as you can tell, the kids weren't huge fans of big al's.  but they did like to play by the water. 

yes, this is our dining room.  full of so much cardboard and packaging tape.  the soundtrack to the last week has been the squeal of that thin plastic tape, wrapping itself around all our belongings: toys, memories, necessities, and several items that shannon wanted to get rid of buy i lobbied for.  i mean, you seriously never know when you're going to need a box of bread ties.  what?  it could happen. anyway, there's not a great deal of cooking going on here, as there really isn't anything to eat on/with, so the other night we ordered chinese.  i've resigned myself to always getting the lamest fortunes that the people at the fortune cookie factory could dream up, like, "this is your fortune."  that's it.  thank you very much.  or another one i liked (hated): "things will continue to happen."  i mean, i guess it's slightly promising because if it had foreseen that things would stop happening, that would be truly ominous.  but thi...

as you can see, we enjoyed some fresh lobster in maine.  nothing quite like taking your food home alive and cooking it in your kitchen.  it has a certain primitive feel to it.  but not quite as primitive as squirting lobster juice across the room when you crack open one of those claws.  it's just a messy dinner, hence the very informative bibs.  hope you enjoy these pics.  .....we're still packing....

this last sunday was my final chance to preach at clinton united methodist church.  preparing for this sermon was rather difficult for me.  first of all you have the overwhelming pressure of trying to prepare something significant and adequate to be a powerful postlude to four years of ministry.  it feels like a much bigger deal than preparing your average sermon.  then there's the question of topic.  what do you talk about?  what becomes the one message that you want to leave people with?  for me that part was pretty simple. i once had a mentor who told me that every preacher basically has one sermon, and that you preach that sermon over and over again.  no matter what text or topic you are tackling, you are always still preaching that one sermon.  ever since i heard that, i have found that so compelling, and it hasn't been too difficult for me to put my finger on precisely that one sermon.  it's simple: you. are. loved. and so th...

well, that may be true to a lesser or greater extent, but i'm referring here to maine (ME), from whence we've just returned.  we had a wonderfully relaxing and isolated 5 days, and i'm glad we took the time to go up, even in the midst of everything that still needs to be packed and done.  it was good for the soul to get away, even to what feels a bit like the edge of things up there, what with all the rocks and the icy ocean crashing itself repeatedly, as if trying to break the world into sand.  i'll probably be sharing several picks from the trip over the next week or so, but here are a few introductory picks from our vacation.  now only this week remains for us as residents of new jersey.  hard to believe that my 12-year stint in the garden state is coming to a close.  anyway, shannon and i are frantically packing and cleaning and tying up loose ends and trying to get everything done in time for moving day.  i'll be posting some more pics fr...