The Eclipse!!

April 9, 2024
Beloved:
My science teacher friend waited seven years to see the eclipse.  She talked to me a year or more ago about coming to Bloomington to be in the path of totality.  She set up experiments in the church yard.  She made extra protective glasses for her four littles, her wife, her parents, and me.  She was not disappointed, nor were the rest of us.  One of the kids said, I can’t believe cars are just driving by.  I’ll leave the descriptions to the poets except to say I’m so glad I didn’t miss it.

In other news, I have another grandbaby on the way, due in September again.  I’m over the moon, naturally, as no role has ever fit me quite so well as NetNet, what my niblings have called me since 1987.*  The first grandgirl is two and has taught me everything I know about grandparenting.  Lots of snacks are involved:  crackers and string cheese and pouches (baby food in squeeze containers).  Raisins and muffins and yogurt drinks.  Popsicles, peanut butter honey sandwiches and pretzels.  Grapes, Cheerios and gummy fruit animals.  Frozen blueberries and granola.  We also color, go for walks, play Barrel of Monkeys, check the mail, watch Bluey and Up, rock in rocking chairs, play doctor, read 

books, and work at our desks.  Working at our desks involves lots of stickers, post-it notes and masking tape.  We also play hair salon, with a spray bottle full of water – after which we both have to put on dry shirts.
All the joy of parenthood with none of the anxiety and stress, is how I’ve heard grandparenting described.  Almost, I think.  The sweetness is practically painful at times, like a heartache.  But I do get anxious sometimes, not about her safety or happiness, as she has amazing parents who know precisely what their assignment is.  I worry about the world in which she’ll grow up, the trouble we are bequeathing to her and her peers.  The endangered environment, of course.  Endangered economies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.**  Endangered governments that serve partisanship instead of people and communities.  Violence.  The repeal of human rights.  So many things to worry about when I think about her future leave me wondering if snacks and Bluey are the best I can do by her.
The answer can only be no.  The hard work of raising kids is not confined to the ones born only to us.  It continues so long as we have strength to do what’s right in the midst of so much wrong.  Grandkids, our neighbors’ and our own, deserve the safest, kindest, most just world we can leave to them.  I am a baby Baby Boomer, born the last year of their era, but not so late I missed the assignment:  this world is only as good as good people are brave enough to make it.  As believers, we are empowered and equipped for the task at hand.  We are people of the Resurrection, for whom fear is off the table, and there is so much work left to do.  Everyone’s grandchildren are counting on us.


~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette 
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*NetNet is Aunt Annette in toddler speech.
** The best book I’ve read lately is Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond.  Everyone should read it.