今日は自分で食べてみました

Erin Watanabe - (Daughter # 1's daughter)

Hirosaki Church English Fellowship - Barbecue

Every year during the cherry blossom season ...

Dr. Ishizawa and his wife

invite all the students they know for a barbecue in a house overlooking Hirosaki Park.

The Cherry Blossoms are BEAUTIFUL!

But we ended up inside.

After most of the guests had gone (and it was getting a bit chilly) we moved inside and drank warm tea and ate a few more treats ... our family always stays until the last cat is hung!

My husband and I have known Dr. Ishizawa ever since our children were in swimming school together circa 1982. Our conversations back then weren't very brilliant - our Japanese level was pathetic! But he speaks a little English and if you ever need an English speaking Dr. in Hirosaki I recommend him:

http://www.myclinic.ne.jp/ishizawa/pc/

Between ... is the Middle Time

I haven't posted barbecue photos,
... or cherry blossom photos,
... or apple blossom photos,
... or photos of anything we've done this last month...

I keep waiting for time. But it doesn't happen. Maybe next week.

Walking the shore in Kizukuri

I am posting a poem I finally found - after about 30 years of searching! - that kind of captures the feel of my life right now.

Somehow I thought it was T.S. Eliot - maybe it reminds me of Eliot's "Choruses from 'The Rock'" - and I've been searching anthologies of his work. But I must have found it in some IV Publication years ago.

MIDDLE TIME

Between the exhilaration of Beginning
and the satisfaction of Concluding
is the Middle Time
of enduring, changing, trying,
despairing, continuing, becoming.

Jesus Christ was the man of God’s Middle Time
between Creation and . . . Accomplishment.
Through him God said of Creation,
“Without mistake.”
And of Accomplishment,
“Without doubt.”

And we, in our Middle Times
of wondering, waiting, hurrying,
hesitating, regretting, revising;
We who have begun many things—
and seen but few completed;
We who are becoming more— and less;
through the evidence of God’s Middle Time
have a stabilizing hint
that we are not mistakes,
that we are irreplaceable,
that our Being is of interest
and our Doing is of purpose,
that our Being and our Doing
are surrounded by AMEN.

Jesus Christ is the Completer
of unfinished people
with unfinished work
in unfinished times.

May he keep us from sinking, ceasing,
wasting, solidifying—
that we may be for him
experimenters, enablers, encouragers,
and associates in Accomplishment.

-- Lona Fowler

(The poem is not properly indented... I can't make the editing stick.)