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School’s Out!

As you read this Perk edition, Allan and I will be celebrating the end of another school year with our grandchildren. My thoughts have been with them this week as they finish exams, engage in some fun activities, and anticipate the freedom
of the summer months that lie before them.


Included in my memories of that year end feeling, both as a student and as a teacher, are stories of the children from homes that are not always a happy place. For some students, school is their only safe and welcoming place, and it can be a place of refugee for them. For those students, that yearend feeling is full of uncertainty. So, I hold those students in my thoughts and prayers too.

This week I have been considering the core values of trust and hospitality that have surfaced in the lectionary readings. Trust comes not as blind trust, but as trust within the context of what we know about ourselves and divine love. Hospitality comes not as an obligation, but as an openness to one another’s story and truths.

As we enter into summer mode with our children and grandchildren, friends and neighbours,perhaps we can be aware of how we open spaces of trust and welcome. Perhaps we can be intentional about creating opportunities to learn and grow together in a variety of ways. I think we do that year round, but what’s fun about summertime, is that we can learn and grow in different ways, change our routines, spend more time outside, eat ice cream and fly kites.

Let’s bring on the summer with openness to whatever adventures come our way. May we find sacredness wrapped around all our encounters, the people we meet, and all we discover in the great outdoors.

School’s out, let the summer begin.

Peace and joy
Nancy