A Slice of Stillman Valley

Eugene Peterson wrote in Under the Unpredictable Plant that pastoral visits are:

. . . occasions for original research on the stories being shaped in their lives by the living Christ.  I go to these appointments with the same diligence and curiousity that I bring to a page of Isaiah’s oracles, a tangled argument in St. Paul . . .

 I love doing the original research of studying the lives of our people.  Exegeting the stories of our small town is one of my greatest joys.  I wrote the following newsletter article after a visit last week.

Bye / Hi Painted Bunting

I honestly didn’t know what a bunting was — I thought it was something to do with what the guy called his daughter before he went hunting in the nursery rhyme.  (Note that the nursery rhyme didn’t work out so well for the rabbit).

But, one of my wife, Jamie, and I’s favorite blogs, Pollywog Creek, has some pictures of a painted bunting – – so I now know what Painted Buntings are in general, and I have met one in particular, on the banks of Pollywog Creek.