The Good News • May 2009

Wanted... A Few Good People

When I think of May, I think of Spring. I think of planting. I think of days of more sunshine than rain, and most of all, I think of my mother. I remember as a child watching my mother plant new seed in our flower beds. She'd water them and watch over the new seedlings, and pull encroaching weeds as soon as they appeared. The back yard was her domain, and she was its steward. But the same was true of our house.

The month of May also meant Spring Cleaning, and it was a month-long event! Closets were emptied; clothes were sorted, stored or given away; carpets were shampooed; woodwork was washed. The draperies were taken down, cleaned and rehung at sparkling clean windows. By the end of the month, the house smelled as fresh as the air outside. We didn't have a great deal when I was growing up, but what we had was clean, cared for and loved. And that was all my mother's doing.

Now that I am a mother (and Grandmother!), I can appreciate what my mother did. It wasn't just the cleaning and ordering — it was the example she set of caring for whatever was entrusted to her. She did her best to pass on that sense of responsibility to me, and I tried to teach it to my sons. It's only recently that I've come to understand that responsibility for the care of what you are lucky enough to have is, in fact, stewardship.

When I agreed to become Senior Warden, I knew that I was making a committment, and that I couldn't do the job half way. Recently, I've been poking into closets and storage areas, and I've found all sorts of things! I was telling Rebecca Rogers that I thought we needed a spring cleaning, and she said that what St. John's needs is a mother! Well, she's right. Some years ago Arden Farragher mentioned to Barbara Faires that we should have a house keeping committee, and I think that's really the same thing as a "mother." We have this magnificent church filled with treasures, and many of them are stuffed into cardboard boxes that have no permanent home. I would like to see everything organized, stored in better containers and assigned to specific storage areas. I'd like to see the same kind of procedures that Rebecca uses for Altar Guild applied in other areas, so that if Bob Wallace isn't available, we can still figure out how to do things! So!! I am proposing a houskeeping committe, and if you would like to help, please call me. I think St. John's can benefit from having a lot of "mothers," and we'll all benefit from the results!

Mara Amedia