Whitby and Belle on vacation

After a very few days at home following our trip to Shining Falls Lodge, a week during which the washing machine worked tirelessly – as did Tal in our yard, we are now at Kanuga, an Episcopal Conference Center in the North Carolina mountains near Hendersonville. This is the first of eight guest periods this summer and I have the joy and privilege of serving as chaplain.

While I am in working mode in unquestionably beautiful and restful surroundings, Whitby and Belle* are with us and we’re calling this week their vacation! When we arrived housekeeping was not quite ready to declare all facilities ready for occupancy, so we headed out on a walk around the lake. Suffice it to say that Whitby and Belle have had the first swim of their time away from home! (Now you know why they are not quite at their best.)

I am sad to say that, while the party inhabiting Cottage 25 was to have been larger, it is just the four of us; we had invited my parents to enjoy a week in the mountains as guests of the chaplain. They are, however, still at – or more correctly near – home, Dad being in the hospital. My photographs this week will be shot with an eye to sharing with them the beauty and calm of this place. Photographs won’t equal the experience of being present to any degree and certainly won’t provide the sound of a late afternoon thunderstorm the next valley over (to which I am listening as I write this), the wafting aromas of meals being prepared at the lodge (oh, the resounding CRUNCH of Kanuga toast!), or the heady chill of early morning in the mountains, but they will provide, I hope, a sense both of the longing I have for Mom and Dad to be able to be here and of the heartfelt blessings we pray for them from this location in the North Carolina mountains to theirs on the South Carolina coast.

* Whitby and Belle are our dogs. Watch for a photo to be taken when they are a bit more presentable.