Slice Of Life: Sunday By the Spoon

Usually my Sundays have a fixed routine. Church and Sunday school in the morning, prayer journaling in the afternoon, followed by cooking the entrée and vegetables for taking to work during the week. It fills my day, involves me in some relatively creative manual work, and allows me a generous amount of time to spend with my Source. It is essential that I keep in close contact with the Source of my life, so this is a commitment. I guard this time so jealously that an act of Congress is required before I skip it, and then only if I can do it some evening during the week.

It took me by surprise, therefore, when I decided recently to vary that routine.

I live in an area that has a small body of water called the Spoon River running through it. It would be totally unknown, in fact, if Edger Lee Masters hadn’t written the Spoon River Anthology. It is a small river, not very wide, not very long, with many small towns and villages on or close to its banks. The first two weekends in October are given over to something called the Scenic Drive, which features the towns along the river, fall foliage colors, craft fairs and food booths of many descriptions.

This year we had a streak of cloudy, rainy, unseasonably chilly weather for the Scenic Drive. There was only one really nice day to go to it, the Sunday of the first weekend in October. It was a perfect fall afternoon, clear blue sky with a few swirls and puffs of white cloud, mild in the sunlight but somewhat cool in the shade. There are always a number of places to decide on, but this year I wanted to go to a village close by me and take a look at the wares that were displayed. It felt at first like a rationalization when I decided to put off the prayer journaling until an evening during the week just so I could go on an outing, but the perfection of the day beckoned me.

When I got to the village, I grabbed a good parking place actually on the riverbank, in the paved area where boaters put their boats into the water. Just across the river was the town. I parked, walked across the bridge, and the first thing I saw was a booth advertising fresh fudge. Right away, I was glad I had come!

I wandered through the small downtown of the village. Well, it is small, but it holds a lot of booths every year. I saw sweaters, sweatshirts, kitchen towels, scarves, hats, jackets, blankets. There were metal things. There were wooden things. There were even fake electric guitars to be used as decorations. I admired home-grown squashes and tomatoes and nuts. My mouth watered as I looked at homemade jams, pies, local grown honey, homemade noodles and breads. Then there was food and drink to enjoy on the spot, lemonade, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, hot dogs, sausages, nachos, tacos, popcorn. I purchased a taco as I wandered, and enjoyed trying to walk and eat at the same time.

And of course there were the people. Short ones, tall ones, stout ones, thin ones. With high voices, with deep voices, with nasal voices, with rich voices. With children. With dogs. Some, like me, wore a sweatshirt. Others had on jackets or sweaters. Several wore T-shirts.

When I finally turned back toward the bridge, my way took me by an entertainer who sang fairly interesting songs and told excessively corny jokes. The jokes were so bad that I really couldn’t help laughing at them. And on my last stop out of town, I dropped by that fudge booth and bought some fudge to take home.

There was one more stop. As I crossed the bridge again I stopped to enjoy the delightful view of the rounded hills, the surrounding farms, the houses and barns, the yellows and browns of ripe crops under the blue sky. I said to myself, “My gosh, this is so beautiful.” And then I realized. I had postponed my prayer journaling for this outing, but I had not neglected my Creator. He was of course in the beauty of the day and the ripening crops and the sunshine and the breeze. He was in the people I had seen, and the fruits of creation included the fruits of our creation, the foods and gadgets on display, for any creative act is generated by His creative energy. We too are the creation, and we too generate fruits of creation. I had spent all this time enjoying the creation with its Creator.

Two hours of prayer journaling wouldn’t have pointed that out to me as vividly as that moment on the bridge. I swung into my car, unwrapped the fudge, took a bite out of it, and headed for home.