229/365 Stewardship August

I'm cleaning the girls' room when he comes home. Wants to know if I'm hungry. I think probably dinner sounds good. It's the end of summer, the girls are out of town, and it's after 8. He half-heartedly suggests going out, but we've been biking and Leo is tired. I give the list of what's in the house and he goes down to make something.

He comes back up while I sort through minutiae of childhood.

"What happened at the meeting?" I ask.

"We think we might get the volunteer appreciation thing catered."

"That's cool."

"And there's going to be a few nametag Sundays coming up, one at the park and one on a Sunday in October."

Nametag Sundays. At the church where I was baptized, it was always nametag Sunday. It had been a brand new parish in 1973 and folks didn't know each other. Everyone was new. My mom still has hers and my dad's nametags, in her jewelry box. They were pinback, gray with raised white lettering, done on a machine probably in the rectory office.

Too bad we can't pretend everyone is new. Too bad a great wave of amnesia can't come through and wipe it clean. Not our skills or jobs or family life. Just our membership at the church. Everyone can forget it all and start over. Sometimes I wish for that so strongly, usually after a meeting I wish I never had to go to again.

But there's something to be said for continuity and the tapestry that's woven with longterm parishioners and newcomers, people who stay and people who don't. Something very powerful to be said, in fact, in an era when this just doesn't happen anywhere for any reason anymore.

But we should still have nametags.