A Week By The Lake

I spent last week in Burlington, Vermont at the Bishop Booth Conference Center meeting with the Episcopal Council for Christian Education (ECCE). I drove up, which was a nostalgic experience. We spent some of our family vacations in Vermont while I was growing up, so I drove by a lot of familiar places--if only the names. The Conference Center sits on the shores of Lake Champlain.

ECCE meetings can exhaust me, but once I recover from the meeting itself, the experience energizes me. These folks--two representatives from each Province of the Episcopal Church--are my network, my "peeps," as my nephews would say. They keep me sane in the ever-changing mess that seems to be the Church Center these days. These people, along with their peers across the church, are the reason I have not walked out the door these past six months. They do incredible work, and I am proud to be their colleague.

At every ECCE meeting we try to provide a development component. This time a former ECCE member did a four hour workshop over two days on the Enneagram Types. The organization he works with is the Enneagram Institute. If you want to find out more about what we learned, you can visit their web site. I am Type 6 - The Loyalist. And this surprises us how? I know people get very caught up in this kind of thing, as also happens with the Myers-Briggs typing that runs rampant through the Episcopal Church. These are tools we can use to help understand ourselves. But each is only one kind of tool. They are not the be all and end all. Not every tool works for every person. Here endeth the lecture.

The ECCE meeting ended at lunchtime on Thursday, and three people heading to the Los Angeles for another meeting were staying over until Friday morning. Ruth-Ann and I stayed as well so that we could spend some time with them to prepare them for the meeting, which we are not attending due to travel restrictions based on budget issues. Before that meeting, however, we needed a break. Even in as lovely a setting as the shore of Lake Champlain in the Fall, you need to get out and have a change of scenery.

Our first stop was the Vermont Teddy Bear Company's Factory and Bear Shop.



We did the tourist thing and took the picture. This is Cindy from the Diocese of Olympia, Nancy from the Diocese of Northern California, me, and my friend MerLynne from the Diocese of Minnesota.

We took the tour.

This is the stuffing station.

We saw lots of bears and outfits.

This is a Renaissance Bear in the custom workshop.

Ruth-Ann bought a bear as a Christmas present for her grandson.

And yes, I came home with a bear.

How could I leave him there? He's purple. (Well, they call it amethyst, but he's purple!)

After a short stop at the cathedral bookshop, we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering up and down Church Street, which is pedestrian street in downtown Burlington. We had dinner at Three Tomatoes and then drove back to the Conference Center to have our meeting.

Friday was a travel day, which for Ruth-Ann and me, consisted of a 5 1/2 hour drive back down to Connecticut. Ruth-Ann the continued on the Port Jefferson Ferry to Long Island. It was a beautiful day for a drive, but when I got home, my body pretty much said "you're done now," and I slept for 12 hours Friday night.

Tomorrow, back into the... office.

Peace,
Jeffri