Mars in Retrograde

Wow, its February already and its been a month since I last blogged--goodness! January was an interesting and rather long month. For my part, I've been working on keeping bible study strong and getting ready for my ordination; all of which is a lot to think about and I've been full of various feelings. I'm definately looking forward to my ordination, and I've invited many of the people I've met over the last few months to share that day with me--hopefully you'll all come! At the same time, I've been working on keeping bible study consistent, interesting, and inclusive in order to work on building community. Some days I feel really good about how things are going, other days not so much. January in particular was a roller coster of "oh, this is never going to work," to "ok, I think we are headed somewhere." One of the things we did was move our meeting location from the Magic Bean coffeeshop, to the Mixx bar in old town. I think we're going to enjoy the bar better than the coffee shop; the ambiance is certainly more cozy and those who couldn't come to the coffee shop, are able to come to the bar (in other words, the bartender's schedule changed so we moved to help accomodate it.) So far, so good and we had a better number this week than last (not that its about numbers...)
Another thing we've been working on is getting involved. All of our bible study people are involved someway in the community and I think that's fabulous. At the same time, I'd like to unify our efforts more and thus focus our energy on one particular need. One of our members in particular has been identifying needs in the downtown Saginaw area and has been very good about showing us these areas. He grew up in the Tri-cities, and I have learned a lot from him about what's up and what's down in Saginaw. Its pretty basic right now but even those efforts, I discovered, are greatly appreciated. So, I and a few other people are going to be in Saginaw tomorrow pulling usable stuff out of homes that are scheduled to be demolished. In this way, perfectly good building material can be reused. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical at first, but then saw that this was indeed something good, yea, necessary for the improvement of the neighborhood. It is a simple task really, but one around which energy can be put and one where we can also see the fruit of our labors.
So what does this have to do with Mars? I chose the title Mars in Retrograde after hearing it commented on by one of our bible study people. I really don't know what it means, but she said that anytime something significant happened in her life, Mars always seemed to be in retrograde (so, obviously it has something to do with Astrology). After hearing her talk about it like this, I thought I'd use it to point out that small things are indeed happening within this little group. I think significant things are beginning to happen and there seems to be a kind of energy emerging (dare I use that word?). I pray that it is the Spirit starting to move, because I'm dying to see where she takes us.