We had our church Auction yesterday. It was another first for me here at St. Stoic.

The Auction works like this: Everybody cleans out their cabinets, garages, storage units, and decides what is salable. People with boats sell boat rides. People with tickets to Large State U football games sell those, people with cottages Up North sell a weekend, business owners sell items from their stock or from their personal expertise (large gas grills, gas fireplace logs, massages). I auctioned off a catered dinner for four, catered by yours truly. (Some people here know that my secret fantasy is to go to culinary school some year while on sabbatical, and that when I had the whole congregation over to our house one year ago, I did all the food myself.) Some of it is junk, some of it is valuable. One member auctioned off a begonia plant. A begonia plant? Yes, one that had been propogated from a plant that had been in the family for 60 years. (Too much pressure for someone like me with whatever is the opposite of green thumbs.) OEH hand-made a mountain dulcimer (a hobby of his) that fetched $425, the highest bid for a single item this year. Yes, I was very proud of him and of it.

The bottome line? $8,600 made in 90 minutes. Enough to cancel out the projected budgetary shortfall for this year.

It seems that the only one who doesn't quite get it is me. The people here are obviously very, very generous. (Fifty dollars for a single raspberry pie? Are they kidding me?) They do not like to pledge support to the church. Instead they like to get together, laugh, have fun, and give the church piles of money. I'm not sure exactly what it is about this that bothers me.

I think I'd better get over it, though, as long as I'm at St. Stoic.