Bathed in Gold
A lovely evening passed at the home of Bob and Libby Sellars of East Broadway, Waukesha WI on Sep. 15, 2009. Once again, these gracious, gentle and warrior folk, on behalf of their long-served First Congregational UCC Church at 100 E. Broadway, came to the fore by hosting a 'Meet the New (interim) Minister' gathering.
The Raccoonage covered the event. It is always hard to pass up the opportunity of free food. It was so glorious in their dining room where they'd set up a splendid buffet that our photographer shot with the available light from the chandelier. No flash was used to disturb the long-practiced Sellars' domestic comity.
Bob, of Quaker roots, is a great historian and story teller. Over many years this reporter has figuratively lain at his feet, bewitched by his various on-target messages. Humor, useful and good information, broad perspectives and not infrequent profundity flow from Bob. He can always smile, and does. Visited by a long-lived musculature degenerative condition, Bob, with the aid of his faithful wife, Libby, has risen above it, in dominance.
This recaller retains a memory about raccoons obtained from Bob. It seems that when cornered, a raccoon, hunted to near-exhaustion by a pursuing hound, will find a body of water, be it brook, river or lake. He will have the hound chase him into the water, a medium with which a raccoon is well-familiar. As the snarling dog bares his gaping maw at the raccoon, the raccoon will overcome the beast by opening his defensive mouth, biting down on his pursuer's nose and holding him under the water until expiration.
This is something about raccoons we'd never heard.
But it is illustrative to us of Bob Sellars, a gentle Quaker who will fight when he has to.
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As for the new interim minister, a seeming Paladin of the Ineke Mitchell variety (Bible-toting gunfighter), her own grace and wisdom fit in well at the Sellars' gathering last night. In the beginning stages of our upcoming joint churchly fray, her strong strokes already tell:
"I know the wilderness. I've been there."
"There's a difference between burning out, and rusting out."
"Great creativity comes through chaos."
...........
Rev. Deborah Howland
