Balmoral

We just finished a lovely weekend in Germantown, Tennessee.

Way back when I was a student at Davidson College, I had a very dear friend from Taladega, Alabama, named Bill Jones.  Bill and I sang together in the Davidson College Male Chorus and in a smaller group called the Lamplighters.

After college we both went to seminary and Bill became a Presbyterian minister while I was Methodist.  Many years later we connected through storytelling as he was at a church in Kingsport, Tennessee, near the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough.

When later Bill and his wife, Lida, moved to Germantown, Tennessee, where he was minister at Balmoral Presbyterian Church, he was instrumental in starting a church storytelling weekend there.  This year was the twentieth year for that festival, and, though Bill is retired with Lida to Ocracoke, I am still going to Balmoral every other year.

The church is very accommodating and involved in community life as well as the life of its own members.  In one hallway there are bulletin boards that interpret to all who see them the total life of the church in all its dimensions,  This is a great idea as most church members only have intimate knowledge of those areas in which they are themselves personally involved. It is a model of interpretations others could duplicate.

The hallway interprets church missions and activities.

Also, as one enters the church, you pass under a gigantic flock/mobile of six hundred origami peace cranes made by church members.  It is almost a calming experience and reminder that you are entering an earthly home of the Prince of Peace.  (In one of the hallways there are other peace cranes, each of which has the name of a church community member who has recently died.)

Balmoral Peace Cranes.

We had a wonderful festival in itself, but, the Balmoral Church setting makes it quite a memorable and unique event.

PS:  on our drive home we saw, at the North Carolina State Farmers’ Market in Raleigh, a truck carrying the largest pumpkin ever.  Worth taking a picture!