New York City to Essexville, Michigan |
| After just four hours sleep I was back on the streets of Manhattan, walking to Grand Central Terminal for the bus to the airport and then a flight to Essexville, Michigan where I was to speak this weekend. |
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| Cities waking up in the morning I find interesting. These two men with their morning coffees are heading crosstown to work. |
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| At street level at 6:30 AM, the sun has not yet arrived but the peaks of the skyscrapers are already bathed in the bright morning light of the new day. |
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| I arrived in Essexville, Michigan in late afternoon and soon got to meet Fr. Ricky Varner, the pastor of St. John the Evangelist parish where I was to speak on the weekend. He had just received a monastic alb he had ordered from St. Meinrad Abbey and was trying it on. |
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| The next morning, on Friday, Fr. Varner left for a weekend trip and I was alone at the rectory with plenty of space and plenty of time to catch up on some work with little interruption. |
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| In the afternoon on Friday, I took Fr. Varner's bicycle and went exploring around Essexville, a small but really pleasant community near the shore of Lake Huron. |
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| The Essexville area has a very strong Catholic presence based on the faith of the original immigrants who came there from Belgium a century and a half ago. This Catholic family has a statue of Mary in their front yard. |
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| The street signs in the Bay City area even have a picture of St. Joseph's Church, built in the early 1800s and now a symbol of the city. |
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