The Shape of a Christian Life

Cheap...

2010-11-09T21:10:00.003-05:00

Today was not my finest day. Let's roll things back a few years...

I was a member of a vibrant, dynamic ministry with lots of great people. We talked a lot about what it meant to be in ministry. We didn't like the idea that church was a "business." Still, we had to begrudgingly admit that the preacher's job involved a bit of showmanship. Like it or not, we were "selling" something. We were selling Jesus.

While this admission didn't make me happy, I was able to find some comfort when talking with my fellow pastor. After worship many Sundays, we'd both be worn out. We'd have some time in the sanctuary, putting things away, enjoying the feel of the empty space that had so recently been overflowing with the Holy Spirit.

"Well," one of us would say, "at least we didn't sell Jesus for cheap today."

It gave me comfort then, and still does.

Fast forward to today. I'm becoming aware that I've been selling Jesus for cheap--maybe for a long time--and it doesn't feel very nice. We'll see what happens next...

Peace...

Wow! Look at those comments!

2010-07-24T12:56:00.003-04:00

I just perused the comments on a few previous posts. Apparently, I'm a hit with the Chinese! I suspect if I could actually read those comments, I'd find myself to be a hit with automatic Chinese blot-bots. Does anyone have anything they'd like to... um... extend?

Frinds and Facebook Friends

2010-07-22T07:51:00.002-04:00

I like Facebook. I spend some time there each day, catching up with friends. I've managed to stay away from the various games/pyramid-schemes. I don't want to join your Mafia, become a Knight, Farm, Garden or run a Cafe. Still, I love how FB has been able to connect me with others.
Almost all of my friends are people I know in Real Life(tm). Early on, I added a few people who befriended me through common interests, but I'm pretty much not looking for new friends on FB.
But now I have a problem. What if I just can't stand to read the FB posts of one of my Real Life friends?
Does Facebook friendship eclipse real friendship? Can I safely "unfriend" my friend and remain friends?
I'm not sure what I'm going to do...

One More Stab at Ubuntu

2010-03-01T12:17:00.002-05:00

My computer life has been turned upside down in the past few weeks. My home PCs have been running Windows 2000 forever. They're old machines (I built mine from part in 1999!). Win2k is great, but more and more it's being marginalized. I can't run the latest versions of software (like the GIMP and Picasa, Napster and Quicktime), and have been thinking about upgrading.

I got in on the Windows 7 beta test and have been using it for well over a year. It's great. My PC (the oldest) runs it passably, but it's not quick enough to play Guild Wars, which is why I still mostly use Win2k. Kristen's PC is faster, but for some reason can't read the Win7 installation media (I've tried multiple times in multiple forms, no dice). I really wanted to upgrade her, as she uses the Gimp and Picasa a lot.

I've been a Unix guy on and off since 1995, and really love the power and flexibility of a well-administered system (I've preferred BSD variants over the years, but also used Linux and Solaris). There have always been a few things about these systems that have bit me in the butt. The most pressing: printing. I've been involved in computer hardware and software support for almost 20 years, but I could never configure and out-of-the-box Unix system to print on a modern printer!

So, I decided to give it one last shot. I installed the latest Ubuntu Linux on an old drive installed in Kristen's PC. It went great. The Linux-native Adobe Flash support for Firefox lets me watch YouTube videos and run Napster over the web. The Wine-enabled Picasa works like a charm. GIMP... of course. But what about that pesky printer?

Well, Ubuntu (or, more specifically Kubuntu) saw it and pre-configured it perfectly. No problems yet. I want to try using XSane or the GIMP to scan something this week, but I'm oddly confident.

So, that brings me to my ASUS EeePC netbook. it had been running the Windows 7 Release Candidate, but that expired today. I had to either pony up the money for a legit license or try something else. Listen closely: WINDOW 7 IS WORTH THE MONEY. It's a great version of Windows and has given me much joy over the past year. That said, money's tight and if I can NOT spend $100, I'll try.

So, I installed the Ubuntu Netbook remix on my netbook. So far, few surprises. I am having problems with my network printer at work (a Xerox WorkCentre 7232 color copier). Ubuntu's print manager can find it and recognize it, but the driver doesn't work. It may be that this copier doesn't support Postscript, but I thought CUPS was supposed to take care of that. I tried a generic PCL5 driver and am able to print, but not in color and probably not using some of the advanced features of this copier/printer. I'll keep trying...

So, my first morning in the office with my Ubuntu netbook is going OK. Not perfect, but OK.

Isaiah and Luke, a Conversation

2010-01-20T09:18:00.004-05:00

On Sunday, January 10, 2010, we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord in my church. Rather than a regular reading of the regular story, that everyone has heard a million times, I wanted to do something different. Reading over the Lectionary texts for the week, I saw amazing possibilities in the Isaiah and Luke readings, which seemed to speak to each other. We had two readers stage this "conversation" between the prophet Isaiah and the evangelist Luke. Sometimes the Lectionary rules:

Isaiah 43:1-7 & Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Isaiah 43:1 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

Luke 3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,

Isaiah 43:2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

Luke 3:16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Isaiah 43:3-4 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.

Luke 3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Isaiah 43:5-7 Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth--everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

Luke 3:21-22 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Mid-Week Thoughts

2010-01-06T16:32:00.001-05:00

Happy Epiphany, my friends!

January 6th is Epiphany, the celebration of the God's revelation to the Gentiles (non-Jews). It also marks the official end of the season of Christmas, which begins on December 25th and lasts for twelve days (hence the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas"). If you ever grow jealous of our Jewish brother and sisters, who get presents each night for the eight nights of Hanukkah, you can consider reviving the old tradition of giving a series of increasingly grand presents each of the twelve days of Christmas, ending with a feast for friends on January 5th, Twelfth Night, the high point of the season.

The customs above come from the rich English Christmas tradition, which seems foreign to most of us (Who is this Father Christmas, anyway?). Most of our beloved American Christmas traditions actually come from Dutch and German settlers to the colonies. They brought us Santa Claus (aka Sinterklaas) and the Christmas Tree. Other countries have yet other ways to announce and embrace the baby born in Bethlehem. I encourage you to learn a bit about how the rest of the world--now and through history--worships The Child. You might discover some traditions you want to make your own. (As you can tell from the preceding paragraphs, Wikipedia is your friend.)

So, no matter how you cut it, Christmas is finally over. Now we must ask ourselves the question, "How am I to live?" How are we to live in a world into which God has chosen to be born? The birth of Jesus is (not was) an event of cosmic significance. If it doesn't change our lives, then perhaps we weren't paying attention, caught up in our own stuff as we often are.

Today I had the pleasure (with Blair and Marcia) of taking a cart-load full of donated food to one of our area food pantries. There we got to speak for a while with the people who get that food into the hands of needy families. It's something I wish we could all do, because it connects our generosity with the need in the world.

Today I felt a bit like one of the Magi (in fact, there were three of us!), taking gifts fit for a king. Instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh we took Ramen Noodles and Jelly, gifts fitting for the king who lifts up the lowly, the poor and the hungry. Today is Epiphany, when we celebrate the arrival of the Magi, who brought their gifts before the King of the World.

Blessings to you all...

Pastor Michael

Living Wills

2009-11-13T16:05:00.002-05:00

It's been too long since my last post. Things at the hospital are progressing. Here's a quick tip: if you haven't made a living will, DO IT NOW! Don't burden your loved ones with decisions you should make yourself. It's agonizing enough to have to disconnect someone from life support, don't make it worse by adding guilt to the experience.

That's my tip for the day.

On Call...

2009-10-30T17:33:00.002-04:00

Tonight is my first weekend on-call shift as a chaplain at Strong Memorial Hospital (weekend shifts are usually doubles, 24 hours straight). I got the pager handed to me about an hour ago and have already been called to one tragic encounter in the MICU (Medical Intensive Care Unit). I'm hoping to get some sleep, I'm hoping to do some reading, I'm hoping to do some work for Sunday's worship, but hoping may be for naught.

Peace.

Gathered As One

2009-08-26T14:34:00.003-04:00

I went to a small, liberal-arts college in Annapolis, Maryland (Saint John's College). It's an unusual place, where great books are read and discussed. It's a fixed curriculum, which means no pesky majors or electives. Everyone starts as a freshman (no transfers, thank you), and everyone takes the same classes, in the same order, from the 1930s to the present. That's bound to bring a great deal of cohesion to any group.

It's a smallish place; they only admit about a hundred freshmen each year. Since everyone begins as a freshmen, the size of the student body is kept in check. When I attended (1983-1987), the vast majority of students lived on campus. Campus life was rich and rewarding. As I look back, my mind often ends up in the dining hall.

Now, I'm as a big fan of cafeteria food as the next guy (as long as the next guy is my friend, Elliott). I ate my way through some memorable meals (THIRTEEN patty melts! Take that!!). I can probably still find the red Jell-O stuck to the high ceiling by Jack Handy one bored lunch. The room itself is a thing of beauty. Deep, wide, high, with a wooden floor and two rows of columns running its length, it's a wonderful space.

Yet it's not fond memories or architecture that recommend the place to me. It's community. With such a small student body and with so many on campus, meals at Saint John's were where (essentially) the entire community met several times a day. Sure, we all sat at separate tables--often zealously guarded for years at a time--but we came together around a single (if metaphorical) table.

So, if the guys from third-floor Randall decided at the last minute to have a party, all they had to do was ring a glass at dinner and make the announcement. Everybody knew. Instantly (years before the advent of Instant Messaging). It's occurred to me that that was the real power of the place. Everybody at their own tables, with their own friends, in their own conversations, yet with the ringing of knife on glass, we were One Body.

In the 1990s, major construction was required on some of the old, decaying dorms. As a necessity, more students lived off campus. I wasn't there for those years, but a good friend of mine was and noticed the shape of the community change. Gone were the days when the tinkling of a glass could attract the eyes and ears of the body as whole. That incredible sense of togetherness was lost. I don't know how things have fared since they re-opened those dorms. I don't know if community life has coalesced around that wonderful dining hall. I pray that it has, because that wwas where the beating heart of that place was to be found in my day.

Shields and Swords

2009-08-24T10:06:00.004-04:00

When I was in grad school the first time, I took a number of law classes. I remember well my Criminal Law & Procedure class, taught by a pair of Secret Service agents. One night, in a conversation about Constitutional rights, one of them quoted "the Constitution is a shield, not a sword." (A recent Internet search has turned up no definitive author of this quote, but suggests James Polk.) The line has always stuck in my mind.

In subsequent years, I came to study the Bible with some great seriousness. I discovered that many people wield the Bible as a weapon against others (notably against other Christians). This grieved me greatly (and still does). In my own mind, I began to apply the Constitutional quote to the Bible, thinking (and saying), "the Bible is a shield, not a sword."

That's what troubles me about this week's lectionary text: Ephesians 6:10-17. It speaks powerfully about the "whole armor of God," which is to keep us safe as we take the Gospel of Peace into a hostile world. What's not to love about the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness? I want that shield of faith and helmet of salvation!

But then Paul shifts gears. To all this protective armor is added the "sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Here's where Paul's metaphor breaks down for me, as I see the word of God (or the Word of God, for that matter) not as a weapon, but as a force of grace, healing, peace and protection.

The armor of God is essential if we're to take the Gospel of Peace out into the dark places. I just don't know why we need the sword.

I think I'll leave mine at home.

Update on my Netbook

2009-08-21T15:06:00.002-04:00

My friend, Amy, asked me how I like my new netbook (ASUS Eee PC 901). I've been writing about it to a few people, so I thought I blog it for posterity...

I got mine in early July 2009. I played around with it, but didn't really use it much (not a lot of wi-fi in Arkport). I got a great deal ($169) on a lower-end model that seemed to meet my low-end needs. I did some common upgrades (upping RAM from 1G to 2G and replacing slow 4G Solid-State-Disk with faster 16G SSD) and was content.

As a low-cost netbook, mine came with Linux (no biggie, I like UNIX variants). I replaced the so-so stock Linux install with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (better formatted for small screens). I started using it. Fun, quick, no probs. Life was good, and it was great to have a command line again.

Then my old, slow laptop died. I'd been using it as my office PC. When it went, I needed to put the netbook into service fast. Ubuntu gave me a few hassles here, some I've experienced before with Linux, others were new. I needed to add the fonts I use in my church publications. No biggie, I've added fonts to UNIX systems before. I even found clear and helpful instructions on the Internet. The only problem? They didn't work. Grrr...

I also need to print at work, and printing is (in my 15+ yrs experience) the Achilles Heel of Linux. I'm sure others know how to make it work and have no issues. I've NEVER been able to get a Linux/*BSD/Solaris machine to print successfully. Call me dumb.

So, this week I jumped ship and installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate on it. I've been testing Win 7 on my home PC since last year and like it a lot. I wasn't sure if the netbook could handle it, but Microsoft is specifically targeting the netbook market (the only PC market to have any real positive sale this year). Once I made a bootable Windows 7 USB thumb drive, I was off to the races. Installation was a snap, hardware recognized without a hitch.

Speed is great. The laptop I was formerly using was a Sony VAIO from the year 2000. It had a Celeron 600 CPU and 256M of RAM. I was running Windows 2000 Pro on it and it was OK, but sluggish, especially loading programs. The netbook is like a Ferrari compare to it (though just about anything would be!). I've yet to experience even a hiccup.

I am conscious about hard drive space. I've got a 16GB SSD in it, Win 7 takes up under 6G of that. I also have a 4G SD card to store stuff like music files. It's really no biggie, I keep all my working documents on a thumb drive. My media-intensive files (images, movies, music) mainly live on my home PC, with it's whopping 80G hard drive. I'm not anticipating a problem with the 16G capacity of the netbook (though I can get a 32G or 46G SSD for it, if I do).

So far, so fun!!

Shooting Star!

2009-08-14T11:12:00.002-04:00

While it's hardly earth-shattering news (in fact, it barely broke the atmosphere), I did see one Perseid meteor last night. I was out taking the dog for her late-night wee when I saw the bright streak in the sky. I wasn't able to get out any other time this week, when the shower was at its peak. Well... at least I saw one!

The Deplorable State of Magical Education Today

2009-08-04T10:10:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about Harry Potter. Something's been bothering me for years about the current crop of young wizards and witches portrayed in the HP books and films. They all seem to suck at magic. By this I mean that they seem to be in no way the magicians their predecessors were. Maybe this is a commentary on the decline of education at Hogwarts and beyond...
Consider Harry's dad, James, and his Hogwarts pals, Sirius, Remus and Peter. By the time they were Harry's age, they had created the Marauder's Map (one of the most infallible and amazing pieces of wizardry in the series) while three of them (if memory serves) had become accomplished Animagi -- able to transform into animals at will (stag, dog and rat). All this before they were eighteen.
Reading (or watching) the Half-Blood Price shows us young Severus Snape, who was busy correcting his textbooks and inventing his own powerful spells. Let's not even talk about the things that young Tom Riddle was able to do whilst at Hogwarts.
While still a student (we hear in the Half-Blood Prince movie), Harry's mom-to-be, Lily, was able to conjure a wondrous magical fish that swam contentedly until the day she died.
In short, who among the current crop of Hogwarts students is doing anything like this? It seems like Harry, while plucky, only knows three of four spells. Even Hermione, the genius of them all, seems to be a master of Magical Trivia (knowing the answer to every magical question there is) without actually doing much momentous magic.
I'm sending my kids to private wizard school.

Just As I Left It

2009-07-28T10:21:00.003-04:00

As many of you may know, I just returned from an eight-day trip to the Navajo Nation, my seventh since 2004. This year, the team helped with the construction of a new church parsonage at Ojo Amarillo, New Mexico. We also put on a Vacation Bible School for the area children.
I find coming back from the mission field strange and disorienting, far more than going out. Mission experiences can be strong (even overpowering), yet when we get back to "the World" everything is just as we left it. It can almost feel like we never left at all. It's far too easy to jump right back where you left off, filing your mission experiences away as pleasant memories.
On the other side of this, the mission field can be very alluring. It can be so refreshing to step out of our day-to-day lives that it's tempting never to return! Even when you get back, you can leave a part of yourself out there.
Neither of these extremes is healthy; we must seek a middle path. Can we come back from the mission field energized by our experiences, yet able to incorporate into our ordinary lives some of what we discovered Out There? That's the question I'm trying to answer this week!

Kind Words

2009-07-07T10:37:00.003-04:00

I was just re-reading an email from Ted, a guy I knew in college. His wife, Kate (also an old college friend), made him listen to my recent Come-To-Jesus sermon (Thanks, Kate!). He sent me some thoughtful words of encouragement, which are much appreciated (and needed).

In his email, Ted wrote, "The modern Christian seems to want a Savior but not a Lord." This simple sentence seems to sum up many of my frustrations at the moment. We may yearn for the Kingdom, but whose kingdom? I long for the Kingdom of GOD, right here, right now. Putting my life under the lordship of Jesus Christ was at once the hardest and easiest thing I've ever done.

Hard because we are a culture of individualists. We elevate the Self, placing it on the highest pedestal. We admire self reliance, self control and self sufficiency (self, self, self). I'm as guilty as the next guy. As a child and young adult, through my twenties, I strove to be a Complete Person (Behold, Modern Man!). I took Donne's words, "No man is an island, complete unto himself," as a challenge. I could be complete; I would be complete. Such is the struggle of the Modern American Man. The cost of giving up this struggle is so high that most of our churches are populated by women and children. This amount of humility and submission is simply UnManly!

Yet my decision was also easy. Once I came to accept the reality of this Jesus, that he is who he claimed to be. Once I came to believe the unbelievable, I was faced the the Big Question: "So What?" If I believe that the creator of the universe longed to be in relationship with me, how must I respond? If he loved us (me!) enough to walk among us, enduring shame and death, how must I respond? What would it say if my life were to go on unchanged, without interruption?

When we come face-to-face with Jesus, the only two reactions that make any sense are to crucify him or fall on our knees an proclaim him as Lord.

Try, Try Again

2009-07-06T15:02:00.002-04:00

After months of inactivity, I'm trying to be a better blogger. I'm looking for a good way of linking my personal blog and my church blog. I think, in the end, that I may just need to copy-and-paste common posts between them. Ug.
Life has been hectic. I'm struggling to motivate my congregation. For a long time I've been in the front, urging them to follow. A few weeks ago, I got behind and started pushing. Reactions have been mixed, to say the least. If it weren't for the calling of God, no sane person would do this job!
Things are calming down, but I feel stuck in the same rut. How do we call people deeper into relationship with Jesus? How do we call them past their comfort zones? Hard questions with no easy answers.
I'm convinced that the way to begin is to expect more of people. For decades we've been expecting less and less, and we have been succeeding fabulously! The time has come to expect more.

Good Friday and Forgiveness

2009-04-18T19:50:00.002-04:00

I spent much of Holy Week this year contemplating a single verse from Luke's Gospel: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34 NRSV). I began to think about the power of forgiveness: how hard it can be for those who have done harm to offer it and how hard it can be for those who have been harmed to go without it.

In my own life, I have done things I know I ought not have done. I have done them and gotten away with it. At times, I have felt remorse over my actions, but too often I have felt that I owed an apology to no one.

On the other hand, I have been hurt by the thoughtlessness of others. Something once happened to me, when I was a young man, that hurt me very deeply. I reacted as we all react when we are injured, I protected myself. I retreated, building an impenetrable wall around myself. I spent five years safe from harm, behind my wall.

Safe I may have been, but sound I was not. The person who had hurt me was not in my life, and I had no place to turn for the healing I needed. The hurt remained. As the years went on, I began to feel that I had gotten over the pain, but I've come to realize that I hadn't gotten over it, I'd merely gotten used to it.

It seemed, as Holy Week went on, that part of the mystery of Christ's saving work has something to do with Forgiveness. A long time ago, God was hurt by the selfishness of humanity. We thought we had gotten away with it, and came to think that we had nothing to apologize for. After all, we didn't do anything. The stories, if indeed they are true, happened at the very dawn of creation. Surely we have nothing to feel sorry about.

Likewise, God has been hurting all this time. Unlike my own hurt, God did not retreat, but tried again and again to connect with fallen humanity. God would reach out and humanity might respond for a time, but eventually they would fall away. Yet God kept on trying.

But it wasn't working. God had been seeking a solution, but could not find the way. Despite God's best efforts, the hurt was perhaps too deep.

That is where Jesus comes in. He came to us to show us a new way, but perhaps he also came to show God a new way. Wrapped up in their pain and guilt, neither God nor humanity could solve the riddle. Like Alexander slicing through the Gordian Knot, Jesus came and wiped away our failed solutions.

As he was being nailed to the cross, the latest victim in the ongoing war between God and humanity, he saw clearly the way out. He saw what had eluded God and humanity since the Fall. He saw people who knew no reason why they should feel sorry for anything and he saw God in pain. Though they didn't deserve it and didn't ask for it, Jesus saw the way through: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."

Perhaps part of the mystery of Good Friday is that Jesus found the way to reconcile God and humanity, and that way is Forgiveness. "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." By extending forgiveness, God could begin to heal. By receiving forgiveness (grace, by another name), humanity came to discover its fault. Only after that could reconciliation be possible.

Who Watches the Watchmen

2009-03-06T22:55:00.002-05:00

I do, apparently. It's 11:00pm and I just got back from watching the movie version of Watchmen (my all-time favorite graphic novel and near-all-time favorite novel period). I'm feeling a bit down, as I often do after my occasional re-readings of the graphic novel. The themes Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons wove together so expertly lead my mind toward melancholy, but there's more to it tonight.

Let me get a few things out of the way first. As an adaptation of an iconic graphic novel, it was OK. I'm not going to go into the quotidian details. It was OK. I liked it. They were dead-on true to the original in parts, and omitted entire major and minor plotlines to make the thing fit into three comprehensible hours. It was an Olympian task, which explain why it took over twenty years to get to the screen. I don't have a problem with the film. It was fine. Job well done. Finis.

What's got me down tonight was my vicarious experience of the film. I saw the film in a small, local theater in the neighboring town in middle-of-nowhere New York State. Judging by previous films I'd seen there (usually with just one or two other patrons), Watchmen was a smashing success. There were dozens of people there! Behind me sat about eight or nine young people. They had all obviously read (and I dare say loved) the graphic novel and could not seem to contain themselves as they saw it brought to the big screen. I was fortunate enough to get a glimpse of the movie through their eyes, as they could not keep quiet throughout the entire film.

Don't read this as me complaining ("Drat those durned kids!"). I was actually glad to overhear their reactions to each scene and how it did or did not differ from the canon. It was eye-opening. Maybe I'm an old crank, but they just didn't seem to "Get It." They found the high-style violence satisfying enough, but they laughed in all the wrong places. There seemed to be a fundamental disconnect about the genre they were watching.

By my reading, the over-arching theme in Watchmen is impotence. Each of the main characters has lost control, is losing control or is desparately trying to hang on to control. Often the control they've lost (or they seek) is an illusion. Yet the story gives none of them real satisfaction. Each character comes face-to-face with powerlessness. Their different reactions shine a light on their basic personality types. The best example, in the novel and the film, is the scene where Dan and Laurie fumble on the couch. The scene is at the same time tender and awkward, and also frustrating as Dan's excitement gets the better of him before he can make love to this beautiful woman. In both novel and film, the scene is a metaphor for the impotence experienced by everyone in the story.

As I was watching this scene, I found the crew sitting behind me a bit distracting. They found it hilarious, missing the point entirely. They found a lot of scenes mysteriously hilarious. In one of the musical montages, a peace-loving flower child puts a daisy in the levelled barrel of a rifle, only to have the squad of young soldiers open fire on the hippie protestors. This seemed the height of comedy to my back-seat neighbors. Likewise, Rorschach's antics in prison were hilarious to them, as criminals tried to settle old scores and were put down one by one. The pathos and tragedy from which these scenes were built were lost on them.

If Impotence is a main theme of Watchmen, Irony is the writer's weapon of choice. Time and time again, characters discover (or we, the reader/viewer, dicover) that things are the opposite of how they seem. Power and powerlessness masquerade as one another. As former superheroes take off their masks, they actually lose their identities. We see that in several characters, literally and metaphorically.

Through the horrors of his violent crusade, Rorschach has become the mask he wears. His "real" face is the disguise he wears for the world. Overpowered and unmasked by cops, he screams "Give me back my face!" Dan Dreiberg, on the other hand, abandoned the life of the superhero. He lives a private, anonymous life, yet he is never free from the power of the mask. After his fumbled (and failed) attempt at lovemaking on the couch with Laurie, he and she are able to ignite the skies with their passion after donning their costumes. The irony is that they discover their true selves only when they put on their masks. Perhaps the greatest discovery of all is that everyone wears a mask.

So, with so much text and subtext, all the kids behind me were able to do was to laugh at the violence without feeling it's true force. What was that all about, I wondered. True, it's hard for a twenty year old to relate to Dan's pathetic, fumbled attempts at lovemaking. Maybe one has to have experienced some kind of helplessness to generate any real empathy. Still, I was their age when I first read the graphic novel and I didn't find that scene funny, I found it profound and revelatory. I could write them off as dumb kids, but I think that's too easy.

In the end, perhaps it's impossible for viewers who weren't even alive when Watchmen was written to really "Get It" (at least not without more advanced empathy skills). Cold war themes dominate the story and perhaps that experience is a necessary enzyme for connecting to the themes of impotence and powerlessness it presents. Thought I was their age when I first read Watchmen, I had grown up in the shadow of the cold war.

True, I was not around for the Cuban missile crisis, but Watchmen is not of a retelling the 1960s. It is all about the 1980s. At the same time that I received my U.S. government plans to build a nuclear fallout shelter in my backyard, I was reading books like Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, which painted a grim picture of the effects of nuclear war (quite unlike the image I had of me safe and cozy in my fallout shelter). On television, we watched Testament, while War Games kept us entertained in the theaters. The spectre of nuclear annihilation was in the very air we breathed.

Underneath all cold war thinking is futility, despair, and powerlessness. This is the zeitgeist tapped by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in Watchmen, and the kids who sat behind me in the theater know nothing of it. Small wonder that they laugh at the fumbling sexual antics of a forty-year-old man, they've never experienced the kind of helplessness that scene is meant to evoke. Even at their age, back in 1985, I'd had a taste of that. Everyone who grew up in the shadow of Manhattan had.

So, I'm sad. Not because kids these days are clueless chuckle-heads (they are), but because the aching beauty of Watchmen is beyond their ken. The irony out of which the story is built should have brought tears when it only elicited cheers. The Comedian is dead.

[As a postscript, just let me give a hearty cheer to Jackie Earle Haley, who played Rorschach in the movie. He brought a malevolent power to every scene he was in and I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. If the late Heath Ledger got the Oscar for playing the Joker, Haley deserves the Novel Prize for Acting. Kudos.]

Procrastination!

2009-01-05T14:36:00.003-05:00

I need to start writing. Not this blog, I need to start working on my written work to become a Provisional Elder. It's due at the end of this month. I have twenty-one questions that need answering. The answers need to be thoughtful, authentic, rigorous and be fully annotated. Ug. Did I mention that I need to get going Right Now?

I have rough-draft answers to most of the questions already, but they need re-working, polishing and annotation. Time to stop making excuses and start working. Bye for now...

Late Night Blogging!

2008-12-11T23:56:00.002-05:00

It's around midnight and snowing like the dickens outside! I should be sleeping, but I'm listening to music and don't want to give up the groove! I've decided that I just need to listed to whatever Zach Braff is listening to. I love Joshua Radin and and starting to get into The Shins and other artists to be found in various Scrubs episodes and the Garden State soundtrack.

Speaking of Garden State, I just watched it for the third time in a week. It's Zach's first writer/director effort and I really loved it. The whole movie opens like a flower as Zach's character comes alive through the film. It starts out with a numbness that's not unlike that in Lost in Translation. I can relate to that feeling of detachment, where everyting around you seems to move in slow-motion and competes with the sound of the blood rushing through your head. "When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse, out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone, I cannot put my finger on it now. The child has grown; the dream is gone."

Life is pretty good. Christmas is coming and we're wondering where we're going to find the money for presents. There things we'd like to get for friends and family, but we have to balance that desire with others. I'd like to make a fewe year-end contributions to causes. At the same time, we're trying to reduce our debt!! It's like we're the country, dealing with our own financial crisis! Still, God is good and we're are more blessed than most.

I just finished reading the short story, Bartleby, the Scrivener, by Herman Melville. It was so Dickensian that I kept forgetting Melville was an American until the narrator would mention paying for something in dollars. It was good, but nothing spectacular. I haven't found another piece of fiction to read, yet. I may try some Nabokov again, or something like A Christmas Carol, to fit the season!

I've just started listening to my first song by Jump Little Children. It's pretty cool! Napster rules! Good night!

Assorted Reading

2008-11-19T16:31:00.002-05:00

I've been forcing myself to set aside time for personal reading. It's tough, as my days and nights are filled with work, family and Guild Wars. Still, I've managed to get though a few things in the past few months.
I just finished Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I read it (along with most of H's other books) about 20 years ago, and it's still good! Hemingway's great for a quick read. It's brutal, like a jab to the ribs, without a lot of subtext. I felt hung over when it was done.
I started and finally finished Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. It took me a while to really get into it -- it starts slowly. By the time I was 2/3 through it started to pick up. What I had to learn is that it is one of Dickens' two historical novels. This means that the pacing and characters are not what you'd find in David Copperfield or Great Expectations. When I finished it last week, I was just grateful to be through it (like I was with Anna Karenina a few months ago, a book it's taken me a solid decade to read). As I've been thinking about it (and reading a bit of criticism), I'm coming to appreciate it more. It's ending is almost ethereal, you almost feel as if you are Sydney Carton.
Right now I'm reading Joseph Girzone's Joshua, a modern-day parable of Christ's return to a small American town. It's very profound and a quick read. I'm liking it a lot.
On the non-fiction front, I'm getting back into John Keegan's The First World War. I'm a big fan of his WWII history (and think it's the best one-volume history of that war to be had). It's tough going in the early pages, but I'm getting through. It's my car book at the moment, meaning I read it when I'm in restaurants alone.
What are you reading??

Democracy in America

2008-11-05T08:55:00.002-05:00

I feel great this morning, and not just because my candidate, Barack Obama, won the presidential election last night. I feel great because it was a great example of American democracy at work. I feel great because of the record turnout all over the country (and hope it's a trend that continues in future elections; I think it will). I feel great beacuse, after a bitterly-fought campaign that got a bit negative at the end, both candidates showed remarkable grace last night.
John McCain's concession speech was powerful and re-affirmed his commitment to country and to public service. How we lose is just as important as how we win, and McCain showed the world what it's like to concede with class. It was bittersweet--he would much rather have given a victory speech--but in his concession, I saw the... well, presidential McCain that I'd been looking for since August.
Barack Obama's victory speech hit just the right notes. It was celebratory without being triumphalist. He acknowledged a fact that is overlooked or ignored by most victorious candidates, that he must be the president both of his supporter and his detractors. Were I to assume elected office (which I hope never to do), I hope I would always remember my duty to all the people: those who voted for me and those who didn't. I'd even go so far as to suggest that elected officials have a special responsibility (duty?) to listen to the voices of their political adversaries. President-Elect Obama acknowledged this last night.
Anyhoo, I feel great today. Hopeful.

Frozen and the Pleiades

2008-10-30T22:15:00.002-04:00

It's just after 10pm and my favorite episode of House, M.D. is on. It's titled Frozen and guest-stars Mira Sorvino. Very good ep. It's the third in a row on the USA Network tonight. I seem to watch all my TV in marathon form these days. One episode of anything just doesn't cut it.

I also just took the dog out for her night-time tinkle. It's a cool, crystal-clear night in Western New York; the best kind. The stars are out and shining bright. I saw one of my favorite constellations, the Pleiades (or the Seven Sisters). It's a cluster of beautiful, distant stars. One thing about the Pleiades, however, is that it's just at the limit of human visual acuity (or at least my visual acuity).

Human vision uses different receptors (rod-shaped and cone-shaped) on the retina. Cones function best in bright light, rods in low light. The center of our vision is predominantly cones and the periphery has more rods. What all this means is that when we look in the night sky, the Pleiades pops into our vision at the edges. When we focus our eyes on it, it fades from sight. When we move our eyes to the side again, it pops back. This back-and-forth is due to the distribution of rods and cones on our retinas.

All of this is fascinating enough, but it's also a great metaphor for some thinigs we encounter in life, things that seem to retreat from view just as we concentrate our attention on them. Some things in life we are destined never to see straight-on. We need to learn to use our peripheral vision, to see the "Big Picture." Ironically, some things can only be seen against the landscape of a greater whole. When we put them under scrutiny, they disappear.

Anyhoo, that's the end of my philospohical musings for the night.

The Weather Outside is Frightful

2008-10-22T08:58:00.002-04:00

That's right! SNOW!! We had some flurries yesterday and this morning they're continuing. As I pulled up to the church, I saw a car coming from up on the hill with an inch of snow on it! Yipee!! Winter Wonderland her we come!! This is why I came to Western New York, dang it!
But seriously... Fuel prices are a concern. With Alexzander in the house (our 9-month-old foster child), we've had to keep the place warmer than is our wont, especially at night. I know it's going to hike up our gas bill. I'm also concerned about others in the community and the bills they face. I'm praying for them.
Tomorrow is a big boys' soccer game in the village. I want to go, but I also way to not freeze. I'll need to plan accordingly!

Double Blogging! How to Keep Up?

2008-10-08T09:37:00.003-04:00

Well, I can barely manage to post to this blog once a month and I've gone and started a new blog! Ack! I started a blog for my church. I was on the fence about posting church-related stuff on this, my personal blog. Now, I have a clear separation. Hopefully, I'll post more to each. We'll see...

Back from the Res

2008-08-05T10:29:00.002-04:00

I suck at blogging! I got back from my mission trip to the Navajo Nation. It was a good trip. I worked on the concrete teams. I had to set forms, mix concrete and pour two small pads and a very long ramp. Altogether, we mixed over 8,000 pounds of concrete. This year's work site was in southeast Utah. It's the first time I've spend significant time in Utah, and I must say that it's a lovely place. I hope to go back soon!

I'm now back in the office, trying to jump back into my normal like. Part of me doesn't want to. I'm trying to preserve a bit of my mission lifestyle back in The World.

This week is my church's Vacation Bible School. Five nights of fun with the local kids. It's going quite well, but it throws our schedule off and is tiring. Still, it's a good time.

More soon...

Mmmm... Beautiful Morning

2008-07-14T08:52:00.002-04:00

We had a pretty steamy Summerfest weekend in Arkport. Friday and Saturday were hot and pretty humid. On Sunday morning, just before the community church service in the park, it started raining, becoming a downpour during the service. Fortunately, we were covered. This morning, however, it's cool and clear and beautiful.

I'm sitting in my office with the windows open, enjoying the breeze. It's awesome. Now I need to get ready for the next few weeks. I'll be in Utah the next two Sundays, so I need to make sure things will run with out me!

Mission Trip Coming Fast!

2008-07-09T11:00:00.003-04:00

I'll be leaving in less than two weeks to go to the Navajo Nation. I'm part of a large team that will be doing construction on a United Methodist church in Utah (near Four Corners). I'm usually excited by these trips, but this year I'm distracted and unprepared.

Part of the distraction is due to the arrival of our foster child, Alexzander. He's been with us almost a month and just celebrated his six-month half-birthday. He's changing the way we do everything around our house! Kristen was supposed to go on the trip with me, but she's staying home to care for The Boy.

One of the best parts about going on a mission trip is stepping outside your normal life and routine. It's a chance to take a vacation from yourself. I'm hoping it will do me good!

Heat Wave Over (For Now)

2008-06-11T09:14:00.002-04:00

It's been a long time since my last post ("Bad blogger!"). We had super-high temperatures this past week, like most of the country. Record highs were set in Arkport with temps in the high nineties. I don't know if we'd have made it without our neighbor's pool. We swam around a few times a day, mostly just to drop our body temperature. It worked!

Just got back in the office from my week's vacation. We spent a few days with Kristen's parents, then came home to visit with friends up from Virginia. A great time off. Coming back to work, I have to contend with Annual Conference this week. Next year, I'll make sure NOT to schedule my vacation immediately before or after conference. Live and learn!

My Guild Wars life is progressing. James and I are pushing our characters through Factions. I've got almost all the Kurzick outposts mapped (just one to go), and am making headway on the Luxon ouposts. I'm still gathering Kurzick faction, however, so the Luxons will have to wait. In Prophecies, I need to push my characters through the final few quests. Liu Kiri's the only one who's completed Hell's Precipice. Lots to do, too little time! I've created a User Page on the Guild Wars Wiki, to help people follow along.

Who Controls the Weather?

2008-05-16T10:56:00.003-04:00

I've been amazed at the wonderful stretch of weather we've been having in Arkport. Warm, breezy days (perfect for baseball) and cool nights. Even the odd patch of rain is a blessing. It's been great here, but the weather has not been so great around the world.

In the past weeks, tens of thousands of people have lost their lives in natural disasters in Myanmar (Burma), China and here in the US. More are homeless and in need of aid. How are we, as a people of faith, to make sense of this? A more difficult question may be: are we supposed to make sense of it? Is it fair to put the responsibility for every drop of rain on God's doorstep? It's too easy to say that God is in control of everything (and therefore responsible for everything), when we know this is not the case. In giving the gift of human freedom, God also gave over some control of the Way Things Are.

To complicate matters, while we may have once been able to put matters of weather and climate firmly in God's domain, human beings are coming to recognize the effect they (WE) have on creation, and the responsibility that comes with the power (literally) to change the world. What impact have our own choices had on recent events? What responsibility do we bear? Again, perhaps this is another Easy Answer, shifting the blame from God to ourselves. Perhaps no one is to blame.

Creation itself is still in the process of Becoming. The Apostle Paul says that creation itself "has been groaning in labor pains" (Rom 8:22). Rather than being "finished," it is still changing. This struggle, which seems to be built in to the very fabric of creation, can be violent. Real change, real transformation, is seldom easy. We inhabit a world that groans, bends, and occasionally breaks under the pressure of it's own Becoming. Perhaps we need to come to terms with a world in which terrible things happen and nobody is to blame.

What are we to do? Rather than pointing fingers (which accomplishes little), we should concentrate on our own response. Instead of crying, "How could God do this?" perhaps we need to ask, "What can I do?" Our first response must be to pray that the victims of these tragedies find relief from their suffering. Prayer, however, is not enough. Our next response is to act. We must learn to become the hands and feet of Christ in a world that desperately needs healing. We must become part of God's ongoing work of redeeming the world.

Time Flies!

2008-04-15T14:28:00.002-04:00

It's been four weeks since Easter. I can hardly believe it. Things have been going great at the church. Attendance has been up and we're getting some return visitors. This past week was the 125th anniversary of the first meeting to elect trustees to start our church. It's an exciting and important anniversary.

Spring is coming. It's barely here, but it's coming. I nearly froze to death at the boys' varsity baseball opener two weeks ago. To top it off, we had snow this past Sunday. It melted right away, but it fell for hours in the morning.
Maybe it was winter's last gasp. Still, we're below freezing each night and in the fifties in the day. My mom would love this weather (she's coming in a few weeks, I hope it's still cold enough for her).

The change of seasons brings a change in life. People are out and about. This is Spring Break for the kids, so they're all over the town. It's nice. We love Arkport! More very soon...

The Calm Between Easter Storms

2008-03-23T08:44:00.002-04:00

It's 8:45am on Easter morning and I'm between services. At 7:00 this morning I gathered with about forty souls in the village's cemetery to celebrate Easter and the dawn of a new day. I had feared all kinds of wintery conditions, but the only thing we had to reckon with was cold; the village thermometer read 16 degrees when we began! Still, that's much better than what I secretly feared: freezing rain and mud. By the time we were half-way through Christ the Lord is Risen Today, I was getting warmed up!
After a brief worship service (about twenty minutes), we adjourned to the church, when the men had prepared a warm, delicious breakfast for us all! We filled up the fellowship hall with conversation and praise. A good time was had by all.
Now I'm sitting around, waiting for the next events to begin: Sunday School at 9:45am and worship at 10:45am. I hadn't figured on so much down-time this morning. I though I'd be running from one thing to the next, but here I am with an hour and a half to kill! I dare not go home and relax--I might never get back up! So, I'm in the office, thinking Easter thoughts.
In the long history of the Church, Easter is the time when adult converts (who have been prepared throughout the season of Lent) are baptized and get to partake in the Lord's Supper for the first time. Easter is supposed to be a communion service and that's what I'm doing this year. I don't think it's the usual turn of events, but I'm confident in the traditions.

White Easter? (plus a Maccabean history lesson)

2008-03-10T09:50:00.008-04:00

I've been enjoying the Western New York winter, even going so far as to make fun of the local who gave me such a hard time about the winters when I arrived from The South. We have a fair bit of snow over the past few days, about eight inches. It didn't all fall at once in a blizzard-like rush, it's been snowing slowly and steadily. It's a beautiful picture-postcard-style snow: big clumps of flakes drifting slowly to the ground.

Then it occurred to me: it's Easter in two weeks and there's a half-foot of snow on the ground. I'm leading our village's Easter Sunrise service outside, in the village cemetery! Ack!! I really don't want to sing Christ the Lord is Risen Today in my snowboots! Well, we'll see how things develop. In the event of actual bad weather, we'll move the service inside. If it's just cold, we'll tough it out and head for the cemetery.

I'm getting ready for Palm Sunday. We're getting proper palm leaves for our Hosanna procession. I've always had real palm leaves on Palm Sunday, but I've been spoiled. This will be the first time in recent memory for this church.

I preached on the Lazarus story yesterday. In John's Gospel, the raising of Lazarus is the straw that broke the back of the Jewish leaders. After they heard about it, they began actively plotting Jesus' death. Next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we see Jesus entering Jerusalem in triumph. The crowds wave palm fronds and sing Hosanna! What's lost on most Christians today is that this was a radical political act in Jesus' time. It had been generations since the Jews had actually ruled their own country.

Back in the second century BC, Israel had been ruled by the Hasmonean Dynasty. These Jewish rulers had revolted against their Greek rulers and won true independence for Israel for the first time in hundreds of years. They pushed back the borders, reclaiming territory last held in Solomon's reign. But, for all their success, the Hasmoneans had difficulties. First of all, they were not of "proper" lineage. Tradition demanded a king of the House of David and a high priest of the House of Zadok; they were neither. Secondly, there were bitter internal rivalries among them. In the end, it got so bad that battling princes sought outside held to shore up their own positions. They sought the power and influence of Rome. Once the Romans were invited to to the party, things fell apart rapidly. When the dust settled, the Hasmoneans were gone and the Romans ruled the land. (You can read about the Jewish revolution in 1 and 2 Maccabees.)

I mention this brief history lesson to shine a light on the political tensions of Jesus' day, and also to point to a powerful symbol of independence. On some coins minted during the Hasmonean Dynasty--the last time Israel ruled itself--appeared images of palm leaves. Palm leaves also appear on some other coins of the period. It seemed to be a national symbol of Judea. It may have been a symbol of the Hasmoneans and of Jewish independence from foreign rule. Waving palm leaves as Jesus enters the city may have been seen as a blatant political act, like waving a red flag in front of a (Roman) bull.

If the raising of Lazarus got the Jewish leaders plotting Jesus' death. His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, amid waving palm leaves, set him at odds with secular authority. Jesus had run afoul of each of these authorities (religious and secular) before. Antagonizing both of them was like bringing together gasoline and fire. The result was explosive, and quicly cost Jesus his life.

The Woman at the Well

2008-02-26T11:34:00.002-05:00

This past Sunday was the Third Sunday in Lent. The traditional story for this Sunday is John 4, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. If I were to take a survey of my pastor friends, this story would rate very high on their list of Great Stories of the Bible. It's powerful, artfully written, and (perhaps most lf all) preachable! I'll make a confession: it doesn't do much for me.

I'll readily admit that it's a great story and an excellent example of Jesus transforming the lives of an entire community of outsiders. Still, it doesn't do it for me. I'm much more drawn to the story of Nicodemus, in the preceding chapter. The two encounters, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, are placed back-to-back for a reason; they're meant to be examined together.

There are similarities and start contrasts between the two encounters. The most obvious being their settings. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, in secret, in private, under the cover of darkness. Jesus himself comes to the Samaritan woman in the bright light of day, in public, for all to see. John's gospel is filled with images of light and dark, day and night, good and evil.

Despite the differences in setting, the conversations they have with Jesus are very similar. In typically Johannine fashion, they take place on two levels. When Jesus speak about being born again (in chapter 3) or about living water (in chapter 4), he is taken literally when he is speaking metaphorically. It takes some time in conversation before the different meanings start to become clear (something we should note, the role of Holy Conversation).

The stories end quite differently. The Samaritan woman rushes away to tell her neighbors, who come themselves to see and hear Jesus. Nicodemus goes away unsatisfied, much like the rich young man who Jesus instructs to give away everything. Maybe I'm drawn more to Nicodemus because I see him more often when I look around (or when I look in the mirror). Perhaps each of us comes to Jesus by night, to ask what's really required of us. Like Nicodemus, most of us go away unhappy.

As for the woman at the well, hers is a simpler story. She has an encounter with the Living Water and is transformed. She doesn't understand it all, but she understands enough. She gets it enough to tell her neighbors, and to ask the daring question, "Could this man be the Christ?" Each of us may encounter Jesus at our own wells. If we can't summon the nerve to ask that same question, we may never recognize him. This woman did and her faith transformed her entire community. It's a good story. A great story. Ultimately, they're both great stories.

They're both great because the story of Nicodemus doesn't end here. He comes back at the very end of John's gospel, after Jesus is crucified, to claim his body along with Joseph of Arimathea. The two were both members of the Jewish leadership who were secret followers of Jesus. They dared not claim him publicly for fear of their positions (and possibly their lives). Still, when most believed the story of Jesus to be over, they step out in a very public way, claim his body and see it safely laid to rest in Joseph's tomb.

Much of religious life, including Christian life, is guided by self interest. We ask, "Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" which is clearly an expression of our own self-interest. Some are never able to see past this, exulting in their own salvation (many even triumph in their neighbor's fall, so secure are they in their own victory). While our salvation may be personal, it is never private. It is never to be viewed outside the context of community (Christian and otherwise). This vain triumphalism ultimately betrays the Gospel.

This is why the actions of Nicodemus and Joseph stand out. They had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by standing up to be counted among Jesus' followers after his death. Believing (rightly|) the Master to be dead, their actions have no self-serving purpose. This is what John Wesley called Christian Perfection (by which he meant Perfection in Love), a love that thinks only of the other, with no regard to the self. Jesus was dead. He needed to be buried. These two men--who had worked so hard to hide their discipleship while Jesus was alive--now set all secrecy aside to perform this one service of Love after his death.

Many shake their heads at Nicodemus and the other "secret disciples." I do not, for when the time came, he stoop up to be counted. Ultimately, his faith transcended Jesus' death and he became a true Servant of the Master.

Go now, do the same...

Sad Birthday

2008-02-20T10:01:00.004-05:00

I heard on the radio this morning that today is Kurt Cobain's birthday. Thinking about him always takes me back to the early nineties. David and I were living and working at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. Our friends were all college students and we got to hear quite a bit of college music from our neighbors (football-playing frat guys). I liked Nirvana at the time, one of the first music phenomena I was with when it was actually popular. I liked the whole college/alternative music scene of the early nineties, actually.

I remember when Kurt Cobain died. It wasn't a where-were-you-when-JFK-was-shot moment, but I remember hearing the news and seeing the effects. My friend Amina was devastated; I watched her cry as she stared at the cover of Rolling Stone (above) that week. Perhaps that's what gets me when I think about Cobain, how his death hurt those around me. He was a gifted songwriter and musician in a great band. I can't say that he was the modern Mozart or the next Elvis, maybe he was just the canary in the coal mine. All I can say is that when I think about him, it makes me sad.

As a Christian, I struggle with the suffering in the world. More than anything, I hate Easy Answers that overlook the harsh realities of life (or, worse, blame those realities on the people who suffer them). One of my least favorite is "God never gives us things we can't handle." I think this is a kind of wishful thinking, an expression of how we hope God will treat us, but I can point to countless example of people who were given more than they could handle, people who bent and broke beneath the load.

A convenient [un]Christian response is to blame the victim, to say that a person simply didn't have enough faith (or perhaps not the right kind of faith). While there are times that this might be true, it's heartless to think that everyone who has ever been overcome by despair lacks the faith to see it through. Men and women of sincere faith can and have been driven to the edge and beyond by life, and perhaps by God.

Nor is it helpful to look at Cobain's life and death as nothing more than tragic vanity (this is what I may have done at the time). On the surface, his inability to cope with fame and the insane expectations of American consumer culture seemed like just another Counter-Culture Pose. An eternal optimist, it's too easy for me to dismiss such pain as self-induced. It's too easy to say, "Cheer up, stupid! Life getting you down? Change it!" Such Can-Do platitudes ignore complexities, they also ignore the realities of genuine mental illness. Worse than ignore, they place the blame for them squarely on the shoulders of those who suffer from them.

While I'm hesitant to make a messiah out of Cobain, I'm not afraid to ask the daring question: Did he die for us? I can't help but see his death as a warning to all of us against the invasive effects of consumerism and greed. We're all subject to the same ambitions our culture presses on us. We chase after success, wealth, power, and influence at the same time our subconscious is telling us to run away. We are in the exact place where Jesus was, when he was tempted in the desert. When offered the chance to be powerful, influential and important, as he was, we want to say "Yes!" But the true path leads us downward, not upward. We're meant to head towards humility and selflessness, until the only thing left is love. This is True Power.

Do we have the courage to say "No" to the enticements of the world? How are we to think of those who say "Yes?" What about those, like Kurt Cobain, who are caught between the two choices? Ultimately, his death may be a warning to all of us. Whatever else it was, is and may yet be, his death was a tragedy for his friends, his family and for me. Not because of who we has, but because:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. (John Donne, Meditation XVII)

That's what's on my mind this morning. Love to all.

Back from Vacation! Whew!

2008-02-20T09:49:00.002-05:00

We got home last night from a week in Virginia. We spent the week hanging our with friends, doing some home repair at my Mom's place, and eating out! It was pretty exhausting. We took Baby, our dog. We had to give her doggie drugs for the long car rides, but she seemed to enjoy the trip.

At my Mom's we removed a bathroom sink/vanity, then relocated a sink from another bathroom and replaced it with a new sink. Lots of annoying work in very tight spaces with me flat on my back on tile floors. In the end, all sinks were working and fully installed. They look pretty good.

For my next vacation, I need to go somewhere without distractions and do nothing. I'd like to visit Yosemite National Park one day; I think that could be a good vacation. We discussed with friends a trip to Nova Scotia as our next group vacation. I have an old programming friend who lives in Halifax and he has always told me how nice it is.

I also want to try to do a bit of camping this year (we went to REI, which always inspires me). Nothing dramatic, maybe just some nights at our local NY State Park, Stony Brook. It could be good practice for future vacationing. I haven't been camping properly since I was a kid.

Cardiology

2008-01-29T10:02:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday, I sat in on my church's adult Sunday School. The passage we read was the Anointing of David by Samuel (1 Samuel 16:1-13). This is a fabulous text and it sparked good conversation. As we were talking, I thought about the perplexing issue of David. God chose the young shepherd as the replacement for Saul, the king who had been chosen by the people. David and Saul are often held up as example of good and bad. The actual text, however, is less black-and-white.

David is not perfect. He is an adulterer and murderer, who uses his God-given position and authority to cause the death of his mistress' husband, Uriah. Saul, likewise, isn't all bad. As God's favor turns away from him, I can't help but feel sorry for him. He is earnest in his desire to rule well. Comparing to David's transgressions to Saul's, it's sometimes hard to tell who's the good king and who's the bad king.

Yet David is special. He is "a man after God's own heart" (1 Sam 13:14). This "heart" talk is repeated in chapter 16, when God tells Samuel that men and women "look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Sam 16:7). The heart is important to God. Something in David's heart appeals to him, while something in Saul's does not. It might be as simple as that. As were were discussing the text, the image of the cardiologist--the heart doctor--came to me. God is the Divine Cardiologist.

As the Cardiologist, he's interested in our heart health. Are we exercising it enough? How do we exercise our hearts? Walking, cycling and running are good for our hearts, but God is looking deeper. We must work out by loving more, caring more, feeling more for those we see (and those who we'll never see). Compassion is the exercise of the heart that the Divine Cardiologist prescribes. Quite simply, we must become more like Christ in the way we think, feel, and act. We must conform our heart to His. It's quite a workout. It gets easier the more we do it (like most exercise), but it never becomes automatic. We must always choose.

The right author (e.g. Maxine Dunham) could probably write a devotional book or short-term Bible study on God-as-Cardiologist. I'm probably not that guy. Who knows?

This Week's Lectionary

2008-01-22T11:31:00.000-05:00

I've got some meaty choices this Sunday, and I want to choose early in the week, rather than later. I'm attending an all-day conference on Youth Ministry at Houghton College on Thursday, and would like to have the reading locked down before that. The big choice is between the Gospel and Epistle readings.

The Gospel reading is Matthew 4:12-23, which tells the story of the calling of the first disciples. The Epistle reading is First Corinthians 1:10-18, an exhortation to unity among the believers in Corinth. Both are great stories.

The Isaiah reading (Isaiah 9:1-4) brings a bit of confusion, especially when paired with the Matthew reading. The versification is unclear here. In most modern Bibles, Isaiah 9:1 doesn't seem to flow into 9:2. The text seems to change gears between the verses. In fact, the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint both number 9:1 as 8:23, tacking it on to the preceding chapter. This makes better sense as I read it, though it's still not crystal clear. How the modern Bibles got the verses changed can probably be traced (as so many things can) to the Latin Vulgate Bible. Saint Jerome labels the Hebrew Isaiah 8:23 as 9:1, and most modern (post-Vulgate) Bibles cleave to the versification of the Vulgate. Why Jerome deviates from the Hebrew and Septuagint numbering is beyond me.

Anyhoo, this is more than just an interesting [to me, at least] detour in textual criticism. The Matthew passage (Matthew 4:12-23) cites the Isaiah text. Matthew's citations (where they can be identified) are universally from the Septuagint. In this case, he connects verses 8:23 (the modern 9:1) and 9:1 (the modern 9:2). Modern readers with modern verse numbers will find these two verses connected (9:1-2) in their Bibles and not blink an eye. The author of the first gospel, however, would have to explicitly make the connection between verses in two hard-to-connect chapters (8:23 and 9:1).

I'm generally underwhelmed by the author of Matthew's use of Scripture, and this citation is a perfect example. While I admire his excellent use of Typological Prophecy in some of his citations, he often seems to be straining to connect the story of Jesus with the stories of the Hebrew Bible. Many of these connections don't seem to make sense at first (or second) glance. The connection cited in Matthew 4 between the lands of Zebulun & Naphtali and the coming of the great light in the darkness is forced, at best. The only connection in the base reading of the text seems to be the fact that the verses are adjacent. Hardly a deep, theological connection.

Because of this textual confusion and the less-then-clear connection between the verses cited, I'm leaning towards the First Corinthians passage. I'm not afraid to tackle tough textual issues, I just wonder if the best place to do it is a ten-minute sermon. I suspect it would leave people uninspired, not to mentioned confused and perhaps annoyed.

The Psalm for this week is great (Psalm 27), but the lectionary does it's standard hatchet job on it. They suggest reading verses 1 and 4-9. I hate it when they do this. What did poor verses 2 and 3 do? They mention evildoers and enemies, strife and calamity. Without those two verses, we get a watered-down Happy Sunshine poem of praise! It's the curse of the Easy Answer all over again (I need to write an essay on the Easy Answer and the huge problems it causes). Ah well... Maybe I need to preach on the Easy Answer this week? Hmmmm...

Quiet Sunday Morning

2008-01-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

This is my favorite time of the week. I'm in my church office, overlooking the Sanctuary. I've come in quite early to prepare for this morning's worship, but now all my preparations are complete. I've got some time to just sit here and think.

I'm nor preaching this Sunday, which is odd. The retired pastor from our community, Rev. Howard Warriner, is preaching the story of the Good Samaritan. I'll be leading worship, doing everything I normally do except preach. It give me different things to think about this morning. I'm also doing special music today, singing If I Had a Hammer for/with the congregation. It's a great song for Human Relations Day (which is today, in the United Methodist Church).

We got a dusting of snow yesterday, with a bit more coming in the next few days. Nothing dramatic, but it looks nice.

New Day Off

2008-01-11T08:57:00.000-05:00

This week I started taking Thursday off. My previous day off was Monday, but I changed to to match Kristen's work schedule. It was pretty great. I didn't go anywhere or do anything. I took a nap on our spare bed, which has a delightful high-density foam mattress. It was delicious. I hope to have a more meaningful post soon.

Two Kings!

2008-01-06T08:02:00.000-05:00

I'm preaching this morning about the Magi, or Wise Men, from Matthew 2. Last night I was reading the New Interpreter's Bible and an idea struck me. The author of the NIB Matthew section, M. Eugene Boring, writes about the problems caused when the Magi come to Herod, the "king of Judea" and ask him where the "new" king was to be found. Herod was understandably upset. Who was this new king and why hadn't Herod heard about him before this?

The commentary goes on to nicely contrast the two kings and the two kingdoms that will be played against each other throughout Matthew's gospel. Herod's realm is an earthly one, Jesus' is much more than that. Despite this, the threat to the established order (Herod's) is quite real.

When reading this, my mind was cast back to the fall of 2000, when I took Intro to the Old Testament under Dr. Stephen Cook at VTS. I wrote a paper on First Samuel 16, where the Lord instructs Samuel to go to Bethlehem, to the house of Jesse, and anoint one of his sons. This is a radical act. Anointing is what you do to kings, and there already is a king in Israel: Saul! The two texts both contrast two kings and two kindgoms. In the Samuel story, God has grown disappointed with Saul and has decided to select as a new king someone after His own heart. Davis is this new king, but he is anointed as a child, while Saul still sits on the throne. Fortunately for David, his anointing is kept secret while he grows up and eventually ends up in Saul's court. Still, the tension between Saul and David begins soon after they meet ("Saul has killed his thousands and David his tens of thousands!") and continues throughout their lives, soon erupting into violence.

Anyhoo, I'm NOT preaching on this parallel story, but I wanted to write it down before I forgot it!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T15:26:00.000-05:00

Well, it's 2008! It's been a whirlwind since Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve service at the church, then we dashed off to Saint Mary's, Pennsylvania Christmas morning, where we spent a few days doing not much at all. It was just what the doctor ordered!

We had some friends from Virginia visit over New Year's. They brought their three dogs, so it was an exciting adventure keeping them separate from Baby (they did not play nicely). We saw I Am Legend in the theater. I liked it well enough, but thought it was a rip-off of The Omega Man. I went home and looked it up on Wikipedia and they were both adaptations of the same novel. No wonder!

Now I'm getting in the swing of this new year. I got a good bit done at the office. I'm preparing for the church's annual Charge Conference, which will be held on Monday night. Lots of paperwork. Ug. Still, I'm getting my hands around the church's membership records. Fun, fun, fun!

It was 17 degrees this morning, with a bitterly cold wind. I took the dog out at 6:30 in sweatpants, which were not up to the challenge. I almost froze before Baby took care of business. The temperature dropped from there. It was up to 18 degrees on the Steuben Trust clock/thermometer sign this afternoon. Brrrrr... I think I'm OK coat-wise, but I really don't have any special cold weather footgear. I need to work on that.

A Little More Reflection...

2007-12-24T13:30:00.000-05:00

In Sunday School this week the question was asked: "What's on top of your Christmas Tree?"
Apparently, the hands-down winner is a star, followed distantly by an angel. It occurred to me that these two favorite tree-toppers were yet a further demonstration of our being caught between two stories. The star, of course, is from the Matthean birth narrative (it's not mentioned in Luke at all), while the angel is clearly Lukan (it appears only in dreams in Matthew's version of the story).

Anyhoo, Happy Christmas to all!!!

A Reflection on the Birth Narratives

2007-12-20T09:13:00.000-05:00

I recently offered a three-week Bible study at my church on the Stories of Christmas. We did a close reading of the Matthew and Luke accounts of the birth of Jesus. About a half-dozen people gave up their Monday nights to attend. I hope they enjoyed it, I certainly did.

Too often we fall into the Trap of the Well-Known. We hear something so often that it no longer registers on our consciousness. Our brain just clicks off, because it knows what's coming (and it knows that it knows). We go on auto-pilot, as when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance or (heaven forbid) the Lord's Prayer. This is one reason why reading common Bible stories in new translations is important. The new words cause our brains to actually pay attention. What we discover may be surprising.

When we really pay attention to beloved stories, what we discover is that our memory is faulty. We think we remember, but often the details escape us (and God is in the details). So, our Bible study group came to these familiar stories with fresh eyes and ears. We wanted to find out what they actually said, not what we thought they said.

Overall it was a good exercise. Most modern re-tellings happily conflate the two stories, so that we have wise men tripping over shepherds on the way to the manger. A simple reading of the texts, however, reveals two very different stories. Each author has to conform to a few known facts, e.g. that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but grew up in Nazareth. Each chooses to conform his story to these facts in a different way. The early Christians were comfortable with these differences, and made no attempts (well... few attempts) to join them. Literal-minded moderns are not so content; we've stitched the two stories into one big (non-Biblical) story. I find the greatest value, however, in the differences in the two accounts, rather than the similarities.

Matthew's account (chapters one and two) is a tale filled with images and references to the Hebrew Bible. Every step in the story is a re-telling of a familiar story, from the dreams that God sends to Joseph (like the patriarch, Joseph, whose skill at dream interpretation was renowned) , to the flight to Egypt (another Genesis story) and the slaughter of the innocents (as Pharaoh ordered the slaughter of the Hebrew babies in Exodus). First century Jewish hearers of this story would be on very familiar ground, the story of the birth of Jesus would appear to rise out of the history of God's work in the Hebrew Bible.

What's more, the author of Matthew explicitly references the story to Israel's past. Five times in the first two chapters we hear the phrase "this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet..." The idea of fulfillment is a key theme in the Matthean story. The birth of Jesus is rooted in the stories of the Hebrew Bible. Careful observers (like the wise men) would not be surprised by the events. Rather, Israel's history seems to point to the coming of this child. From the settings and actions of the characters to the multiple citations from prophetic texts, the story is deeply rooted in what has come before, and is an expected consequence of it. The way the story is told shows the reader not only that the events were expected, but that they were (in retrospect) obvious.

In Luke's Gospel, the account of the birth (chapters one and two) is quite different. Central to the Lukan story are images of the improbable and the unexpected. It opens with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and elderly, barren couple. This is a familiar image from the Hebrew Bible, and like earlier accounts ends in the miraculous and unexpected conception and birth of a child. When told by the angel that he and Elizabeth would have a child, Zechariah's first reaction is disbelief, "I am and old man, and my wife is getting on in years" (Luke 2:18). We're reminded of Sarah, overhearing Abraham and his (divine) visitors speaking of their future child, "I have grown old, and my husband is old" (Gen 18:12). Neither, at first, believes that it can happen.

The events of the Lukan birth narrative point to improbability and unexpectedness. That the Son of God would be born in a stable, to an unknown young girl, is shocking in itself. And who does the angel of the Lord choose to tell of this miraculous event? Kings? Priests? Prophets? No. The angel appears to the shepherds guarding their flocks by night. Not to the highest, but to the most lowly. The reversal is predicted in Mary's song, the Magnificat, "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly" (Luke 1:52). At every turn, the birth is presented as unexpected, just opposite of the Matthean story.

What are we to make of these two stories and their differences? Matthew's Gospel tells of the long-foretold coming of the Savior, with attendant wise men and rich treasures. Luke's Gospel shows God working at His most mysterious. The coming of the Savior is improbable and unforeseen--so much so that he was born in a stable. No one came looking for him in the cold stable except the shepherds to whom the birth had been announced. What do these differences reveal about the communities among whom these stories came to be told? Are they self-portraits? Have they written themselves into the story of the birth of Jesus?

Where do we put ourselves in these stories? Are we careful observers, keen for clues to the coming of the Saviour? Or are we going to be just as surprised as everyone by the Saviour's miraculous and unexpected return? Which characters speak to us? Who are we most like and unlike? Most importantly, are we capable of holding on to these stories simultaneously, while resisting the impulse to squish them together?

Holiday Housekeeping!

2007-12-07T10:38:00.001-05:00

We're holding an Open House next Friday (in one week!) and I have lots to do to get ready. There are some small, home improvement projects (like replacing our porch light with a more traditional model) and lots of putting away and straightening up. We still have loads of pictures that need hanging on the wall. We also have a large quilt hanger and really want to start displaying our quilts. So, I should have my work cut out for me in the next seven days!

The end result will be a house that looks much more Lived In, which will be nice. We've got lots of company coming in the weeks to come, so it'll be good to get ready.

Plans for the Season

2007-12-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

Happy Hanukkah!! Last night was the first night of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. You know the story: the Maccabees drive out the foreign oppressors and cleanse the Temple in Jerusalem. They need to rededicate the Temple to the Lord, a ceremony which will require eight days worth of oil for the lamps. They don't have that much, but the begin the ceremony anyway. Miraculously, their insufficient oil supply lasts the eight days and the Temple is cleansed and rededicated! Yeah!!!

This is a great story for many reasons. Chief in my mind is the role of scarcity in our lives and God's answer to it. They didn't have enough oil to finish their rededication ceremony. God saw this and what did he do? Did he miraculously provide rivers of oil--enough to light the world? No. He provided enough to get through the ceremony. God's answer to scarcity is not abundance, but sufficiency. They have enough. In our culture, where so much value is placed on abundance, this is an important lesson!

With the change in the seasons, I've been thinking about sustainability. As we beat back the cold, I'm thinking about both the price and the cost of our lifestyle. I've got an old programmable thermostat that I bought 20 years ago. I've NEVER been able to install it anywhere, but I think It can go in our house now, so I'm going to look into it this week. We're also starting to talk about planting a modest garden in the spring.

Think Green!!

More Snow! Doggie Cold!

2007-12-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday was the church's annual Hanging of the Greens service. It was held in the evening and has beg a big draw for the surrounding communities in years past. I went out Sunday morning to take the dog for her morning outing and was pleasantly surprised by six inches of perfectly-powdery snow. It's been snowing lightly ever since, a beautiful drifting of big, perfect flakes in the air most of the day.

It's also been quite cold. We bought that film you put on your windows and blow-dry. Our upstairs is quite a bit colder than downstairs, so we're weather-proofing it a bit. Since she's an indoor dog now, Baby has not developed a winter coat, which mean she get a bit cold on out outings. Kristen's looking into buying or making a jacket for her. She seems content to wear clothes. Kristen took her for a test walk yesterday with a t-shirt on (the dog, not the wife).

Snow, Wonderful Snow!

2007-11-07T09:38:00.000-05:00

We've had some flurries over the past two days. Nothing serious, but a harbinger of things to come! Erie got 5 inches and places to the west of us got more than that. The Canisteo Valley (where Arkport lies) is not really in the Lake Effect Snow zone. That's more to the west of us. Apparently, we get bitter-cold winds from Canada screaming down upon us. Nice!

Brrrr...

2007-10-31T09:41:00.000-04:00

We had our first hard frost on Monday. I took the dog out in the morning and everything was coated with a thick layer of shimmery and spiky frost. When I scraped the windows of the car, I really had to work to get through it. Since Monday, we've had smaller frosts. Winter's definitely coming! I hope we get snow in time for Thanksgiving; my family's coming up from Virginia and would love a white Thanksgiving.

At the moment, we're trying to do some home improvement projects and I'm trying to kick-start some guitar projects that I have. I'm hampered by lack of some tools, but I'm trying to improvise. I may need to get a drill press, which is a must-have for some luthier projects. My main project at the moment is my Stratocaster. It's mostly in parts and in need of a drill press to proceed. I'll keep you posted.

Rain, Rain

2007-10-24T09:51:00.000-04:00

It rained all day yesterday. It's a good thing, as we need the rain. It did put a damper on a visit from Kristen's parents. Still, a good time was had by all. Our dog, Baby, doesn't like to go out in the rain.

My mom's visiting this week. As a home improvement project, we're hemming some curtains and installing new rods downstairs. We we doing lots of sprucing-up in anticipation of Monday's home visit. The place is looking better all the time. I still need to install more orange Halloween lights on the porch.

We're not buying any candy until next week, otherwise it'll all get eaten.

Home Visit Tomorrow

2007-10-21T20:27:00.000-04:00

The people from the country are coming tomorrow to look over our home. We're in the process of being certified as foster and/or adoptive parents in the county. We're taking classes this fall and the home visit is part of that. We're cleaning up and making the place more presentable. I'm looking forward to their visit; we know the people who are coming and like them.

Indian Summer

2007-10-18T11:18:00.000-04:00

Fall may have fallen, but summer's holding on! We've had some wonderfully warm days recently. Not hot, mind you, just pleasantly sunny.

We've been having company lately. A few weeks ago we hosted friends from Virginia who came to see us. This weekend my Mother arrives for a visit. It's great to have company. This is Fall Festival Season in Western New York, so there are different events in small WNY towns every weekend. It's apple season, as well, which adds to the fun. We cut our lawn this week, hopefully for the last time this year!

The dog has discovered that she can just jump over the baby gates we had blocking the entrances to the kitchen. Now we can't keep here there at night. We could lock her up on the laundry room (which has a proper door) but we're letting her roam free for the moment. It's been working fine, but she does come in and wake us up around six o'clock each morning. I take her out and feed her and she lets Kristen sleep for a few more hours before she wants to go for walkies.

We've started decorating the house for Halloween. We got some light-up bats and orange strings of lights. We'll take some pics. More soon!

Fall has Fallen

2007-09-20T14:35:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I haven't posted since August. I'll try to do better!. Life in Arkport is grand. The seasons are beginning to change. It's still in the seventies in the afternoons, but it's getting colder and colder at night. On Sunday morning it was 38 degrees! It's fabulous.

I've been doing some visiting this week. Coming from a community with no expectations of pastoral visitation to a community with high expectations has been a wake-up for me. I'm getting out there more and more. Our church has begun its planning for the Christmas season -- the Hanging of the Greens is only 10 weeks away! Ack! We gotta get cracking! I'm hoping that Christmas at Arkport UMC is an opportunity to really reach out into the community with a welcoming spirit.

Baby continues to enjoy life in her new family, and we love having her. I generally take her out for her morning constitutional, so i get to face those morning temperatures first-hand. Brrrrr... She's a great dog.

New Baby in the House!

2007-08-29T09:29:00.000-04:00

Well... not a baby, exactly, but a dog named Baby! Life happens sometimes and this week we got a dog. We'd planned on getting one eventually, but were going to get a cat first. Baby is about a year-and-a-half old. She's a black lab-looking mixed breed. For the past year she's been living on our friend's farm. He rescued her after being abused and abandoned as a puppy.

She's very people-focused, likes to be in the middle of things. We're laying down House Rules (e.g. stay off the people furniture, no people food) and trying to enforce them. Kristen loves having a walking partner. When she gets a job, I may bring Baby to the office with me. We've been taking her on car trips. She's not used to it, but is getting better.

More Adventures with Baby to come!

Time Flies

2007-08-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

We had a great week with my Mom, sister and nephews. The weather was all over the place. It was so cold when they got here that they had to go buy warmer clothes. By the time they left, it was boiling. That's part of the excitement of Western New York.

We took the boys swimming at Stony Brook State Park, where you swim in a carefully-controlled dammed river. The water there is usually quite cold. It was great. We went to a friend's farm, where the boys got to see horses, goats, bunnies and other things. We also went to the Corning Museum of Glass, which was very cool.

Visitors Expected

2007-08-21T11:00:00.000-04:00

My mom, sister and two nephews are coming into town today. We're excited about showing them the sights. They'll be taking an overnight trip to Niagara Falls. It's cool and rainy now, but should be hot and summery by week's end. We want to take the boys swimming at Stony Brook State Park if it's warm enough (though the water will be freezing, no matter what!).

I'm trying to decide whether or not to go to Homecoming in Annapolis this year. It's the 20th anniversary of my graduation. which means extra fun at Homecoming. I do need to be back by Sunday morning, however, which limits my time to Friday night through Saturday afternoon. It might not be worth it.

Church has been going well. I'm starting a short-term Bible study on the Book of Jonah in September. Two seminary friends and I are working on a translation that I hope to have finished before I begin the study.

Lawn Care, Continued...

2007-08-10T20:26:00.001-04:00

Well, I finally know how long it takes to mow my lawn in one go: about two hours. I got interrupted mid-mow a few weeks ago, and today was the first chance I've had to get back to it. It's been alternating between rain and sun all this time, so it was quite a lawn. There are places where it's mostly weeds, but it's all the same height right this moment.

My lawn mower (the one that comes with the parsonage) is not the mightiest cutter in the world, unlike my new weed whacker (q.v.). I have to nurse it along a bit. I think there a part or two missing. I downloaded all manner of manuals today for the mower and engine and am going to do a bit of preventative maintenance. I bet the air filter, for example, has never been changed. It feels good being handy.

For some reason, we have a single rhubarb plant in the backyard. It may be the last vestige on an old garden. I mowed over it today. Kristen's allergic to rhubarb and it looked pretty dodgy, anyway. I avoided mowing over two small toads in the yard. I didn't really stop for the countess crickets and the like. I draw the line at vertebrates. Well... I did pause for a few proper grasshoppers. One was pale green, another dark brown, and a third was a beautiful red-brown. I didn't mow them over.

We've got a good-sized crabapple tree in the back yard. When mowing over the fallen apples, it smells nice and apple-y. Mmmmmm...

Sad News: No Baby

2007-08-06T09:50:00.000-04:00

It's been over a week since I last posted and it's been pretty crazy. We got the call Sunday night/Monday morning that our birth mother was in labor. She delivered a healthy baby boy at 4:45am on Monday. We packed up the cars and caravaned to Alexandria (an epic journey in itself).

On Tuesday morning, we went to the hospital to see the mother and meet the baby. When we got there, she told us that she had changed her mind and couldn't give us the baby. It seems that, after the baby was born, the birth father and the mother's family stepped up with promises of support. It was very disappointing. We knew it could happen, but thought things would go differently. Kristen was very upset by this, just another in a long chain of loss.

So, we came home to Arkport baby-less, wondering what to do next. We've gotten through the lion's share of the standard adoption paperwork, which means we won't have to do it again! That's a blessing. Still, we'd rather have the baby!

Busy Day

2007-07-26T18:24:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy day. I had my annual interview with my District Superintendent in Olean. I was able to go early and have a yummy lunch at the Beef & Barrel with a pastor friend in the area. The meeting went well.

It's been alternating sun and rain for the past week, so things have been growing like mad. That means I needed to mow the lawn (well. the front lawn). My neighbors all have great lawns. We bought a line trimmer, which is essential, but I think we may need an edger, too. We'll see. I know it's not a competition, but my next-door neighbor has a sweet lawn. Ah well...

Kristen's been cleaning up and putting away the house in anticipation of a visit with our social worker tomorrow morning. The SW will look over the house and interview Kristen and me about parenting stuff. Adoption is kind of like doing your taxes, getting a mortgage, interviewing for a job and going on a blind date, all rolled up into one.

Finally, It's Official!

2007-07-25T16:14:00.000-04:00

We went to the DMV and got our New York driver's licenses. New York takes your identity seriously, and you need to provide many ironclad proofs of identity to get a license. I had my US passport, my original Social Security card, and my Virginia driver's license. That was enough, apparently. I couldn't register my car, since I didn't know the odometer reading. I'll do that tomorrow or Friday. Fun, fun, fun!

Actually, the DMV in Hornell is pretty cute. It's in the old country courthouse building. They had us in and out in a pretty short time.

Getting Our House in Order

2007-07-20T11:35:00.000-04:00

We got the first huge batch of paperwork out yesterday--financial data, personal histories, etc... Soon we expect the next batch to arrive, including fingerprint cards for our criminal background checks.

In the meantime, we're getting the house more organized, which included unpacking and organizing the as-yet-unpacked junk. We've decided, for example, not to unpack 100% of our (my) books. We've got some bookcases put together and we're going to fill them with a selection from out collection. We'll rotate things in and out periodically.

I just assembled a piece of IKEA furniture on which to put our huge TV (parting gift from my mother). Then I had to hook up the cable, DVD, amplifier and speakers. Whew!

The saga continues!

The Joys of Yardwork

2007-07-18T11:26:00.000-04:00

I mowed the lawn yesterday. It's the first sizable lawn I've mowed since 1983. It was pretty cool. I hated doing it as a kid, but this time wasn't so bad. Actually, I'll bet that Kristen mowed over half of it, so I guess I should say "I mowed half the lawn yesterday." It was starting to look a bit shaggy, and we didn't want the neighbors to give us the eye!

We needed to do some trimming, so we went and bought a Craftsman weed whacker. It's gas-powered and TONS of fun! Kristen loves it, as well. We were contemplating a sensible, petite, electric trimmer, but we have a big house. If we added in the price of a 100-foot extension cord, it was close to the gas model. We have no regrets!

Adoption paperwork is taking up our time this week, plus getting the house more presentable for a home visit.

New Baby on the Horizon?

2007-07-17T07:05:00.000-04:00

I's been too long since I've posted. Many things have been going on that are very exciting. Kristen and I are settling into Arkport nicely. It's a totally different way of life that the hustle and bustle of Northern Virginia. I've got to mow the grass today, something I haven't done since 1983!! This morning, at 6:45, it was 52 degrees! Take that, DC!!

The big news is on the adoption front. We've been approached by a woman who would like us to adopt her baby. She's a friend-of-a-friend and has heard about our difficulties. It's all very sudden and wonderful. We met her face-to-face last week and are moving ahead at full speed. The catch is that she's eight months pregnant! Normally, this process takes months and months (often over a year), but this one's going to take much less.

We're expediting the paperwork as much as possible, but some things can only be rushed so much. If the baby arrives before it's all done, we can take temporary legal custody until it is. The catch is that the baby can't leave Virginia! Kristen may need to go and live with my mom for a few weeks while things are sorted out. We'll see how it goes. It's happening crazy-fast!

With all the last-minute adoption preparations, we decided that we could not afford, time-wise, to go on the mission trip to the Navajo. That was disappointing--for us and for our friends on the team--but the decision was really a no-brainer.

So, we're filling out forms and deciding on baby names.

Internet At Last!!

2007-07-02T15:44:00.001-04:00

We got hooked up to the Internet this afternoon, so this is my first post in about a week. We arrived in Arkport, New York, safely on Thursday evening. The truck was unloaded in about an hour by a stalwart team of volunteers. Since then, we've been going through boxes and trying to put our house in order, so to speak.

My first Sunday at Arkport UMC went well. I preached two services in the morning.
The people have been wonderful and the weather has been nice and cool (47 degrees this morning!).

More very soon!

Transitions

2007-06-25T18:48:00.000-04:00

I preached my last sermon at Saint James yesterday. It got a little emotional at points, but it went very well. My prayer is that things at Saint James continue along the path they've been on for the past year. It's going to be exciting. Now my energies are focused on packing and getting ready for this week's move to New York.

It's general practice in Arkport for the pastor to use a P.O.Box for mail delivery. The parsonage doesn't even have a mailbox. But, since I need to be there to get a P.O.Box, I don't have one. That means I'm unable to give my new address to folks like my bank, credit card companies, etc... It's a little frustrating. I have now idea how long it will take us to get phone, Internet and cable TV established. Not too long, I hope.

Gotta go, must pack...

Moving Day Approaching

2007-06-22T09:17:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I hope to be doing so much more often. I want to start using this blog to keep friends and family up-to-date on what going on in my life.

This week, we're getting ready to move to Arkport, New York, where I've been appointed as Pastor of Arkpoprt United Methodist Church. It's sad to leave Saint James, where I've been for the past eight years, but God is doing something new!

Right now, Kristen and I are adrift in a sea of boxes. We're packing up for this week's move. More details to come, stay tuned...

Article About Our Trip in Local Paper

2007-01-16T09:43:00.000-05:00

This article appeared in the Chattanooga Times Free Press the first Saturday we were in town:

Saturday, January 06, 2007

A Ministry Education
Wesley Theological Seminary students learning urban ministry at St. Andrews Center

By Clint Cooper Staff Writer

Eight students from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., are in Chattanooga trying to soak up the how-tos of cross-cultural urban ministry.

The urban immersion is a requirement of students seeking a Master of Divinity degree at the school, but the two-week local placement is new, according to the Rev. Mike Feely, director of St. Andrews Center.

"It’s not as much learning about a place as it is about cooperative models of ministry," he said. "We’re not as big as Atlanta or D.C., but it’s a place to sink your teeth into."

St. Andrews Center, a former Highland Park United Methodist Church that is now an urban community center, hosts 16 ecumenical ministries and people who speak more than 20 language groups.

More than 700 people worship in the center and more than 1,200 come through it in a given week, Mr. Feely said.

The students in the urban immersion program range in age from 24 to 53, come from various faith traditions and have a variety of post-degree career plans. The seminarians are learning "how to have the church work outside itself," said Lory Cantin, 53, pastor of Solomons United Methodist Church in Solomons Island, Md.

"We’re being intentional about working with other ministries, about learning how to partner," said Yvette L. Twiggs, who is working with the start-up Temple of Healing Waters Church in Herndon, Va.

During their time in Chattanooga, the students are spending time with the core congregations who worship at St. Andrews Center; participating in discussions and reflections with urban ministers, planners and visionaries ; meeting neighboring black and Hispanic families; and observing and investigating social-service providers and others who provide services or make decisions in the urban area.

They are learning how to relate urban ministry to, among other things, grant writing, foundational giving, economic development, storytelling and the arts.

Mr. Feely, a graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary, said St. Andrews Center has hosted individual pastors and interns from Sewanee Theological Seminary and Tennessee Wesleyan University who wanted to learn more about urban ministry, respectively, but has never provided a program such as the immersion.

Other Wesley Seminary students may take immersions in areas such as South Africa, Korea and Arizona, or they may design their own, the seminarians said.

All of the immersions allow the students "to look at a realworld range of models" and give them "some different ideas how to reach out and work with people," Mr. Feely said.

On the last day of their stay, the Chattanooga guests will visit the Upper Sand Mountain Parish, a United Methodist cooperative rural ministry in northeast Alabama.

A rural area, with often dwindling congregations, crumbling buildings and a lack of funds, can be quite similar to an urban setting, Mr. Feely said.

"They have some real commonalities," he said.

The program participants said they value the experiences they’re getting.

Linda Morton, 44, an intern at Arlington United Methodist Church in Arlington, Va., said too often in ministry people get put in boxes.

"The focus should be on Jesus, not on denominations," she said.

Mark Erhlichmann, 49, an intern at Christ Lutheran Church of the Deaf in Silver Spring, Md., said he hoped to gain "the ability to improve understanding" in urban ministry and the importance of finding a common theme.

While pulling together the ministry immersion program was more difficult than he expected, Mr. Feely said he hoped it will continue in the coming years.

"It reflects St. Andrews’ real ecumenical spirit," he said.

E-mail Clint Cooper at ccooper@timesfreepress.com

Still Catching Up!

2007-01-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

It's been three days since I've posted -- I'm still recovering from the trip. Near the end of the immersion, people started to fall prey to various ailments. I was feeling fine (and feeling a bit smug about it) until Friday night. Mike Feely had gotten a stomach bug on Thursday and I came down with it on Friday. It was not fun.

Friday night was an eleven-hour endless night. I went to bed early, because I felt so miserable, but was never able to actually sleep. By the time I gave up at 6:30 Saturday morning, I think I'd managed to get about three hours of fitful sleep.

So, with just a few hours sleep -- and still feeling a bit dodgy -- I got in the car for the marathon drive home. I dropped Linda Morton off at the airport and went to Mike Feely's house to pick up my passenger, Jeanet. She hails from Mexico and does not drive, so it was all me!

We left Chattanooga at nine o'clock in the morning. I dropped Jeanet off at Wesley at eight o'clock that evening. We pretty much drove straight through, making only brief stops for necessities. I managed to stay awake and alert through the lively conversation of Bill Moyers' Genesis: A Living Conversation. I've had the ten-tape audiobook of this awesome PBS series for years and have listened to it often. It's like being a fly on the wall at the best Bible study ever. It kept us on the road all day!

So, I've had a few nights in my own bed and am feeling like myself again.

Urban Research

2007-01-11T19:06:00.000-05:00

We had a great lunch meeting with David Eichenthal from the Community Research Council. They are interested in the future of the mid-sized American city. They are committed to gathering the best data they can, and putting it in the hands of conscientious, well-meaning people with a passion for change. They have been tracking population, employment, economic and social issues and trends in Chattanooga and regionally. Their news is mostly promising. Chattanooga has been able to stem several alarming trends, such as population loss and education. Looking deeper into the statistics, however, they are concerned with those who the statistics leave behind.

Overall education level, for example, is rising. This is coming, however, from an influx of college-educated young people. While this is great -- every city want to attract such people -- what does it say about the people who have been here all along. They are remaining flat or, what is worse, falling behind. Thinking deeply about the data and testing its implications can lead people to make more well-informed decisions about how to change the community for everyone's benefit.

Hearing David talk about trends in American city life, such as the Growth Imperative in American cities, I was reminded of issues in the Detroit of my youth. It's been said that Detroit is the first major American city to die. It had been a ruin for decades. Last year I read Devil's Night and Other True Tales of Detroit by Ze'ev Chafets. It's the story of Detroit's decline from American megalopolis to ghost town. It's a fabulous book.

I was also reminded of the book that I've been reading here in Chattanooga, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Tom Friedman. I've been able to make numerous connections between this book and the urban coalition-building ministry that Mike Feely's doing here in Chattanooga. In the fast past future (i.e. the present) we rise and fall by our ability to make connections. This is the heart of the Saint Andrew's Center. I highly recommend this book.

Community Economic Development, Oh My!

2007-01-10T20:35:00.000-05:00

We spent the morning with Steve Corbett of the Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College on the top of Lookout Mountain, Georgia. It was a great meeting. Steve walked us through the basics of community building. His experience is largely international, but his work at the Center applies to foreign and domestic situations. We discussed different models of poverty--different ways in which it saps the strength of individuals and communities.

"What causes poverty?" Steve asked us at the beginning. Our answer to that question will shape our response to poverty. Is it a matter of [poor] personal choices or is there a systemic component? Some of each? How we tackle the issue determines what we will do to ameliorate it. Our discussion ranged into theological waters as we discussed Christian responses to poverty. We all want to help, our Christian hearts desire to relieve suffering, but can we actually do more harm than good when we reach out to help?

Steve emphasized (repeatedly) that the way we offer help is just as important as the help that we offer. Through the way we offer assistance, we can isolate and devalue those who seek to lift up. We must take care with our process as well as our product.

Overall, a very informative session. Steve offers an online development class, which I'd love to take. The next time it's offered I'll be in licensing school, so I may have to catch a later course.

In the afternoon, we visited with Bethlehem Center, in downtown Chattanooga. We met with the Director, Lurone Jenkins, who shared his experience in this vibrant United Methodist community center. They run after school academic programs, athletic programs and leadership training for young people in the adjacent public housing. They also partner with churches to develop their own programs to lift up at-risk youth and show them the love of Christ. The work they're doing seems to be faithful and effective.

WOW!

2007-01-09T16:08:00.000-05:00

I've had quite a day so far. We went this morning to the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, which serves three meals a day to the city's homeless population. They've expanded their ministry into providing health care, life skills, a thrift store, etc... We ate lunch there, then we went to work moving a bunch of donated dry goods from a small storage room to another storage room.

After the kitchen, we went to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga campus and met with the minister of the Wesley Foundation. We had a great discussion about the challenges facing campus ministries today.

After that, we went to The Sanctuary, an Episcopal ministry that helps women who come from addiction, homelessness, prostitution and incarceration transition to stable, permanent lives. They provide free housing, rehabilitation counseling, health care, job skill training, etc... to women for a period of at least one year and up to two years. They have room for seven women in their housing and the women begin working in the greeting card business run by the Sanctuary. They've had some successes and some women who have relapsed.

We did get to meet four of the women who have been living in the shelter and working, going to school, and getting their lives back in order. We chatted with the women for ten minutes or so, learning a piece of their stories. I must say, that of all the amazing things we've seen here, these women might be at the top of my list. As I was in the facility, I wished that my wife could have the opportunity to volunteer with these women. It seems like a place where she would have a wonderful experience.

We've got a little downtime here at the Saint Andrew's Center (where I'm writing this). I'm going to look in on the group of Guatemalan and Mexican children in a few minutes.

Monday, Monday!

2007-01-09T07:53:00.000-05:00

Today we drove up to Knoxville, to the Holston Conference Center. We met with Jim Sessions, who had been [hyper]active in social justice issues for the last thirty years. He spoke with us about grass-roots advocacy and coalition building around labor and children's issues. He currently works for the Children's Defense Fund, and told us about some exciting things they are working on. In February, a bill will be introduced in Congress to guarantee health coverage for all children in the United States--documented or not--until they are nineteen years old.

I immediately began thinking about ways I could get involved in making this happen. Two things are needed: the votes are needed in Congress and the President must not veto the bill, if it passes. I've done some personal letter writing to my representatives in Congress. I've started wondering about doing that on a larger scale. I'm going to find out what's required to get a petition going. If I want to take a page from Mike Feely's book, I'll start looking for groups with whom I can partner on this issue. Jim Sessions recommended local health concerns (doctors, nurses, etc...) as potential partners, as well as other churches. I've got good relations with our neighbor church, maybe I need to reach out when I get home.

We also spent a few hours with the Bishop of the Holston Conference, James E. Swanson, Sr. and three District Superintendents in the conference. We had a rousing conversation about preaching, life in ministry and what we might face as pastors in the twenty-first century. Bishop Swanson told us of the exciting things going on in the Holston Conference--he made it sound pretty enticing, I must admit.

Lots of time in the van today, two-and-a-half hours each way. When we finally got back to Camp Lookout, we were tired and hungry. Fortunately, an excellent dinner was waiting for us (I can't seem to get enough mashed potatoes). I'm getting ready to turn in for the night. Tomorrow, we're starting our day serving in a local soup kitchen, followed by meetings in the afternoon.

Sightseeing and Stuff in Town

2007-01-07T08:29:00.000-05:00

We spent Saturday wandering about Chattanooga. It's a lovely little town and we had terrific weather. We've only been here for five days, but Mike had connected us with so many movers-and-shakers in town that we ran into three of them on our walk through the downtown area. Adera Causey caught up with us on the Walnut Street bridge. She pointed us in the direction of great ice cream (Clumpeys!). Where we were talking with Adera, Chiquita Bass pulled up, with her two daughters, and greeted us. Walking back over the bridge, we ran into one of the people we'd shared dinner with on Wednesday night. He and a friend were playing (guitar & harmonica) and singing. They were pretty good. It's a small world, and we seem to be pretty well-connected Chattanoogians, even after just five days.

This morning (Sunday) I'm worshiping at First-Centenary UMC's contemporary service, The Vine. After that, I'll grab some lunch and check out the Chattanooga Valley Railroad Museum. Tonight we are relocating our living quarters from Tennessee Temple University to Camp Lookout, on nearby Lookout Mountain. This coming week, we'll be relaxing at Camp Lookout and coming back to the Saint Andrew's Center daily to continue our work.

Grants, etc...

2007-01-06T09:19:00.000-05:00

Friday was busy and productive! We spent the morning meeting with Angie Sledge from the Center for Non-Profits. Angie gave us a general overview of writing grant proposals. There is a lot of money out there, if you know how to get it. Angie knows, and now so do we (a little bit). It was a fantastic class. I wish she could teach it at Saint James. We were asked to come up with an idea that we might use for the practical parts of the class. I used Miriam's Gift. Searching through databases of grant-funding agencies, I found lots of places that might fund Miriam's Gift. We might need to actually put Angie's class to work finding funding.

The grant class highlighted something that's run through my entire experience in Chattanooga: the need to forge links to other passionate individuals/organizations who share your vision. This builds synergy, avoids duplication of effort, cuts down competition and shows the world (i.e. funding agencies) that you are serious about your project/mission. This kind of broad coalition-building is exactly what Rev. Mike Feely had done at the Saint Andrews Center.

We spent Friday afternoon talking with a few local pastors and meeting with one of the people pushing for the creation of a new homeless center downtown. This, apparently, is an issue of some controversy -- it's come up in several of our discussions. The neighborhood is wary of the center, thinking that it will attract the homeless. What perhaps they don't realize is that the homeless are already these (I had dinner with them last Wednesday) and the center is a step in getting them on their feet and OUT of the neighborhood!

We wrapped up the day at Rev. Mike's house, enjoying some fine barbeque (watch out for the HOT sauce, Yvette!) and meeting some friends to discuss storytelling in ministry. A good time was had by all!

Long Day, but Fruitful

2007-01-04T19:16:00.000-05:00

We've had a long day today, meeting with a variety of folks from different sectors. We started with some strategic planning folks, who consult on development projects for cities. We got our first look at the political side of things. Our discussion got a little heated, but was very good.

Education was a theme for the day. We met with people passionate about early-childhood literacy issues. School-access issues dominated the afternoon and evening, with a panel discussion about special issues confronting the growing Hispanic community. Chattanooga is home to growing Mexican and Guatemalan communities, and they face issues regarding literacy and access to the education system.

Access is something we (I) tend to take for granted. For non-English-speaking communities, the ability for parents (who may not be literate, even in Spanish) to navigate "the system" is extremely limited. How are we, as the church, to respond? What can we do to change the futures of entire families? It begins, I've learned, with the children. It does not end there, however. Getting parents more education (language, job skills, etc...) can get them more involved in their children's education.

Putting together coalitions of people committed to changing their city means finding committed, passionate individuals. Meeting the people we've met so far, I'd say that's the sine qua non. If you find those people, other things fall into place. What is my passion? What is my community's? What is yours?

Coalition-Building and the Sugar Bowl

2007-01-04T07:48:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was a busy day. We met with a series of people involved in the revitalization of Chattanooga. We lunched with a group of pastors who work to improve their city. We also met with the presidents of two large foundations who have been steering change in Chattanooga for decades. The reason for these meetings: to learn about coalition-building. A critical part of starting and maintaining a vital social-service ministry is being part of a larger group that shares the same vision.

Here at the Saint Andrews Center, Rev. Mike Feely has done just that. He has forged partnerships with all kinds of local agencies, churches, foundations, etc... to do the work that the SAC is doing. It's pretty impressive.

We dined at a local United Methodist Church that holds a Wednesday night supper and Bible study for the area's homeless population. There were about fifty homeless folks along with the eight seminarians enjoying a wonderful chicken dinner. I passed the night with my neighbors talking about the upcoming LSU/Notre Dame match-up in the Sugar Bowl (LSU pounded the Irish, it turned out). After eating we had a quick Bible study, working through a few verses of Philippians. The whole evening was wonderful.

Spiritual Disciplines while on this Immersion Trip

2007-01-03T08:26:00.000-05:00

This Immersion Trip is all about serving the needs of marginalized communities: inner-city, rural, immigrant, homeless, uneducated, etc... Every day, we are meeting people who are changing the world from the bottom up. To go along with our daily activities, I've chosen a few spiritual disciplines to do on this trip that match its goal.

I'm reading the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church. These are the official statements of the church on matters of social policy. They state the church's position on such issues at conservation, energy use, child labor, human sexuality, gambling, and the Internet, just to name a few.

At the same time that I'm reading the Social Principles, I'm also reading the Book of Isaiah. I hope that these two readings will fit will the the things I'll be doing each day.

Arrived! Safe and Sound

2007-01-03T08:17:00.000-05:00

It was an exciting day in the car yesterday. I left the house before 9:00am and arrived in Chattanooga around 8:00pm. I ran into two separate rush hours (Washington and Knoxville). I listened to a lot of music on my MP3 player (the radio on my car is starting to go). After Knoxville, the batteries died on the MP3 player and it was me singing to myself to stay awake. Lots of bad road food. Ug.

When I got to the Saint Andrew's Center, there was a presentation already underway. Andy Mendonsa, the founder of Widow's Harvest Ministries, was telling of his experiences. Twenty years ago, Andy found that God was calling him to serve the widows of his community. In turn, he discovered their deep, dependent faith in God and their power as partners in prayer.

Andy has gone back to the Bible and found that the "office" of widow in Scripture is one of prayer. Rather than being overlooked and forgotten, they must be cared for (or course) and honored as valuable members of the faith community. It was a great presentation. We'll be seeing Andy again today.

Hello 2007

2007-01-01T00:33:00.000-05:00

It's officially the New Year. I hope this one brings more peace and less suffering to all the people in the world. "War is over, if you want it."

Hello, world...

2006-12-31T18:59:00.000-05:00

Well, this is my first post! In two days I'm leaving on a cross-cultural immersion trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee. I've decided to use this blog as my journal of this event. More details to follow!