Disaster Area

McLaren & Grenz

2005-03-14T20:49:00.000-08:00

McLaren & Grenz
Originally uploaded by drdjp11.

The only photo I have of Stan Grenz from the San Diego Conference. Stan was patiently biding his time while Brian kicked off the proceedings. I love the look on Brian's face here.

New Digs

2004-12-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

As threatened a few posts ago, I'll be moving over to Typepad, thanks to Adam of Pomomusings and the buy one give one free Typepad offer. The new blog is up, but I don't have time to tweak everything yet, so it's a bit rudimentary, but I'm very excited about the possibilities of a more flexible framework. It will still be called Disaster Area because I really like the name...

Advent Calendar Finale

2004-12-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

The Episcopal Diocese of Washington (DC) and the National Cathedral have been running an online Advent calendar. Each day has been a wonderful surprise. The final item is a nativity scene from Mexico. Each day has a highlighted giving opportunity, the Daily Office readings and a meditation. Here's today's meditation.

So next up: Christmas Day
After that: Boxing Day and front row seats for the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker. Maybe I'll even get pcitures of me all dressed up in my tux.

Over and out.

Merry Christmas Everybody

2004-12-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

It's been a fun year starting blogging so thanks for all the new friends I've made. I look forward to meeting some of you in person over the next year.

As the clock is about to tick over to Christmas Day, I offer a prayer of consolation to the family of Johnny Oates, one time Texas Rangers manager who passed away at 2 am Christmas Eve. Johnny was 58, and died three years after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.

As the clock is ticking over, on a lighter note I'd like to offer you this cast list for a worldwide favorite Christmas movie:

Emma Dreaming, Arthur White, Chris Muss,
Jess Like-Dee, Juan Swee, Hugh Sterno,
Wendy Treetops-Glissen, Anne Chilled-Wren, Liz Anne,
"Two Ears" Laybelle, Cindy Snow,

Emma Dreaming, Arthur White, Chris Musswit,
Avery Chris, Miss Carr, Dai Wright,
Mayor Dazeby, Mary-Anne Bright,
Ann May Hall-York-Rhys, Mrs. B. White.

(courtesy of a Goodies annual from way back when...)

iPod Love

2004-12-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

Here's an insanely brilliant home made iPod mini ad, created by a high school teacher. Here's an article about the background on Adrants. Of course the high school teacher would just love a job in advertising... and he'll probably get it. The ad is beautifully synchronized to the music - the Darling Buds' Tiny Machine. Anyway, check it out - I guaranteee you'll be impressed.
Now, wouldn't it be impressive if we could do church ads that good and that much fun?

A Woman's Position is...

2004-12-22T13:38:00.000-08:00

...in Church Leadership.

Lots going on right now in the emerging church "conversation".

The NJ emergent cohort meeting kicked off a whole conversation on Adam's blog about the (relative) lack of female involvement, then Bill Arnold (who attended that meeting, along with his wife) asks the question "What do you want emergent to be?", particularly who's in and who's out and who gets to decide? Just for reference, you can always see the OFFICIAL VERSION of the emergent vision on the emergent village website...

But it seems like nobody can be bothered to pay that any attention. As for me, I think it's a great working definition. Why not let the conversation take place around that? I would ask:
What's missing, if anything?
What's no longer true or relevant, if anything?
What should be emphasized?
How far have we come in living into this ideal?
What "entities" do we need to further the cause?

Then up pops Jenell's review of A Generous Orthodoxy, looking at it from the point of view of female involvement. To be fair, a substantial part of the book is a compendium of influences on Brian, so history is what it is. It's perhaps not remarkable that the female influences on his spiritual journey are much fewer and farther between than those of men. It's been a while since I read it, but I know I would be somewhat blind to what's missing too.

Prompted by the review to look back at my own spiritual formation, I see that in my own experience women have been incredibly influential in my spiritual development. Without my wife I would never have even got started. Women have been far more influential than men actually, but then I've never been one of the backslapping, poker playing, beer and cigars kind of guy. Well, maybe the beer part ;)

Jenell writes:

You can only be formed by that which you're exposed to, and you can only cite or write about who you read and hear. Which books are in our libraries, who is on our blogroll (so many men's blogs link almost exclusively to other men!), who preaches, innovates, and makes decisions in our churches? Who feels entitled to express their opinions publically, or to speak in public?

That's an interesting note about blogrolls. I just did a quick scan of mine and it's remarkably even. Of the ones I read religiously though, a large preponderance are female (Maggi, Jen, Karen H, Karen W, Dylan). No, I'm not looking for a medal. If anything it's simply a testament to the fact that there are very articulate women out there with something to say, and they should be listened to.

Actually, that reminds me, I need to get Rachelle's blog on there too. Her article on why it's tough to be a Woman in Ministryshould be required reading and study for, well, everybody with pretensions to emergent leadership.

Gmail and emergentYS

2004-12-20T13:14:00.000-08:00

Whew, finally tracked down a gmail invite, thus the new Gmail link on the right.

As for the other, I registered for the emergentYS conference in San Diego in February, so I hope to see a few of the people I only know electronically so far. And I must say that the YS website and registration process is, um, absolute crap. Given the tech-savviness in the emergent world it's particularly distressing that the process should look and feel like it might have on the web in 1995 using Mosaic.

And then there's the fact that you can't register as an individual - you have to be on some larger church account (and the system throws a real wobbly if you try to create a duplicate one...)

Oh well, I guess it will probably work OK. Also talked to Karen Ward last week and CotA will be bringing a group of six down, so there'll be at least a few of us from the great Pacific Northwest.

Flight's booked, hotel's booked, registration's paid. Now all I need is a rental car. Anyone interested in a minor road trip diversion while we're down there? (The Taylor guitar factory is just down the road in El Cajon...)

Added Haloscan comments

2004-12-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

Hmm, I didn't realize it would wipe out all previous comments... Oh well, these things happen... At least it gets rid of the awful blogger comment box.

Maybe Typepad wouldn't be a bad idea after all...

Musical Influences Top 10: #10 - Wishbone Ash

2004-12-19T20:02:00.000-08:00

I tried desperately hard to cut my list down to ten and it was next to impossible, so I may cheat a little along the way. Also, I am going to generally try to select influences that are off the beaten path rather than the more common ones. However, I will also point out some common influences that just didn't do it for me. And finally, rather than trying to list them in order of importance (nigh on impossible) I'm going to work in chronological order.

So, that said, let's get to the first (or technically the tenth) one. I was hitting my mid-teens about 1970. As the oldest kid in my family, I didn't really connect with the whole sixties thing - I was too young. My wife, who is a smidge older than me, was into all that sixties stuff. Why? Because she had an older brother and sister. So she's a serious Beatles fan. Me? Not so much. My first serious musical interest was what is now known as classic rock. Back then it was known as just "rock". My first band of choice was Deep Purple, and in fact the first LP (that's Long Play record) I bought was Fireball. Oh, sure, I liked Zeppelin and some of the more popular bands, but I never really cared for the Rolling Stones.

But all this was just laying the foundation.

The first album that really stunned me was Wishbone Ash's Argus. Up to that point Ash were mostly a blues band with twin lead guitars, one feature song (Phoenix from the first album), a weak vocalist and a whole bunch of mediocre blues songs. Somehow, somewhere, out of absolutely nowhere, God blessed the band with an album of pure inspiration. And then right after that, the band dissolved slowly and never came within a million miles of the pinnacle again. It was as if they knew they'd never top this, so why even try?

As the band members said at the time Argus wasn't exactly a concept album, but it did have an overarching theme of weariness with war, especially side 2 (yeah, you used to have to flip those things over in the middle!). Well, what was so great about it?

First, the guitars. Ted Turner and Andy Powell were guitar players with two very different styles and tastes, but here they meshed and complemented each other beautifully. Second, while Martin Turner's (bass player, no relation to Ted) voice was a bit weak for blues, it fit much better with the ethereal lyrics of Argus. Then there was his "lead bass" style. It really sits up front in the mix and he played a lot of lead-like riffs that intertwined beautifully with Andy and Ted's work.

The result was an album with a hint of a theme, decent lyrics and vocals and flat out wall to wall guitar excellence. Of the seven original tracks (let's not sully the album's memory with the "bonus track" added to the first CD release...) six have guitar solos/duets that are so jaw droppingly good that all of them would make my top twenty of all time. The other track is a pretty acoustic ballad that serves as a nice change of pace in the middle of the epic side 2 tracks.

I've been listening to the album a few times this week as I've thought about this list, and it still stands the test of time. It's only reinforced the fact that since forever and a day my favorite guitar track of all time closes the album. Throw Down the Sword is the band's finest hour on its finest album. At six minutes it's hardly a radio friendly track, but it just means the build up to the two minute guitar duet finale is nicely paced. And while Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers featured some stunning dual lead guitar work at times, I don't think anything they ever did matches the power and emotion of Throw Down The Sword.

Top Five of the Year

2004-12-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

OK, so I got my arm twisted to join in Bob Carlton's Best Five posts of the year deal, so here we go (and this was tough...)

I just read through almost my entire output since I started blogging in May (and kudos and thanks once again to Adam Cleaveland for being the inspiration to start...)

First, my first really serious post...
Serious Stuff

Then I'm a huge Ellen Degeneres fan, so this made sense to add in...
On The Other Hand...

It was alt-worship that got me into blogging, so I had to keep this:
Waiting In The Starlight

And the whole PoMo Mojo deal here was a natural:
Mo' Pomo Mojo

And finally, who could leave out the Bishop's visit?
Episcopal Oversight

It's been an amazing experience, so thanks everybody out there :)

Momentary Political Diversion (and pun alert)

2004-12-14T23:30:00.000-08:00

In the recent US election (surely you guys remember?) one of the more interesting side issues was the efforts of MoveOn.org, a Democratic, celebrity fueled political action group. I find it interesting to ponder MoveOn's role in the election. If it was truly as effective as it thinks in persuading people to vote for John Kerry, then without its efforts surely Bush would have won by an even larger margin. Hmmm. However, if, as I suspect, MoveOn actually provoked more of the opposition to vote than it did support, then it clearly is a pointless, self-defeating organization. Also interestingly, it appears to be unable to MoveOn itself... From the article:

"In his house-meeting conference call, Pariser quoted the famous dispatch from French general Ferdinand Foch at the second battle of the Marne in World War I: “My center is giving way, my right is pulled back… Situation excellent. I shall attack.” At those words, fire burned in the eyes of the meetings’ faithful. The troops are rallied, their leaders just have to decide which front to attack next."

And of course, despite that one bright moment in the Second Battle of the Marne, we all know just how successful the French have been in World Wars, or any wars, come to think of it...

Yes, I almost hate to say it (and my friend Paul would be yelling "pun alert, pun alert" at this point), but MoveOn may be well and truly Foched.

Bear with me here - one more time...

2004-12-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

One more plug for the Soulsisters Guide to a very Merry Christmas and an interview over at Jordon Cooper's blog. There's even a really excellent photo of Jen. The arched eyebrow (courtesy of the Joey Tribbiani school of acting?) makes me wonder what nefarious schemes she's dreaming up next...

Toying with Christmas

2004-12-13T19:05:00.000-08:00

As usual life is insanely busy. Last Saturday was the culmination of the toy sale. "Toy sale?" you ask. Well, yeah. I've wanted to try this again for 20 years - we used to do it at our church in Montreal all those years ago (St Barnabas in DDO for anyone that knows Montreal). We'd have all the parish families clear out old toys the kids have grown out of, or don't play with any more, collect them up and sell them. Back then we would load everything in a truck and ship them to a downtown church in one of the poorer neighborhoods and sell the stuff really cheap. All the money we raised went to local charities.

This year I finally remembered early enough to suggest it to a few people and the idea clicked. So that's what we did this fall. Interesting stuff. For the most part people were good about giving us toys in decent shape, but there was a little bit of weeding out the really beat up stuff.

We didn't do the sale at our own church because we're a bit off the beaten track. Instead we did it at a Lutheran church in downtown Kent because it's closer to the Thrift Store that our church runs. The Thrift Store has absolutely no extra space to carry toys, so we needed somewhere close. As usual, the day of the sale crept up on us faster than we would have liked, and we could have used more publicity, but we had a modest flow of traffic. By our official closing time we had sold about half of what we brought (it covered 18 tables set out in the parish hall) and made a modest amount of money. We still had about half of what we started with as we were packing up, though, until a woman came in with a 4 year old boy.

At that point everything was back in boxes ready to give to the local food bank or Goodwill, but we let her look through stuff. As she did, we got talking and she told us about all these families at her church that were single moms with three kids, or other families who had taken in a couple of orphaned nieces. So she ended up taking a van full of stuff with lots of extras for free. The food bank will still get a ton of toys to hand out in the next couple of weeks. My friend Paul has a couple of boys (13 and 10 years old) who had never cleared out any toys ever, and this really encouraged them to dig deep and let go of a lot of stuff. So not only do they feel all warm about it, Paul gets his basement back. How cool is that? Everybody wins...

So it was a lot of work and stress, but it turned out incredibly well in the end. And that's just another lesson God keeps teaching me. But I'm glad big projects are over for the time being.

Musical Influences Top 10: #11 - Glenn Miller

2004-12-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

OK, so it may be cheating to start a top 10 with number 11, but Glenn Miller died about 11 years before I was born, so his influence is mostly posthumous. Well, entirely posthumous to be technically correct.

Born in 1955, my conscious growing up was done entirely in the sixties. We had a behemoth of a stereo system known as a "radiogram", sort of a cross between a record player and a credenza. Looked like furniture, but, hey, it played records too!

My mother was the record fiend, and I think she had three. There was Australian crooner Frank Ifield (Oh, Frank, how "I Remember You"). The second was the Syd Lawrence Orchestra, a Glenn Miller soundalike band, and for the life of me I can't remember what the third one was. Probably the Sound of Music soundtrack.

These three records got heavy airplay at the weekends and so I heard In the Mood, String of Pearls, Moonlight Serenade and Chattanooga Choo Choo a million times over the course of the decade. Then there was the movie, The Glenn Miller Story. Miller was played by the charming Jimmy Stewart who managed to put a shiny smooth gloss on Miller's character. When I first saw it I was too young and naive to realize that the hints of irritable perfectionist that Stewart conveyed were writ much larger in real life.

But oh my God, what wondrous music it was, and remains to this day. The sax and clarinet emphasis that gave Miller that smooth, buttery sound is still recognizable 50 years later in about three notes. The fact that I cut my teeth listening to a British hack Miller cover band doesn't even detract from the memory. It did, however, make finding the original Miller recordings later in life much more rewarding. Who knew there were so many other songs? Who knew the raw material was so much, well, rawer? The other difference was that the Syd Lawrence band was, as far as I remember, 100% instrumental. Finding the vocals of Tex Beneke and the Andrews Sisters later was incredible.

I'm sure my love of instrumental music stems from this early influence. Even now I don't really care too much about lyrics, and certainly my first impression of a new song is invariably how it strikes me musically. Lyrics are for digesting later. Maybe that's why I'm not a big fan of hymns - the melodies are plodding and repetitive and we use the same tune over and over for different hymns. After all, sing one 8.7.7.8.7.7. hymn and you've sung them all. And Miller, if nothing else, was an innovator. Finding a distinctive sound has been a must for commercial success in the music biz through the ages, but he succeeded beyond even his own wildest dreams.

Well, Captain Glenn Miller, lost in an inauspicious airplane accident over the English Channel in December 1944 (conspiracy theories notwithstanding), you made an indelible impression on me decades after your death and I thank you for your contribution to musical ingenuity. Now, if only somebody, anybody, had even thought to encourage me to learn an instrument back then...

All time musical influences top 10

2004-12-10T21:52:00.000-08:00

I was thinking it would be cool to do a retrospective of the year - best this, best that, whatever, and of course music comes to mind. However, I thought that maybe a top ten artists of my life would be a cool thing to do, as any one year's output is so trivial relative to a career's worth of influence. So... let the list begin...

Hold the presses - US Postal Service mangles mail!!!

2004-12-08T16:50:00.000-08:00

Really. I got my six copies (yes, you heard me, I have a lot of real friends too) of the Soulsisters Guide in the mail today and it was a close run thing as to whether all six copies survived intact. It looks like the USPS either thought Al Qaeda had taken to mailing Christmas guides, or some poor overworked sorter went berserk on the package. Maybe both.

Anyway, a fine and spiffy little deal it is. Just make sure you avert Granny's eyes from pages 10 and 11. But people - not only do Jen and Patience send you the 'zine, you also get CHOCOLATE! Not any old run of the mill stuff either - Ghirardelli's. Or maybe I'm just special. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that. Oh well. Now they'll have to send it to everybody.

A few more blogs

2004-12-07T22:50:00.000-08:00

The little flurry of comments reminded me that there are some new blogs I wanted to add to the blogroll, so there they are on the right in their own new category temporarily.

There's some awesome conversation going on out there right now.

Note Jen and her sister's 'zine blog Soulsistersunite. Still time to buy the 'zine to help with Christmas. And even if you miss this year you'll be so far ahead of the game for next year it won't be funny...

Oh well, back to installing the new 40GB drive in my ancient Dell laptop (up from 3GB, woohoo!)

The Empty Manger

2004-12-06T23:32:00.000-08:00

What are you waiting for?

Episcopal Oversight

2004-12-06T22:59:00.000-08:00

Oh, I know you think I'm going to rant about some shenanigans in the good ol' Episcopal Church, don't you?

But you'd be wrong. Yesterday was our once in a blue moon (well, too long at least) visit from our Diocesan Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent W. Warner. He's been the Diocesan Bishop just slightly longer than we've lived here, so he's the only one we've known in this neck of the woods. Vincent has been through a lot of ups and downs the last few years. Let's not dwell on the details, but there's lots of injuries and illnesses (including one pretty close to fatal), a divorce and a remarriage just to name three fairly tumultuous things. After a couple of years of not being at the top of his game, I'm really pleased to see him back on form (personally, I think retirement is in sight, and it's given him a renewed sense of purpose to finish strong.)

Anyway, it being the feast day of St Nicholas the next day (today as I post), we usually have a parishioner dress as St Nicholas for effect (definitely not Santa Claus.) But with the Bishop coming we didn't do it this year. No, instead, the Bishop dressed as St Nicholas and delivered the sermon in character. Now, how cool was that? Really, he had an awesome beard and talked (among other things) about how the church was divided in his day and reconciliation. It might have been a bit on the "can't we all just get along?" side, but it was still a worthwhile message well delivered.

We had confirmation, too, of course, (why else do Bishops visit?) and one of the confirmands was an incredible 15 year old young lady, daughter of friends, for whom my wife was confirmation mentor. That whole apostolic succession thing gets you right *here* (or is it #here#?).

When the confirmation liturgy was concluded the Bishop asked if anyone wanted to come up for reaffirmation. Can you say "Anglican altar call"? About 30 or more people (astonishingly enough including myself) went up, thereby extending the service by an extra 45 minutes. It ran over two hours in total (normally shooting rampage territory for us), yet nobody complained (well, none that I heard...)

One of these days I'll write up my favorite rant against the altar call and describe why this was very different (and why I love parenthetical comments so much)...

Teenage Life

2004-12-04T23:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I just wrote that I don't write many paragraph and a link posts, but here's one. As I have mentioned, I do a lot of volunteer youth work. many of the teens I work with are amazing, awesome people. And you may alreay know this, but teens don't blog, they Xanga. Two of my very favorite are two young ladies, each extraordinary in her own way. Here are their lives:

Meet Sarah and Emma.

The story so far...

2004-12-04T23:36:00.000-08:00

With Maggi Dawn's blogiversary today it got me thinking about how I started. The origins go back to my parish priest asking me in February about starting a contemporary service aimed at the twentysomething demographic. I work with a lot of people in that age group, and run our church's contemporary band, so it's something I thought was worthwhile. We set ourselves a goal of researching some of the local churches that have done this. We already knew of Church of the Apostles, and had provided some assistance. However, we wanted to look further afield. '

One of the places we had heard about was Mars Hill, so I set out to find out what I could. That involved a web search, of course, and I stumbled upon a post on Adam Cleaveland's PoMoMusings blog. Well, I'd heard of blogs, but never really bothered to find out much about them. Apart from the really interesting content (a nice surprise) I was really struck by the network. Also by the emergent church conversation, including a lot of discussion on the fallout from the Emergent conventions which I had just missed. So I ended up reading Dan Kimball's books and a few other, including a few Brian McLaren books (which I promptly set aside until September).

The other big thread emanating from this discovery was alternative worship. From Adam's blog I checked out his blogroll and found Maggi Dawn and Jonny Baker to be great resources and inspiration. Maybe it's just the British angle working for me, but I am always grateful when I don't have to filter out the overly Evangelical tone of much US material (see, I should have read Brian McLaren sooner...) I bought Jonny's book (but here's a hint Jonny - make the text on the CD copyable!)

Somewhere in there I researched the free blog tools and as Google had just taken over Blogger, it seemed easy and reputable, so hey, here I am.

I have a really hard time writing daily, simply because of my work schedule, but I've run about three posts a week, which seems reasonable and sustainable. The other thing that mitigates against more frequent posting is that I have a hard time sticking to a simple paragraph and link format that many do. I think as I write, so I never quite know where I'll end up.

Oh well :)

Advent Service - poster

2004-12-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

Poster for the service. The art was projected from an overhead projector onto paper and then painted by our Jr High youth group.

2004-12-03T14:55:00.000-08:00

The bare parish hall with the star on the floor

Stupid Human Tricks

2004-11-30T20:49:00.000-08:00

There's so much wrong with this story i don't even know where to start. (Note the story is from Australia and FYI, a P-plate license is "provisional".) Thanks to Tim Blair for this one...

Quick synopsis: 20 year old drives dad's forbidden car 200 km/h in a 50 km/h zone with two passengers (one a 7 month pregnant 15 year old), hits telephone pole and kills them all.

But how about we start with this?

"along with passengers Carl Homer, 33, and Mr Homer's 15-year-old, seven-month pregnant, girlfriend Natasha Schyf"

The mind boggles. A bit more when you read this:

"Miss Schyf and Mr Homer, who met two years ago through friends..."

But not as much as when the dead 15 year old girl's father says:

"Carl and Natasha were perfect for each other, inseparable," Mr Schyf said.

"He was a lovely guy, everything for my daughter, and we were all looking forward to the baby."

Hang on a mo'. Your 15 year old daughter is pregnant by a 33 year old man who's been boffing her for two years SINCE SHE WAS THIRTEEN!!! and you're just fine with it? And you're a Jehovah's Witness? That Bible sure must read different upside down. And I guess they can't spell "statutory rape" in Oz.

On a lighter note, it was good to find that the following story (supposedly the winner of the 2004 Stella Award), doing the rounds on the net right now, is indeed a fabrication.

"In November 2000, Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32 foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having joined the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the Winnie left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the handbook that he could not actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago."

Eh, thank goodness for small mercies.

Mo' Pomo Mojo

2004-11-28T01:10:00.000-08:00

Continuing on from the previous post…

After mentioning the first characteristic of the post-Modern age (it’s a transition phase out of Modernism, not an age in and of itself, hence not a finished product), let me digress a little before getting to point two (or maybe this is point two…).

Pretty much none of the work I’ve read on postmodernism and the church mentions the scientific side of the equation at all. This is probably because the debate is driven by philosophers and theologians. Once upon a time those same fields would have been closely linked to science, but the Modern era divorced the two and I think that’s yet another unfortunate development of Modernism.

Scientifically, the modern era was triggered by the work of Copernicus and the realization that the earth was not the center of the universe. From Wikipedia:

Copernicus’ theory about the Sun as the centre of the solar system, turning over the traditional geocentric theory (that placed Earth at the centre of the Universe), is considered one of the most important discoveries ever, and is the fundamental starting point of modern astronomy and modern science itself (it inaugurated the scientific revolution).

Remember people were burned at the stake for believing and teaching Copernicus’ theory, and Galileo was tried and convicted by the Inquisition (however, he was expecting it) and only evaded being burned at the stake by essentially recanting. Old and frail he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The parallels with today’s Fundagelical church and creationism are, um, interesting and instructive. It’s a good thing it’s just not that easy to pull together an Inquisition these days (although the religious right gives it a shot once in a while...)

The second characteristic is the questioning of authority (hmm, which I guess does go nicely with the digression above). Much authority is wrapped up in knowing “the answer”. If we don’t think there are absolute answers (or, more accurately, that we won’t be able to understand or articulate them purely and accurately), then authority is undermined. This also helps to explain why those that hold authority in the Modern era (in fact any era, as seen above for instance) are extremely threatened by the transition away from it. We can generalize this to say that change is bad for any authority, because it undermines the foundation upon which the authority is built. This may be a "Well, duh!" statement on the surface, but it bears repeating and remembering, especially when we see said Authority lashing out.

These characteristics (allied to some of the new scientific principles like relativity) create secondary effects. One of these is relativism. If mystery is back, certainty is gone, and authority is to be questioned, then everything is relative. Taken to extreme, objectivity is out, subjectivity is in. My opinion is no worse or better than yours, no matter how much it may appear to be. Even if there is something like absolute truth out there (which we might describe as God in some way shape or form), we question our ability to discern it accurately. Again, at the extreme, (what Brian McLaren calls absurd postmodernism – the bogeyman of today’s conservative church establishment) this looks like anything goes. But looked at more realistically, that’s not true, it’s simply an acknowledgment that life’s a lot more complicated than the Modern era supposed. It makes our lives harder, not easier, as the desperate adherents of Modernism suggest.

This drives some people crazy. That’s too bad, because this is a cat that can’t be put be put back in the bag. Postmodernism is not (just) a philosophical school or construct. Scientific discoveries have shown us that the certainty of the Scientific Modern era are not as certain as we believed. Modernism has been done in by science even more surely and certainly than it has been strangled by philosophy. Change is happening, there is no going back, and it serves us best to acknowledge it and deal with it. Sure, there is going to be kicking, screaming and footdragging. After all, it took centuries to convince the church world that the Earth was not flat, and that it wasn’t at the center of the universe. And that kicking, screaming and footdragging? That was some poor people being hauled off to their deaths.

So what are the implications for the church?

The early years of the church were characterized by the mystery of God. The Modern era killed off a lot of that and brought an implicit faith that God could somehow eventually be understood and codified by logic and science. While this is an attractive notion on some levels it is patently absurd. God doesn’t fit in a box of human making. Not that anyone was saying this explicitly, of course, it just seemed in the Modern era that scientific advances would eventually reveal God. All of this was in parallel with the blossoming of secular humanism which was pretty much intent on debunking religion as outdated superstition. Religion was intent on proving God exists, Q.E.D., just as the secularists were aiming to prove that there was no God at all.

As we move forward, there will be challenges to hierarchical authority. This doesn’t mean that existing church structures will disappear. Some will, especially the ones that can’t adapt. Some will manage to preserve their current structures and beliefs, but they will be the 21st century Amish - quaint and isolated, living in a kind of absurd church zoo.

The fact is that most people like structure (especially, for instance, Myers-Briggs ESTJs - and there are a lot of them) and so structure will arise or adapt, but it won’t necessarily look like it does now. Change is driven by the creative types - but they are in reality a small fraction of the population at large. To be implemented, change needs to be accepted by a much larger group.

Think of this in marketing terms. You have the innovators, who will support new ideas at any price. In product marketing this can be faddish, but in terms of ideas this can be very powerful. Small in number they will respond positively to innovation (in fact, in emergent church terms, these are probably the people driving it). Then there will be the early adopters who see value in the new ideas. If not actively involved these people will certainly be interested and supportive. The early majority will follow when the ideas have been proven somewhat, and the late majority when it seems everyone is doing it (whatever “it” is.) Finally, there are the laggards – those who may never adopt the new idea, and if they do it is long after the fact.

Now, the correspondence with marketing terms is imprecise, and may even be distasteful to some in the church, but human nature is, well, human nature, and how people respond to a new type of carpet cleaner has a lot of parallels to how they respond to philosophical and theological innovation.

More later...

So how was that again?

2004-11-25T01:23:00.000-08:00

In all the hoo-ha fuss over the recent election, one vote map I remember seeing that struck me was one where the states were colored blue/red in a vertical stripe arrangement with the stripe width/area proportional to the vote in each state. It took me forever to track it down again (bookmark 'em when you see 'em people!), but I finally found it on the political blog Wonkette.

Now, please note that there are no "red states" or "blue states" - there's a healthy sprinkling of everybody everywhere. Even the most extreme states were maybe 60/40, which is a big victory in political terms, but hardly monolithic.

One thing to note: vertical red and blue stripes would still make for a horrible, I mean seriously nasty, dress or shirt. I'm sure Clinton and Stacy (or Trinny and Susannah) would agree...

Waiting in the Starlight

2004-11-24T23:09:00.000-08:00

After spending the last few months being intrigued by the myriad facets of alternative worship (thanks Adam Cleaveland) and experimenting with a few things here and there, we (myself and our youth director) decided we should go for it and put together an alt worship Advent event. We've roped in a few other people to help with stuff and this is what we came up with...

First, reading the Advent section of Jonny Baker and Doug Gay's Alternative Worship book (awesome, by the way - buy it now!) the theme of starlight struck me. I mentioned it to D (she's the artsy one, I'm the musical one) and she married it to the waiting theme of Advent. So we had a title.

From there it quickly morphed to the notion of a star labyrinth - 8 points/stations, with an empty manger in the center. One of the creeds from the Alt Worship book seemed like a natural, so I set that to a background of 50 NASA pictures from space - various parts of the earth, planets, moons, solar flares, so that's one station. Another station will be "light" prayers (with candle lighting, of course) - a lot of them from Evening Prayer. Throw in a Jesse tree, a scripture station and you're almost set. One other station will be a set of 24 black and white photos to ponder and meditate and the last station will be a payer wall prompted by the question "what are you waiting for?".

Musically we'll start with about 20 minutes of live music. So far I've got Tim Hughes' Here I Am To Worship (which could be an official Advent song with a different bridge...), O Come Emmanuel, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, and maybe (if I can get the music in time) a Maggi Dawn song Into the Darkness and some other stuff I'll figure out this weekend. Once that's over I've put together a mostly instrumental mix while people interact with the stations. Now, having lots of Enya and Vangelis CDs I'll confess to a weakness for going with what I've got. I also resisted the temptation to use some of my more favorite tracks that are just too overpowering for this. I did, however, stick with Delerium/Sarah McLachlan, even though it gets fairly intense and the vocals are potentially intrusive. But whatever... sometimes you just have to put in stuff you think works. All this stuff just feels right for "starlight"...

Here's the track listing (all nicely cross-faded with Nero - I love their software...) (let's see how the formatting works - not, I bet)

Name - Artist - Album
A Day Without Rain - Enya - A Day Without Rain
The Oracle Of Apollo - Vangelis - Direct
Shepherd Moons - Enya - Shepherd Moons
Raincry (Submerged) - God Within - Plastic Compilation Volume 1
First Approach - Vangelis - Direct
'S fagaim mo bhaile - Enya - Oíche Chiún [EP]
Silence (Michael Woods Remix) - Delerium/Sarah McLachlan - Chillout/A Nettwerk Escape
To The Unknown Man - Vangelis - Portraits
No Holly for Miss Quinn - Enya - Shepherd Moons
Alpha - Vangelis - Portraits
Pulstar - Vangelis - Portraits
Storms In Africa - Enya - Watermark
Sauvage Et Beau - Vangelis - Portraits
The Memory of Trees - Enya - The Memory Of Trees
Hymn - Vangelis - Portraits
Oíche Chiún (Silent Night) - Enya - Oíche Chiún [EP]

The goal is to start quiet, crank up the intensity in the middle a bit (Alpha & Pulstar) and then wind it back down, starting with the driving but lighter Storms in Africa. Oh, and it's all a nice 75 minute track on my iPod now, too.

So I'm pretty psyched about this. I can't wait (hah!) to see how it works out. And for once, the musicians can actually participate...

Random Travel Musings

2004-11-23T10:10:00.000-08:00

This last weekend my wife and I went back to Philadelphia for the weekend. We lived there from 1985 to 1990 and have some great friends who we haven't seen in their natural habitat since we left (they have visited us in Seattle.)

Anyway, even ten years ago the notion of taking a four day weekend trip to visit friends 2500 miles away was unlikely - insanely costly even, but now, there we were. I guess the older we get money means less and friendship means more. Disposable income is a wonderful thing...

Our flight out was delayed by three hours. Oh, not all at once, of course. First it was ninety minutes, then two and a half hours. Then we were late boarding, so it all added up to three hours. Why, you ask? Well, the contractors hired to change the engine oil the night before put THE WRONG KIND IN! So they figured this out somehow, and the wrong oil must be really, really bad, because it wasn't a "we''ll fix it later" kind of deal. No, they (US Airways) had to fly a special tech team up from Los Angeles to drain, flush and refill the engines with the right kind.

Regular readers will remember that I am an airplane guy (more design than maintenance, but you get the idea). I'm not freaked out easily, but you could have knocked me over with a feather when the pilot volunteered this story of gross incompetence. Well, technically you would have had to pry me from my jammed in seat next to the window first, then you could have knocked me over with a feather. You can bet I was paying close attention to engine noises on take off all the way up to cruising altitude. I can't imagine how badly freaked out the flyingophobic passengers were. On top of this US Ariways (trying to stave off bankruptcy) has given up providing meals (even on a five hour flight) but they will sell you a meal for $7. Oh, except they ran out halfway through the cabin. How do you do that when you had THREE EXTRA HOURS? Really...

When we got to Philly it was remarkable how 14 years can change a place. There's a new highway that makes it a snap to get to our friends house. What used to be a 40 minute wind through suburban stripmall hell is now a ten minute blast up the Blue Route. And that's now the only highway not under construction apparently.

For a rental car we ended up with a Chevy Impala, an old school full size behemoth, with typical spongy Chevy handling, underpowered gutless engine and squishy seats. Bleah. Made me long for my little Subaru WRX at home.

We didn't really do much out there - just sit and talk with our friends like we used to when we lived there. And why not? There may have been a small temptation to cram more stuff in, but why? We went there to see our friends and that's what we did. Their kids are 14 years older, and New Kids On The Block are no longer all the rage (thank you God for small mercies) but there are new challenges, like the first grandchild due in January.

Flying back wasn't a lot of fun, cramped into too little space for over six hours, but at least they didn't screw up a simple oil change this time.

All I have now is two quiet days at work then the four day Thanksgiving weekend. Yay.

What does post-Modern mean to you?

2004-11-22T20:48:00.000-08:00

Given that the emerging church, emerging culture and a whole host of things are based on postmodernism it might be a good idea to figure out exactly what it is. The trouble with defining what it means is that it has mostly been defined by philosophers. And gosh darn it, those guys converse in a language that bears no relation to English (or even American).

Just to underscore the point I’d like to bring in Noam Chomsky. Now nobody could be further from a Chomsky fan than I am. My opinion of him to this point is that he’s a classic academic liberal who hides behind the skirts of the very society he condemns. So color me shocked when I read this in Chomsky’s entry in Wikipedia:

Chomsky has written strong refutations of deconstructionist and postmodern criticisms of science:
"I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as 'science,' 'rationality,' 'logic,' and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me 'transcend' these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, 'my eyes glaze over' when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed."
Chomsky notes that critiques of "white male science" are much like the anti-Semitic and politically motivated attacks against "Jewish physics" used by the Nazis to denigrate research done by Jewish scientists during the Deutsche Physik movement:

This simply underscores for me the fact that the postmodern conversation is one that is not accessible to the casual observer, so I decided to embark on a Dave’s Cliff Notes version for enlightened lay people. I realize that for the literary academics postmodernism has some kind of precise definition, but I haven’t seen a single one that manages to integrate the scientific perspective, and for me, above all else, it is science that is the final nail in the coffin of Modernity. Who knew?

And in other news, a friend of mine told me was talking with an architect about postmodernity and she insisted that the only field where “real” postmodernity lies is architecture. In some ways this underscores the meta-postmodernity of the term. People can’t agree objectively on what post-Modern is.

One key thing for me is that post-Modernism (and I deliberately use the hyphen and capital to underscore the meaning of the term) is not something you can accept or reject – it’s here whether you like it or not. The Modern era is going, going, gone (eventually). Dead era walking.

The world of the Middle Ages didn’t ask for the Modern era, it wasn’t designed or planned by anyone, it just happened as a result of the Renaissance, the Reformation and perhaps the crowning glory, the Scientific Revolution. None of them were planned by anyone, they just happened. Not only that, but the change took place over at least two centuries, in reality more like four. I’m sure if I’d lived through that transition I wouldn’t have been able to make much sense of it and there’s nobody then who did either, probably not even Sir Isaac Newton.

The Modern era brought us the scientific method, a vast improvement on primitive superstition. We discovered the earth wasn’t flat and that it revolved around the sun, not vice versa. These earth-shattering revelations shook civilization to its core. The fact that they were actually true and verifiable didn’t make them any easier to swallow. On the positive side it appeared that by diligently exploring and experimenting humankind could eventually solve the mysteries of the universe. However, even the great Isaac Newton (and I hate how people diss him because he wasn't another 300 years ahead of his time) cautioned thus:

"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."

The peak of the modern era may well have been the 1920s. Why then? Because in the 1930’s Einstein’s Theory of Relativity finally gained acceptance and the world began to change again. Newtonian mechanics explained a lot that happened on the macro scale, but the atomic scale proved to be quite different.

It took three hundred years or so for humankind to come around to agree with Newton's quote above. After three centuries of scientific discovery we are no closer to solving the meaning of life. If anything, the more we have discovered, the more we have found there is yet more to know. When every question answered raised two more, the belief that we humans can figure out God, the universe and everything dissipated rather quickly in the latter end of the 20th century.

However, just like five hundred years ago, the realization that the end of an era is upon us isn’t as obvious while we are in the middle of it. I don’t know when the term “Modern era” was coined, but I’ll bet it wasn’t until long after the “Modern era” was upon us. By the same token, I doubt the Middle Ages were known as the Middle Ages to middle-agers. So while we know we are in an era that comes after the Modern era, the only thing we know right now is that it is the era after the Modern age, that is, post-Modern.

One distinction of the current transition is that it will happen much quicker than the Middle age to Modern era transition. Just as the printing press was the technology that drove the Modern age, the computer, recently augmented by the internet, is the technology that is now driving the post-Modern era. Electrons travel a lot faster than paper and it’s ideas that turn eras. The faster the ideas travel, the faster the change. Even so, the post-Modern transition has been upon us for seventy years or so, and will probably take several more decades to complete. Another facet of the speed of change is that we now have a world of scholars, with learning being almost universal now, rather than the prerogative of the privileged few in all of history prior to the 19th century.

So what are we to make of all this?

First, “post-Modern” is a transition phase, not the end point of the transition. Whatever the historians call the subsequent era, it won’t be “post-Modern”. What will it be called? I’ve seen a proposal for the “Creative Age” which I think fits with the likely outcome of ever-expanding universal education and discretionary time.

And here I'm going to take a short break, with part 2 coming soon, looking to the implications for the future.

Um, not quite yet...

2004-11-17T22:49:00.000-08:00

Sure, I should be dropping off to sleep right now, but I felt I had to give major props to Bob & Deb, a couple in my church who decided to take a leap and produce an amateur play at church this year. It all comes to fruition this weekend. The play is Cheaper By The Dozen based on the 1950 movie with a plot set in the 1920s, not the recent Steve Martin dreck.

Although the three official performances will all take place while Sue and I are gone, we did get to see the dress rehearsal tonight. So many of the kids in our church are in it, from 7 years old and up and wow, it was so much fun to watch. Way better than sitting home watching TV...

The funniest part was with the oldest sister of the family and her boyfriend. They are played by brother and sister, although it's ok because the most they do is hold hands. The rest of the youth group (most of whom came to see the rehearsal) were totally freaking out at the sibling ick factor. Hilarious ;)

Time for some Brotherly Love

2004-11-17T22:26:00.000-08:00

No really, off to see our friends in Philly for the weekend - yes the same ones that came for a week and never saw Mt Rainier. That's 2378 miles each way FOR THE WEEKEND, people!

We lived there from 85 to 90, and believe me, it really lives up to its reputation as the town that booed Santa Claus...

Back Monday night, all being well.

Mt Rainier - no really, it's there...

2004-11-16T23:30:00.000-08:00

One of the most majestic sights I've ever seen is Mt Rainier, up here in the great Pacific Northwest. Rainier is about 50 miles south of Seattle and despite being 14,000 ft. high, is invisible a lot of the time (you know, rain and cloud and such). This shot was taken a week ago from the ferry dock at Kingston (across Puget Sound from Seattle) when Sue and I were away for a fabulous quiet weekend. Rainier is the fuzzy triangle just right of center.

This shot reminds me of our friends in Philadelphia because they came out to Seattle for a week one time and never saw the mountain once. Even though we drove them 7,000 ft. up one side of it.

One of these days I'll post a really good shot so you all can see it properly too.

Something really cool

2004-11-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

It's an interesting feeling to open up you RSS reader, check your favorite blogs and find something like this post. What a great compliment... and responsibility.

It made me wonder why I started blogging a mere four months ago. Up to a point I'm not really sure why. Oh, it's the cool new hip thing to do, and I do like to blather on. Like a lot of extroverts, I think while I'm talking, and the way I blog is a lot like that. That's kind of why a lot of my posts have no serious logical flow to them (well at least until I go back and force something in...) It's more thinking out loud than anything else.

Often I end up somewhere unexpected, which is half the fun. Sometimes an even tempered or humorous piece turns into a rant and I wonder where it came from. Just putting your thoughts out for the world to see is a bit scary, too. Writing about difficult topics like gay church issues and abortion is tricky, because it's so easy to feel like you're going to alienate half your readership whatever you say. But I've always found that progress is made when we can disagree and talk through those disagreements rather than calling each other stupid. So I'd rather write about stuff like that than pretend I don't have strong opinions or don't care.

And that's one reason I appreciate Maggi's comment so much - I feel she writes in the same spirit (and way better than I do, btw...)

May God bless bloggers everywhere :)

I Got Saved For Ten Bucks!

2004-11-14T21:29:00.000-08:00

Yeah, really. It wasn't even a blue light special on the Trinity Broadcast Network! No, the local Blockbuster Video had the movie Saved in the used rack today (finally) and with the 2 for $20 deal that's how I got Saved for $10.

The movie has interested me for a while, since I saw it mentioned on Adam Cleaveland's blog and the TV ads. I was especially looking forward to the lampooning of the typical US fundagelicals. Given the alleged fundagelical conspiracy that swayed the recent election it seemed like waiting until now makes it even more relevant.

With movies these days I usually check out Rotten Tomatoes for a thorough rundown of the spectrum of reviews. At 59% it just marginally fails the "fresh" test (60% positive reviews) but it's certainly not putrescent like, say, Seed of Chucky (25%). Based on the range of reviews, it seems like it really requires some knowledge of the Christian faith to "get" the movie. The hip, secular reviewers seem completely bemused by the movie.

Most reviews love the first half of the movie, which is the more delicious skewering of the fundagelical mindset. Pastor Skip, the school principal, is a dead on composite of all the fundagelical youth pastors I've met and seen in action. The wannabe hip talk is particularly cringeworthy: "Alright! Alright! Who's down with G-O-D?", "Let's get our Christ on, let's kick it Jesus-style!" (that last one is pronounced Jaaay-zus, by the way).

The second half, according to a lot of reviewers, particularly the ones that didn't like the movie, is something of a letdown. I think this is because, rather than piling on, the movie shows how the caricatured fundagelicals (mostly Pastor Skip and Mandy Moore's character) have their own problems and humanizes them a great deal. While this makes for a less dark movie (this ain't Heathers, people) it brings us around to the point that all our lives are grey, not black or white.

p.s. I was thinking Eva Amurri (Cassandra, the very cute "bad" Jewish girl) looked familiar. Check out the IMDB entry, and there it is: she's Susan Sarandon's daughter. Yeah, it's not what you know, it's who you know...

On the other hand...

2004-11-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

With the other big election issue being gay marriage/union/whatever, this interview with Ellen Degeneres is timely and interesting.

I've always like Ellen, and I'm surprised that apparently so few people knew she was gay before she officially came out. Same with Rosie O'Donnell. Of course, Rosie O'Donnell instantly became the world's worst caricature of a lesbian when she came out, while Ellen has continued to be her laid back, pleasant, engaging self.

Phillips: "Are you surprised by the sexual orientation, gay marriage, that these are such hot buttons issues in American in 2004?"

DeGeneres: "Am I surprised? No. No. You know, I wish that I wasn't seen differently. I wish that people looked at me and just saw that I was a good person with a good heart. And that wants to make people laugh. And that's who I am. I also happen to be gay. And I would love to have the same rights as everybody else. I would love, I don't care if it's called marriage. I don't care if it's called, you know, domestic partnership. I don't care what it's called.
...
And at the same time I know there are people watching right now saying, you know, it's sick it's wrong, it's this. And it's like, I can't convince them that I'm not sick or wrong, that there's nothing wrong with me.

This is interesting because while there are some people who think gays are sick or wrong, but they aren't the majority (if the polls are to be believed). The world always seems to break roughly into thirds, and this issue is the same. One third of people will resist gay unions to the end, another third will push for it for all they are worth, and the middle third could swing either way (pun intended).

In the election I don't think the proponents of civil unions really understood what the middle third is looking for. And the rush to gay marriages earlier in the year was, in hindsight, a public relations disaster. If not even fairly liberal Oregon can be persuaded then there is still a long way to go.

Amazingly enough, I stumbled across Andrew Sullivan's website where there is an article way back to 1989 that is quite interesting. The one major problem with his argument is that the word "marriage" is such a hot button item that "gay marriage" as a term and concept is DOA.

My own thoughts are that the first thing that needs to happen is that church and state must be separated. The marriage process is the last remaining unholy alliance, with the church deeply entangled in the legal process of creating marriages. If we separate the legal from the religious, life would be much simpler.

The government is then only in the business of recording legal relationships between people and the religious institutions are then only in the business of blessing those relationships in whatever way they choose.

Or maybe that's just too simple.

How convenient...

2004-11-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

One of the big issues in this past election was abortion. Big issue - little common ground.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day wondering why the two extremes can't meet somewhere. Personally I think abortion is a horrible, terrible thing, but I can see how, once someone is in the terrible position of being pregnant in an unplanned way, that there are few good choices. The thing that really pisses me off about abortion proponents (and let's not kid ourselves, they are very pro) is their relentless defense of abortion under any circumstances. State funded, no less.

As someone conceived "out of wedlock" in the fifties I'm lucky to even exist. In the same circumstances today I'd have a 40% chance of existing at all, a 60% chance of ending up as blob of lifeless medical waste. Probably on a New Jersey beach.

It was, um, interesting to find that out at the age of 25. While my family wasn't exactly textbook, I had no idea my origins were so, well, illegitimate. Then I found out that my favorite aunt had been pregnant at 16 years old and gave her baby up for adoption. After being thrown out of the house by her father (my dad's dad) no less.

Not only that, I discovered at the age of 42 that my grandfather was the illegitimate son of some local landowner and a maid, and that he had only acquired the family name in his thirties, while my dad was a mere 7 years old at the time.

Ah, good times...

What's the point? I don't know, except maybe to indicate that you don't ever really know what's going to happen down the road. And that there's no such thing as a "normal" family.

But on to our fun topic of the day...

The Alan Guttmacher Institute is an interesting entity. Its goal is:

to protect the reproductive choices of all women and men in the United States and throughout the world. It is to support their ability to obtain the information and services needed to achieve their full human rights, safeguard their health and exercise their individual responsibilities in regard to sexual behavior and relationships, reproduction and family formation.

The description for pro-abortion of late has been "pro-choice". Well, I'm pro-choice, but maybe not in the commonly perceived way. AGI's goal includes the phrase "exercise their individual responsibilities in regard to sexual behavior".

Interesting, because the first exercising of such responsibilities is whether or not to have sex in the first place. That, my friends, is the ultimate choice (barring rape, of course, which as we see later is really a minor factor). After that it's all a case of natural consequences. Let me illustrate with one of my favorite stories:

A man is talking to a woman at a party.

He asks, "Would you have sex with me for a million dollars?".

She replies, "Well, I guess so."

He counters, "What about $20?".

"What kind of girl do you think I am?" she retorts.

"We've already figured that out," he says, "now we're just haggling over the price."

The AGI is so good at providing statistics about abortion. In the US, 52% of pregnancies are planned, so obviously 48% are unplanned. Hmmm...

They do assume that all abortions are the result of unplanned pregnancies which is fair enough I guess. Maybe there's the odd exception, but probably very few.

Of those 48% of unplanned pregnancies, 47% end in abortion, 40% in a birth and 13% in a miscarriage. So roughly 1 in 4 pregnancies in the US ends in abortion. That's 1.31 million a year. 2% of the female population between 15 and 44 has an abortion every year. That's one in fifty for the mathematically challenged. As the AGI proudly proclaims, abortion is one of the most commonly performed surgical procedures performed in the US.

Reasons for abortions vary, but "not ready financially", "not ready for the responsibility", "woman's life would change too much", "problems with relationship" and "too immature to have a baby" add up to 79% of the reasons. Apparently nobody checked the "too stupid to have unprotected sex when I don't want a baby" category, although I'm sure that would be a Vegas bookie favorite.

By the way, health problems with the fetus, mother or cases of rape and/or incest account for a measly 7% in total.

You might think abortions are mostly performed on teenagers. And you would be wrong. Less than 20% are performed on women younger than 20. Almost 50% are performed on women 25 and up. 67% are performed on women who have never been married, 17% on women who are currently married and the remaining 16% on the widowed or divorced.

Abortions are mostly for the poor, right? Wrong. Only 27% are performed on women at or below the poverty level. Admittedly that's higher than the incidence of women overall in that category, but it's hardly overwhelming. 25% are performed on women earning more than 3 times the poverty level.

Perhaps most telling is the fact that almost half of abortions (48%) are performed on women who have had a previous abortion. As Oscar Wilde may have written, to have one abortion is unfortunate, to have two is sheer carelessness. Yet these multi-abortion candidates are often seen as folk heroines of the abortion movement.

One thing the AGI decries is 87% of US counties have no abortion provider. Now these counties account for only 27% of the female population, so these are mostly rural counties. And let's face it, who wants to be known in a tight community as the local abortionist? It's hardly the kind of thing that endears oneself to neighbors. They're about as popular as the local porno director or oil company CEO, and it's much harder to blend socially into the background in close rural neighborhoods than in the big city.

Well, that was a fun and interesting tour through the world of abortion. I'm sure nobody goes looking for an abortion for kicks, but by the time a couple is faced with an unplanned pregnancy a bunch of bad decisions (aka choices) have already been made and have turned out badly. Are people really willing to deal with the harsh reality that their (lack of) plans have now gone wrong? Or is it really about "whatever is convenient for me"? I think it's this latter perception (and one borne out by AGI stats) that fuels the opposition to abortion as a throwaway means of after the fact contraception.

You can bend a lot of statistics to look any way you want. The pro-choice mantra used to be that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. Pity they've never really worked on the last one, huh?

So where do we go from here? The only way to make abortion rare without making women carry unwanted pregnancies to term is to have less unwanted pregnancies. There are several approaches to that:

1) Don't have sex (as much) if you can't stand to get pregnant. This requires education and self control, so this would also imply fewer drunken parties, etc.

2) Use a reliable means (or two or three) of pregnancy control (why do we still call it birth control anyway?) Given the incidence of STDs condoms should be used routinely with anyone not trusted. And as condoms aren't reliable enough as a sole means of pregnancy control, then other means should be used too. However, those drunken parties are also not conducive to remembering to use protection...

3) Morning after pill. This is an interesting one. Philosophically it's no different than an abortion, but if you don't know for sure you're pregnant, it's more like the don't ask/don't tell deal. It's also the only really good counter to those drunken parties... Of course, there's the risk of hemorrhaging and overuse no doubt leads to some nasty effects on the body. I guess we'll find out from the French eventually. And then there's the problem of using it as a primary means of pregnancy control rather than a "next to last resort".

Complicated stuff...

Fear and Loathing, Winners and Whiners...

2004-11-04T19:43:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, I didn't have a vote in the election, not being a citizen and all. That made me more like a spectator at a football game where I don't have a vested interest in either team. However, even when I watch a game like that I inevitably gravitate to one side or the other. I don't even know why I end up favoring one side or the other. So it was with the election and to my own surprise I found myself pulling for George Bush. I think that was mostly fueled by the sheer snobbery, elitism and arrogance of most of the Democratic pundits.

There's plenty of analysis of the election out there, of course, and it basically says that the Kerry campaign failed to connect with heartland America. The US is really two nations, the hip, urban, liberal coasts and the unhip, down to earth, rural(ish) conservative heartland. They are roughly equal in size and basically, they despise each other's beliefs. Liberals in particular love to write off the Deep South as stupid interbred hicks. Well, guess what? Even if that were true they vote, so get over it. Not only did Kerry not win, Bush made significant gains in the popular vote, making races close where they weren't last time around.

The fact that Bush won by 3% of the popular vote is hardly a mandate by any stretch of the imagination. On the other hand, it's about as good as it ever gets in this two party nation.

So what's my point? Well, the democrats are sitting here stunned and they're all kind of mad. And that whole "we despise those heartland hicks" vibe is throbbing with a million volts of electricity. Apparently when you're all pissed off it's OK to be rude and intolerant of people who disagree with you. It's one of those "I'm tolerant of everyone. Eell, everyone who agrees with me, anyway", kind of deals. Some examples:

People apparently aren't thinking about these issues in anything like a defensible, logical fashion. Oh really?

Never have I felt such anger, bitterness, and loathing not just for Republicans but for half of this country. Nice, there's that "tolerance" I was looking for.

And the condescending "they voted out of fear" excuse:
There there are those Americans voted on other kinds of fears--the ones that we're less likely to admit that we have. Guess what people "fear"?

And the foreign vote:
The people of America have failed us today

This last one prompted a lot of outraged responses, too (many of them Kerry voters).

Yeah, really. Don't any dem voters think that maybe Kerry wasn't exactly the most scintillating of candidates? Better than Michael Dukakis, but then a half dead squid would also have been a vast improvement.

As for the gay marriage measures, maybe this is a wake up call to the gay lobby that calling your opposition "stupid hicks who just don't get it" (I paraphrase) is not a good strategy. The gay marriage wave this year obviously fueled a heavy backlash (even in Oregon, for crying out loud), and was another serious misstep.

As an example of missing the point, the Episcopal Church gay organization Integrity had the following to say:

Integrity is deeply concerned that voters in 11 states last Tuesday passed constitutional amendments limiting the definition of marriage to between a man and a woman. (A half dozen other states already have such language in their constitutions.) Instead of protecting the American family, such amendments legally discriminate against loving, committed same-sex couples-many of whom are members of Episcopal congregations.

<...>

Integrity challenges the national, diocesan, and congregational levels of the Episcopal Church to redouble their efforts to protect the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens.

Rough translation: "The floggings will continue until morale improves". Heads up Integrity: You win this kind of battle by making friends and influencing people, not by pandering to your own choir.

One last reaction calls for a response. I work a lot with youth. I help run a youth group, I do Junior Achievement in a local high school teaching economics. Basically, I see a lot of teenagers, and nobody appreciates their potential more than I do. And then you get a pathetic effort like this. Man, what a bunch of dweebs.

Sunset Over Mexico

2004-11-02T21:22:00.000-08:00

Culiacan Mexico, Summer 2004

This was the view from the roof of our apartment on a Sunday night after a rainstorm. It was the night before we started building the house, so in some ways it was the calm before the storm as well as the calm after.

Maybe it's fitting as the sun sets on John Kerry's run at the presidency. As of 10 pm PST it looks like Ohio is the new Florida, but that it is inching inexorably George Bush's way and that makes it just about impossible for Kerry to pull this out. Guess that will piss off those folks at moveon.org, huh? May be time to move on...

Honestly I think we'll look back on this election and realize that Kerry and Edwards' "Cheney's gay daughter" gambit might well be their "Dukakis in a tank" moment. There's no doubt in my mind that this election was winnable from a Democratic point of view, but they weren't bold enough to break away from the typical political cat and mouse game.

Overall, though, this election, like all of them, will demonstrate the usual annoying propensity for winners to act like asses and losers to be whiny criers. So what's new?

On the local front it looks like Christine Gregoire , a very successful state Attorney General, will squeak out a narrow win as Washington governor, which should be a good thing. And the Seattle Monorail recall is failing (which means the Seattle monorail will go ahead) so everyone, let's celebrate the legacy of Phil Hartman, sorry, I mean Lyle Lanley...

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail!

What'd I say? Monorail!

What's it called? Monorail!

That's right! Monorail!

monorail, monorail, monorail, monorail,

I hear those things are awfully loud...
It glides as softly as a cloud.

Is there a chance the track could bend?
Not on your life, my Hindu friend.

What about us brain-dead slobs?
You'll be given cushy jobs.

Were you sent here by the devil?
No, good sir, I'm on the level.

The ring came off my pudding can.
Take my pen knife, my good man.

I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!

Monorail!

What's it called? Monorail!

Once again... Monorail!

But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!

Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
Monorail!

Mono... D'oh!

And the sun will still rise tomorrow... (too early for some, of course... hope the hangover's manageable Jen ;)

More on CotA

2004-11-01T19:03:00.000-08:00

This ended up much longer than I anticipated, so be warned ;)

Church of the Apostles (CotA) is an urban pomo church plant born out of the Lutheran Church and, since the ELCA and the Episcopal Church are now in full communion, both support it. Episcopal Life magazine wrote up an article on CotA recently.

I actually heard about CotA a long time before I got really interested in the emerging church and the postmodern expression of church. I was on a Diocesan commission when I first heard that a Lutheran pastor, Karen Ward, was looking to start some kind of ministry in the Seattle area. If I recall correctly, it was going to be some kind of ministry to young adults, probably on the East side (the ritzy suburbs). Now I have no idea if what I heard was accurate, but we did grant a few thousand dollars to help Karen get under way. I heard nothing more for a while and in the interim the vision apparently crystallized and ended up as a new church plant in funky, pagan, independent-minded Fremont, a Seattle suburb tucked between downtown and the University of Washington (also an Adobe campus).

Somewhere in there, my own parish donated some money (from the tithe of our capital campaign) to help them get started. I believe our money bought a computer projector and was much appreciated.

The first time I met Karen in person was October 2003 at our Diocesan Convention where she spoke. For many people she was the highlight of the convention. CotA had a table in the exhibits and so I got to talk to a few members as well as Karen. I was really looking forward to extending the relationship between our churches, including keeping some financial support going. Unfortunately, the aftermath of General Convention 2003 (the Gene Robinson story) began to make itself felt. People had already left our church and the financial reality started to become clear - and it wasn't pretty. We were running somewhere around 15-20% down on giving. Pledges for the coming year weren't looking any better. This is a a whole other story in itself, but it's a very important backdrop to the CotA story the past year.

Meanwhile, our Senior High youth group had attended a CotA service earlier in the year and in January 2004 our Junior High mission team, who were working in homeless shelters for a long weekend, also went there to worship. Of course, it's not like CotA is a million miles away from us anyway - maybe 25-30 miles so we can visit just about any time.

With all of this contact a few of us at my middle of the road Episcopal Church have hazy visions of doing something emergent within our own context. Who knows what it might be yet, but we're very interested in understanding what CotA is doing. CotA's big dream is to buy the old, disused Lutheran church across the street from their current Living:Room space. This property acquisition might seem very un-pomo in some ways, but their vision of it as a community center/coffee shop/worship space is very organic and in many ways also very Fremont.

There's the little matter of $400K to buy it and about the same amount to kit it out... Then I heard that a property the Episcopal Church had bought for a suburban church plant was not going to be used after all and that we are considering selling it. Of course, given our dire financial position there are those who want to shore up the operating budget with it. That's a bad idea. If we aren't going to invest it in a suburban church plant in Vancouver WA, why not invest it in a radical church plant that could be a model for a whole new way of doing church? And oh, by the way, the property to be sold is worth about $400K. Hmm, sometimes you have to pay attention when God whispers.

So, a word here and there (including emailing people from Hawaii while on vacation) and it looks like CotA may well get a decent chunk (but probably not all) of that money which, combined with other sources, will hopefully be enough to get the ball rolling. So that brings us up to this week. Karen and Ryan Marsh (the curate)introduced their video of CotA and the vision at convention. It's mostly short clips of interviews with CotA members and others, sometimes with Lacey Brown's (I presume it's her anyway - very cool) music overlaid. It starts by showing what they're up to today, showed a bit of a bit of the Quest story (a different but similar pomo hurch) at Interbay Covenant Church a few miles away, and finished with the vision for the church building, including clips with the architects.

With all the other preoccupations (like a 20% income shortfall) I don't think the convention was quite in the right place to hear about grand visions but it was still well received.

Through all this I'm continually amazed at Karen's energy and persistence. While the monetary situation doesn't look great right now, I think this past year has been the worst of it (that's the optimist in me :-) I'll be praying and helping wherever I can as the situation develops. Won't you pray for them too?

Random thoughts from Convention

2004-10-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

Went to the dinner on Friday night. There was a cool jazz musician who played a bunch of stuff, then the after dinner entertainment was a dance troupe of Chinese origin. Now, which of these activities seems not to fit:

1) Lion dance
2) Peacock dance
3) Sing along to The Carpenters' "Top of the World"
4) Martial arts demonstration

Yes, that was what they did, and yes, the third part was really quite surreal. The rest was pretty cool, apart from the excessive banging on what appeared to be a frying pan. The banging was really penetrating and I was really sad the Advil container was sitting on the back seat of my car, ten minutes walk away.

Of the actual convention business there wasn't anything too momentous. The Bishop's address was more direct and candid this year than previously, which was refreshing. I especially liked his acknowledgement about being stubborn on insisting we go ahead and bring in a Bishop Suffragan, even though the budgetary situation looks pretty dire (20% shortfall on congregational giving.) The last two or three years have not been kind to him, what with his divorce and numerous injuries - he had lost focus on leadership, so it was good to see that back.

Probably the most intense moment was a nasty unprovoked personal attack from some delegate from Blaine (actually two, on separate occasions) who called on the Bishop to apologize as called for in the Windsor Report which the attacker claimed to have read thoroughly. However, the Windsor Report only calls for regret from the bishops who were actually at Gene Robinson's consecration, and our bishop was not. He would have been there had it not been for illness, but technicality or not, he doesn't fall under the guidelines of the Windsor Report. The bishop gave the guy his full two minutes both times and bore the criticism with good grace. After the second tirade, a brief rebuttal was made by another delegate which prompted a standing ovation for the bishop.

The bishop also mentioned that two parishes have announced their intent to leave the diocese and become part of the Brazilian diocese of Recife. We all knew this, of course. I got a chance to talk to a parishioner from one of those churches who was an objector to the leaving. Apparently the vote at St Stephens in Oak Harbor (Navy base town, so very conservative) was 70-8 to leave. Interesting that the turnout was so low. Apparently a lot of moderate folk left as the temperature of the rhetoric heated up. Tough situation for those who are now essentially without a church home.

The last thing I stuck around for was a presentation by Karen Ward and the Church of the Apostles, the only mainline emerging congregation I know of. They had a well put together video maybe 10 minutes long on what they've been up to and where they are headed. More on that at Karen's blog, and I'll write more later.

Other than that it was mostly business as usual. There was a resolution to "explore" the Earth Charter which seemed harmless until you realize that it's an extremely political document that has ramifications far beyond being kind to the ozone layer, whales and the rain forest.

Plumbing - Don't Try to Faucet

2004-10-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

There's nothing quite like a good dose of home improvement to blow away the over-analytical philosophy blues. On the other hand, there's nothing I hate more than plumbing. Plumbing is eveil bcause the damage done by leaking water is pervasive and leaks are hard to find and tough to fix. Sure, electricity can KILL you, but wiring is easy.

Unfortunately, one of our bathroom faucets needs replacing and therefore the one that sits next to it does, too. This is because the cheap and nasty items installed by the builder are not exactly what I would choose, so I'm not going to replace one piece of crap with another just so it matches. And then I wanted to put a nice one in the powder room, so that's three.

But then that doubles the work. And with most home projects, you learn a whole bunch quickkly to get the job done then you never have to do it again for seven years or so, which is just long enough to forget everything. For this project though, I found this website. Very cool. It even tells you that when you get to the really annoying part (trying to unscrew the unscrewable) that you should probably just take a reciprocating saw to it and hack it off. Woohoo! Power tools! Plus no guilt. Not only that, with three to do I'll get great learning reinforcement.

Oh well, back to installation of all the new stuff...

The Thin End of the Wedge

2004-10-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

In all kinds of arguments, both institutional, political and personal, have you ever noticed how quickly positions gravitate to extremes? When asked why compromise isn't possible, spokespeople inevitably cite the slippery slope or thin end of the wedge argument. These are, of course, derivatives of the "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" saying.

But really, life would be so much easier if people would just judge each case on its merits, not worrying about what might happen if the chain of dominos falls.

For example, take a look at (picks hot button political topic at random) abortion - the most radical opponents think that even allowing it in cases of rape or other equally barbaric situations is wrong. Give in on that and pretty soon "those people" will want more and more concessions and we know where that ends up.

The most radical proponents figure that even if the baby is abseiling its way out of the uterus with equipment provided by REI it's still fair game for early euthanasia - just in case it's inconvenient to somebody somewhere.

Try to pick a position in the middle and both sides throw rocks at you. Which is why the extremists get to fight the battles and common sense goes out of the window.

While we're on volatile topics, I often have really interesting conversations with my carpool buddy on our 45 minute drives. Because we've been driving together for about 5 years we can talk about stuff we disagree on without getting all wound up about it. The other day we were talking about liberal and conservative positions on life and death and ended up pondering the following opposite points of view.

Conservative - save unborn babies, execute murderers.
Liberal - execute unborn babies, save murderers.

Hmm, which one of those looks wacked?

Happy Birthday to Me...

2004-10-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

...when I wake up in the morning. Yeah, you heard it here first. And my wife is out of town for the week :(

Well, at least I got an iPod (busy loading as I type - 29GB down, 5GB to go).

On the other hand my back hurts from moving boxes of stuff in an office move last week. And the day I get an iPod, Apple launches the iPod Photo and the special iPod U2 Vertigo edition.

On the other hand the Red Sox won game 3, although I'd be sad to see St Louis get bounced out in four straight. And there's a birthday present treasure hunt tomorrow when I open my wife's card.

On the other hand I have to go to work and I appear to be allergic to some nasty crap in the new office building, which has sat idle for two years collecting dust and all kinds of biomedical hazards.

OK, I'll stop now...

Through Different Eyes

2004-10-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

I wandered across this blog a while ago and must thank her for this Margaret Cho link.

MC is an interesting case. She's female (well, duh!) She's a "person of color". She's gay. [Note: correction thanks to Karen. Margaret Cho isn't gay. Her sexuality is complex as evidenced by her biogrpahy. She is, however, extremely supportive of the gay community.] If she could just see her way to getting permanently disabled she'd win the diversity lottery. Anyway, for those of you too lazy to click the link, here's the religious reference part:

All the busy-body “Christian” people—when they’re not preparing for the Rapture—are trying to make gay people miserable. I don’t see why our lives affect theirs in the least. They point to us as evidence of Satan in the world. Don’t they realize that Satan is intolerance, that every time they practice injustice, another demon gets his wings?

The Pope recently castigated the media for making gays look normal. Yeah, he’s a real good judge of normal. With the gold dress, and the matching gold hat, living up in the Vatican with 500 men, surrounded by the finest antiques in the world. You go, girl!

But it is the religious right who are fucking scary, because they’re out of control. Even the Satanists are saying, “Wow, you guys are being really mean.”

That, my friends, is how the secular world sees Christians. And while they may understand that not every Christian is part of the religious right, the rest of us are pretty invisible, relatively speaking.

Fine print: Thinking Margaret Cho has a point about some things does not imply agreement with all of Margaret Cho's politics. This post not endorsed by Satanists for Kerry (well, not yet). Your mileage may vary. Two and a quarter pounds of jam weigh about a kilogram. OK, I'll stop now.

Hymns Ancient and Ancienter

2004-10-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

Our contemporary band provided the music for the main service this morning. We do it about once every six weeks or so, on no particular schedule. It's a huge amount of fun, although fun isn't exactly the word. It's partly the privilege of leading the worship service for a couple of hundred people, part creativity of picking out songs, part teamwork pulling together ten people or so to create music and part tension of wanting to get it "right".

In the weeks in between I find myself increasingly frustrated by the music most of the time when it's mostly organ and choir. That's OK some of the time, but the musical choices are very limited. Flipping through the 1980 Hymnal (Episcopal) there are very few dates of authorship beyond 1900. The vast majority of the words and music come from the 19th century with a fair amount before that and precious little after. For every great hymn (Immortal, Invisible; Love Divine) there are twenty nobody has ever heard of and can't sing. Also, take out Ralph Vaughan Williams and you've taken out more than half the great melodies. Then take out all the German melodies and there's nothing left.

How did we get into this position? Did God quit inspiring musicians when Queen Victoria died? It's a good thing he didn't stop inspiring engineers or we would never have had cars and airplanes. In fact that's a good way to think about it - church music is basically Amish.

For our contemporary music we mostly draw from the evangelical CCM industry which brings its own problems. The theology is quite different from that of the Episcopal church, so we eliminate some songs on those grounds. Then there's quite a lot that's just crap, too, so that's another whole chunk (probably the biggest one actually). Even the good stuff is mostly "I" material - there are very few good corporate "we" songs. Still, with a careful blend of the best of those, some excellent (but obscure) Episcopal songs and a few home grown songs we get by.

Oh well, today totally rocked. Our mandolin virtuoso was on fire, and that makes a whole lot of things better.

Stupid Misogynist Church Tricks

2004-10-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

I subscribe to a worship leader mailing list. I'd say 99% of the posts are from evangelical/fundamentalists so I'm presuming that the general readership is similar. The message linked to the title is, unfortunately, all too common in evangelical circles. (Quick summary: Married female singer on worship team going through marital glitch. Some gossip rats her out. She is kicked off the worship team. Marriage gets worse. Husband stops coming to church. Woman won't be allowed back onto worship team without husband's permission. Husband doesn't give a rip, not being a church member. Woman leaves church looking for less abusive environment.)

The source of the problem is, as usual in husband/wife relations, the Apostle Paul. Well, before you get your hackles up, it's selective interpretation that's the real problem. Let's start here:

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Pretty clear, no? I once found a bible study guide on marriage that featured this passage prominently. What it didn't have, amazingly enough, is the verses immediately following:

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

As usual, the language gets all convoluted and Paul continues writing, mixing up the husband/wife and Christ/church metaphor, but you get the drift.

At the very least, this is at least as demanding a reciprocal requirement as Eph 5:22-24, yet it seldom seems to be encouraged. In fact, loving your wife as Christ loved (why not "loves"?) the Church. Pretty tall order. The two sections combined paint a picture of a very mutually sacrificial relationship, the like of which is rarely seen.

Being involved in youth work as I am, I am also very interested in the chapter following:

Eph 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise 3 that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.

Again, oft-quoted and enforced in various ways. But hey, what's that coming up right behind?

4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Just so we're all sure, exasperate means: "to excite the anger of, ENRAGE, to cause irritation or annoyance to". Now how often do parents get that admonition? I guess there are several interpretations of the second half of verse 4, but the context seems to imply "train them by example", a version of the golden rule - treat your children as you would like to be treated. Ha, fat chance you'll ever hear anyhting like that from, say, James Dobson.

If you're interested in just how badly spiritual abuse of women and children can go, check out Renee Altson's book Stumbling Toward Faith.

Meanwhile I pray that Patti finds her way in the world free of stupid misogynist church tricks.

OH. MY. GOD.

2004-10-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

Sox win! Sox win!

As I drove into the church parking lot tonight to help run youth group Johnny Damon hit a grand slam to put the Red Sox up 6-0 early in game 7.

We had an insanely fun youth group meeting where I forgot all about the game, trusting that the Lord would continue to smite the Canaanites, sorry, I mean Yankees while I was otherwise occupied.

And yea indded, the Lord was faithful, and the Canaanites^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Yankees were smitten and stayed smitten the entire evening, even unto death.

Buh-bye George, Joe, Arod, Derek, Gary, Hideki, Mariano...

Watching the post-game interviews when I got home was awesome.

Having seen Terry Francona (the Israelite, I mean Boston, manager) mature as a player in the early 80s while living in Montreal watching him play for the sadly defunct Expos, I was chuffed to little mintballs(tm) to see him handle pulling off the single most impossible feat in the history of baseball.

It's not about me, it's about the team.

Wow.

And now we have yet another game 7 tomorrow.

This may be the best baseball post-season ever for me. I just pray the World Series won't be a letdown, whoever is in it. History is full of great league championship seies and less than stellar World Series.

Still, this is great stuff right now.

And why is live sports better than movies, plays, ballet or opera? Because nobody knows the outcome, and the script is being written as we go.

Really, you couldn't write this stuff if you tried.

The Windsor Change (or As The Anglican World Turns)

2004-10-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Anastasia asked where I stand on this whole Windsor report/Anglican schism deal. Ask a 2 cent question, here's the 5 cent answer.

The short answer is in the middle. This isn't a particularly comfortable place to be.

As I wrote before, my views have changed considerably over the past 15 years or so regarding the role of gays and lesbians in the church. On the other hand I also believe that the liberal arm of the Episcopal Church has acted heavy handedly over the past 30 years or so, and that they can't really be surprised that the rest of the world is pissed at them.

I see some curious parallels with the Iraq war (stay with me here.)

a) ECUSA liberals saw a need, even a mandate, to be fair to the gay community in the church.
b) George Bush saw a need to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein.

Both are noble goals.

a) ECUSA discovered that the rest of the Anglican Communion would not approve the ordination of gays (especially to the Episcopate) and would drag out the process as long as possible.
b) George Bush knew the UN would not approve unilateral military action and would drag out the process of intervention as long as possible.

Both were frustrated by the rest of the world "not getting it".

Both acted precipitately because they wanted what they wanted NOW rather than do the hard work of building consensus.

So interestingly, liberals would generally approve of the former and abhor the latter, while conservatives would do the reverse. I see it as a case of both parties seeing the end justifying the means, and both are wrong, and now both are having to deal with the consequences.

Sticking just with the ECUSA theme now, I do believe that if gay people are to be allowed full participation in the church then it should be just that - full participation. The critical piece is in determining whether being homosexual and acting on it, even in a monogamous way, is a sin. If it is, then unrepentant sinning cannot be condoned in leaders. But what if it isn't?...

And here is the crux of the matter - Biblical interpretation. To the literalists and traditionalists, there is no turning away from millennia of condemnation of homosexuality in any form. The increasing acceptance of it in Western society today is to them simply an indication of the moral decay of the world, rather than a new revelation about human sexuality.

However, to those open to the possibility of continuing revelation from God, and a more contextual, less literal view of scripture, the possibility of a monogamous, loving, same sex relationship not being sinful is real.

I find myself leaning to the latter camp. I'm not a literalist and I refuse to believe that God revealed truth to us 2,000 years ago and then stopped. The work of the Holy Spirit continues within us today, and God's purpose (I believe) is not to help us keep following the old rules like some kind of robot operating system.

In the Anglican church we believe that God gave us brains for a reason and to reason, which is manifested in Richard Hooker's model of the three legged stool of scripture, tradition and reason.

Face it - the people of New Testament times still thought the earth was flat, that it was at the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. We've burned people at the stake for saying it ain't so. We have learned and unlearned an incredible amount about the universe, the physical world, our bodies and our minds in 2,000 years. Ideas of how the world works have been overturned numerous times.

Is it so hard to believe that while there are some fundamental (in the true sense of the word) truths to the spiritual life revealed in the bible, there was and is still just as much to discover in the spiritual realm as the physical?

Much Ado About Something

2004-10-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

So today was the big day in the Episcopal Church with Archbishop Eames’ Lambeth Commission on Communion Windsor Report being published. With the big debate between “orthodox” Anglicans on the one hand and the “renegade” Episcopal Church in the USA (ECUSA) over the consecration of an openly gay Bishop and parts of the Anglican Church of Canada over blessing same sex unions.

This was meant to be the showdown.

Well, not really. First, it’s an advisory panel, not a judge and jury, and second, in the Anglican Communion a showdown isn’t exactly the Sharks and the Jets. Well, maybe it is, come to think of it, with lots of dancing and a good soundtrack but not much actual blood.

I’m not sure what people expected, but a committee put together to attempt to reconcile two extremes is, by definition, going to end up somewhere in the middle. It is also bound to please neither extreme. Another important thing to bear in mind was that the Commission was not asked to define whether ordaining gay bishops was good, bad or indifferent, merely to explore the impaired nature of communion that occurs when one part of a body acts completely against the desires of another part. So understanding that as a starting point, what did we get?

Here’s what I consider a pretty good summary. But never mind that, here’s my take.

First, ECUSA got slapped on the wrist for ordaining Gene Robinson despite the clear understanding that this would upset a large number of conservative Anglicans around the world. The report calls for an apology, oops, I mean “expression of regret” from all those who participated in the ordination. Pretty much the minimum penalty expected. if they don't apologize then they are expected to do the honorable thing (big in old school Britain) and not participate in broader Anglican affairs.

Second, and very interesting, the conservative US dioceses and parishes that solicited alternative oversight from foreign conservative bishops (notably some ultra conservative Africans), and these alternative oversight bishops themselves were also slapped for crossing the boundaries of polity. I don’t think they were expecting that at all.

Finally, for those conservative dioceses and parishes who have pretty much declared themselves apart from ECUSA, the DEPO (Diocesan Episcopal Pastoral Oversight) model of alternative oversight defined by ECUSA was affirmed as the better model, over the AEO (alternative Episcopal Oversight) model preferred by the breakaway conservative groups. This is not unexpected, as the DEPO model insists the local bishop, no matter how estranged from a parish, remain in the oversight loop and alternative oversight remain as close to home as possible. The latter model is pretty much “anything goes” including flying African bishops.

If all this sounds arcane, convoluted and unfathomable, welcome to the Anglican Communion. It’s our core competency.

And now the reaction begins. Of the major players, first to respond was ECUSA Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. To be honest I didn’t think any of the main protagonists would comment in any meaningful way immediately. I expected the usual platitudes thanking the commission for their hard work, yada yada yada. In amongst all that though, Griswold definitely held the ECUSA ground.

“as Presiding Bishop I am obliged to affirm the presence and positive contribution of gay and lesbian persons to every aspect of the life of our church and in all orders of ministry”

and

“The Report calls our Communion to reconciliation, which does not mean the reduction of differences to a single point of view.”

This is certainly no rolling over and playing dead. Griswold continues:

“Therefore, we regret how difficult and painful actions of our church have been in many provinces of our Communion, and the negative repercussions that have been felt by brother and sister Anglicans.”

This is the new 21st Century non-apology, of course: “I’m sorry you were hurt by what we did” rather than “we’re sorry for doing it”. Does this satisfy the Commission’s call for an expression of regret? While I feel strongly that this kind of apology is usually weaseling out of a real apology, in this case I’m not sure it’s inappropriate. Apparently his detractors call him Obi-Wan ("These are not the gay bishops you are looking for...") Which is interesting, because wouldn't that make Bishop Duncan Darth Vader?

Next to chip in was the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada, perpetrators of the same sex union liturgies. Much like Griswold, Michael Ingham, Bishop of New Westminster, is sorry they were misunderstood. He is also quick to point out that the interfering bishops were slapped upside the head too. And is that a blithe "in your face!" invitation to peruse the New Westminster website featuring the same sex union liturgies that are the bone of contention?

Last to weigh in was the conservative Bishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Communion Network. Typical of his extremist rhetoric is the statement,

“We must not allow a desire to hold the church family together to allow us to maintain the fatal disease that grips ECUSA and by association, the Anglican Communion.”

It seems to me that Griswold and Ingham are more willing to continue in dialogue without retreating from the position they are in. For Duncan, the ACN and his former organization the AAC (an unhappy divorce, by all accounts), nothing short of total victory will suffice and dialogue isn’t really on their agenda.

All in all an interesting day with a long journey in front of us.

Wacky Fundamentalist Fun

2004-10-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

Having participated in a few comment wars with the likes of Chris P on Adam Cleaveland's Pomomusings blog, I was tempted to check out Chris P's blog itself to see what makes him tick (or maybe it's tock, or some weirder sound). I have to say that it isn't easy. He's prone to excessive verbiage and I get bored before I can figure out what his point is (if indeed he does have one, unlike Ellen Degeneres.)

In among all the wacky fundie diatribes, Chris P posted a link to the following story about Nestle where, apparently Nestle is using candy to peddle lesbianism (or vice versa) in a deceitful socially destructive television campaign. . Suffice it to say that the story ends with the sentence:

"Nestle is a leader in elite social engineering designed to breed a slave race."

Um, yeah.

Really, you just couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

In other news I can hardly wait to check out Team America. Irreverent puppet humor inspired by the immortal Gerry Anderson Thunderbirds (not the recent pathetic facsimile)? Yeah, I'm all over that...

I'm at a place called vertigo...

2004-10-15T17:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, I was one of the 37,000 people who downloaded the new U2 single Vertigo from iTunes last week.

Music is strange - you'd think that the upbeat pop single genre would have run out of ideas by now, but here's U2 with another killer song. There's nothing amazingly innovative about it, but it just lends itself to repeat playings galore. I just have to listen to the chunky guitar intro and Bono's count out of 11, 12, 13, 14 in Spanish to get the spine tingle. And I don't think I can ever get tired of the Edge's guitar work. Dang, I might have to really work on the POD to get that tone down ;)

And how many #1 pop songs reference the temptation of Jesus?

I can hardly wait for the new album.

once doce trece catorce
(Turn it up loud, captain!)

Lights go down
It's dark
The jungle is your head
Can't rule your heart
I'm feeling so much stronger
Than I thought
Your eyes are wide
And though your soul
It can't be bought
Your mind can wander

Hello, Hello (Hola!)
I'm at a place called vertigo (Donde está?)
It's everything I wish I didn't know
Except you give me something
I can feel, feel

The night is full of holes
As bullets rip the sky
Of ink with gold
They twinkle as the boys
Play rock and roll
They know that they can't dance
At least they know

I can stand the beat
I'm asking for the check
The girl with crimson nails
Has Jesus 'round her neck
Swinging to the music
Swinging to the music

Hello, Hello (Hola!)
I'm at a place called Vertigo (Donde está?)
It's everything I wish I didn't know
But you give me something
I can feel, feel

(Check it)
(Shots fall)
(She'll make it)

All this, all this can be yours
All of this, all of this can be yours
All this, all of this can be yours
Just give me what I want
And no one gets hurt

Hello, Hello (Hola!)
We're at a place called Vertigo (Donde está?)
Lights go down and all I know
Is that you give me something
I can feel your love teaching me how
Your love is teaching me how
How to kneel, kneel

But wait! There's more...

2004-10-15T17:04:00.000-07:00

Hmm, interesting discussion. Thanks for all the comments either pro or con. You've all been gentlemen, ladies and scholars.

While I appreciate the proposed reading material I doubt I'm going to shell out $39 for a book that (like most of an argumentative nature) merely reinforces the viewpoints of those who agree and causes those who disagree to look for holes. I read the reviews of Gagnon's book on Amazon and found a couple of balanced ones (the 5 star rave reviews I tend to dismiss as the aforementioned reinforcing views.)

And really, I have no intention of making this a life crusade or getting an MA in gay theology or anything. It just happens to be a peripheral issue in my life that has caused me to reexamine some long held culturally inherited views.

I also find myself in an odd place. On the one hand, I have clearly distanced myself from the traditional, conservative view on homosexuality, so whenever the subject comes up I get blasted by those people (many of whom are close friends so this can be tricky and risky to discuss at all). On the other hand, I'm no gay activist either, and find much in overt modern gay culture that's pretty repugnant.

In many ways I'm in No Man's Land (no pun intended). Being in the middle is a pretty good place to get shot at by both sides.

C'est la vie...

Serious stuff

2004-10-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things about my Christian faith that has changed over the years is my attitude on what might be termed the "homosexual question". Being in the Episcopal Church this issue has been thrust upon us over the last twenty to thirty years as the gay community has sought legitimacy in the church. Most mainline denominations have been dealing with the issue through this time, but the Episcopal Church above all has been in the forefront.

I am one of the few people I know who has switched sides on this debate and it hasn't been easy. Let me start with where I started...

In the beginning I had no clue about gay people. I never consciously knew any growing up and never really thought about it except for the occasional appearance of a character on a TV show or movie. I guess John Inman's character on the 1970's britcom Are You Being Served was typical of my view - good for comic relief and way over the top, but not really real.

If I had a "position" on homosexuality in my early years it would be that, as an engineer and designer, people were obviously made with an "insert Tab A in Slot B" design and "inserting Tab A into Slot C" was something you could do, but was never really the original plan. Much like you can hammer a nail with a wrench, but it's not really the optimum tool, so to speak, and you are likely to get less than optimum results. I wasn't a churchgoer or particularly a Christian at this point so religious values weren't really of any importance to me in considering this.

Things began to change for me in the mid-1980s. First, I was now involved in the church, and secondly, the AIDS crisis was starting to bite. Also, after the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church in the 1970s, the gay community was now clamoring for open acceptance (it was pretty obvious that there were already, in fact, gay priests here and there, they were just closeted to various degrees.)

Here's where my engineer view really showed up. Not only is Tab A not designed for Slot C, there are some natural consequences for stupid behavior. I wasn't at all sympathetic to the plight of AIDS victims. This wasn't because I thought it was some kind of divine retribution, but rather a simple case of the natural consequences of stupid behavior. If someone chooses to run across interstate highways, dodging cars at least for a while, I'm less than sympathetic when they finally get hit. In much the same way the hedonistic gay society of the seventies and eighties was a train wreck waiting to happen. Whether it was merely hepatitis B or C or something new, nastier and lethal like AIDS, having sex with multiple anonymous partners several nights a week is beyond stupid. As my mom used to say, "if you fall out of that tree and break your leg, don't come running to me!"

So that was the eighties.

As we moved into the nineties other things came into play. I had been a volunteer youth leader for several years at this point, and I had finally come into contact with a few gay kids. I had a literally life changing experience as a counselor at a camp in 1992. There was a gay kid in my small group and during the week he came out to the group and described some of the experiences that had hurt him. It was late at night after an emotional day, including a healing service. As he spoke, the group was frozen. I was burning and I felt God tell me that I had a choice. I could choose to dismiss this issue or deal with it. As I think about it now, it was a "What Would Jesus Do?" moment. Everything in my mind screamed to avoid or dodge the issue, but instead my body made me walk around the circle and hug him. It wasn't a token hug, either. We hugged for a few minutes, and one by one the rest of the group joined us.

Somehow, that encounter put a human face on what had been up to that point a merely theoretical exercise and I would never be the same again. I was still of the opinion that homosexuality was technically wrong, but the picture wasn't quite as sharp any more.

After that I felt like I needed to know more, so I bought a book on counseling homosexuals which I naturally got from my local Christian bookstore. This, I figured, was my ticket to being able to deal with any of these situations again.

Funny thing was, the arguments put forth in the book were crap. They were strained and they didn't ring true. There are only seven references to homosexuality in the entire bible, and none of them address a long term relationship between two consenting adults of the same sex. Sodom and Gomorrah - well I can agree that homosexual gang rape is probably wrong. As for the Leviticus purity laws - well there's that whole shellfish/poly-cotton/kill the homosexual vibe going on...

Paul? Well, there's enough vagueness in the wording and interpretation to drive a bus through. I'm willing to bet the homosexuality he refers to is the kind of pederasty common in Greek society where young boys were pretty much fair game. Again, none of this really relates to a mutual long term monogamous relationship between consenting adults of the same sex.

Around this time I was less inclined to think of alternate interpretations as heretical and sought something out and stumbled across What The Bible Really Says About Homosexuality. Not only was this an interesting counterpoint, the author isn't so full of his own blowhard self-righteousness.

A short time later I decided to get an MBA. One of the options in Seattle for a somewhat similar program is the Graduate Management program at Antioch University Seattle. It's really pretty far out liberal but a friend of mine had been there and enjoyed the, um, opposite viewpoints from his own. I gave it a shot too. I had gay and lesbian classmates and the most superb marketing professor who just happened to be a lesbian. This was a pretty intense program and spending time at close quarters with these folks was again life changing. Where the youth encounter had been a pivotal moment this was a long term learning experience. I'd like to think that they also learned something about me and my often conservative viewpoint that surprised them pleasantly. The key thing here is that all of these new gay friends were in long term stable committed relationships, and that for the most part they just wanted to live a happy quiet life with their partners.

Another turning point was reading Bruce Bawer's A Place at the Table. Hey, here's an articulate gay conservative! Not only that he describes very articulately how he ostracized himself from the church when he discovered he was gay because he had been brought up to believe that being gay was antithetical to being a person of God. It took him ten years to find his way back.

As time wore on the gay issue advanced in the Episcopal Church (not always by fair means on either side), culminating in August 2003 in the election of Gene Robinson in New Hampshire as the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion. After all the openly gay priests who had been ordained over the years the massive reaction in the Episcopal Church caught me a bit by surprise, but I guess for a lot of people it was just the final straw. It's really too bad - a lot of friends left my own church, but I just don't get why they're so upset about who the bishop is 3000 miles away.

But don't get the idea that I'm just sappily PFLAG pro-gay. The gay community has many different facets and some of them are pretty ugly. However, none are any uglier than the worst excesses of hetero society, so I'm just not up for singling out gays.

Take promiscuity - please!

In hetero society it's absolutely venerated. I've been a fan of Friends and Seinfeld since the beginning, but there's no doubt they promoted a hedonistic anything goes mentality in the 1990s. Throw in Sex and the City, the OC and whatever other sleazy crap Fox is showing these days and hetero society has nothing to be proud of relative to the gay community.

I guess that's kind of the short version of the long story - I may choose to flesh this out (ha!) a bit more later.

Biggles, the cutest guy cat in the world...

2004-10-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

Biggles (short for Captain James E. Bigglesworth, I presume the same Bigglesworth that Dr. Evil's cat is named for in the Austin Powers movies, but I grew up with Capt. W. E. Johns, so there...) is about 18 months old. He and his sister Hilary (named after Sir Edmund Hilary) are seriously cute. And fun. We have Kitty racetrack, Kitty massage, Kitty wrestling - they're a two cat barrel of laughs. But Biggles is my guy, so he's the best.

2004-10-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

Karen (of Raw Faith fame) wrote me about having watched What the Bleep Do We Know (read my comments on Doug Pagitt's blog Heh, well I did say you can get some benefit from those movies - just be aware that it has a strange history. Nowhere in any of the publicity or on the movie's website does it mention the allegiances of the crew. I'm not sure if they credit JZ Knight herself in the movie (Roger Ebert didn't know it was her until someone told him afterwards). JZ has a big place about 50 miles south of here, so she's um, well known around these parts.

This led me to ponder on how nice I want to be on blogs. I think it's always more tempting for me to comment on a post or issue that I am critical of, so a natural tendency would be to come across as some sarcastic know it all. Wait, that IS me, darn...

However, I am a bit leery of being overly critical in commenting on blogs - but as you may have noticed, sometimes I can't help myself ;) Which is why I like Karen and Maggi Dawn and a few others who aren't afraid to tell it like it is when necessary, even if you risk alienating people once in a while, or getting branded as a hothead.

Speaking of straight shooters (one of my patented segues...), just in case you've never stumbled across her, you have to check out Heather Armstrong at dooce.com. Funny stuff.

Right now I'm packing for a weekend away with 100 teenagers in a church 3 hours drive away. I get to just focus on leading music this weekend, though, so that will be cool. We're doing a cool alt-worshippy type service tonight based on Rite I Evening Prayer - it'll be interesting to see how that pans out.

I managed to put off bottling 5 gallons of beer (Widmer Hefeweizen recipe - very yummy) and some of the moving furniture ready for new carpet on Monday. Meh -they'll still be here when I get back on Sunday.

Massive Amounts of Hot Air Expelled

2004-10-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

Not sure whether I'm writing about Mt St Helens or the Vice Presidential debate. I have to say though, as excruciating as debates can be, they're nothing compared to the endless repetitive drivel coming out of the local volcano watching news reporters. Man, if there had been this much coverage back in 1980 we could have wiped out 90% of the perfectly coiffed generic TV news reporters right then and there. The industry would never have recovered.

Highlight of the day was when a reporter asked the geological survey guys if they were going to drop any more people in the crater with monitoring equipment. "Wanna volunteer?" was the reply. Naturally the chucklehead declined. What all the gawkers don't realize is that their cars are at risk too - get an engine full of fine volcanic dust and kiss it goodbye. If the mountain really blows it will take thousands of gawkers with it. In 20 years we'll be visiting Gawker's Ridge, complete with the rusting hulks of many 2001 Toyota Corollas.

As for the debates - more potayto potahto crap. I mean really, is anyone forming an opinion based on any of this twaddle?

And speaking of twaddle (nice segue, you can tell it's been a while since I posted can't you?) I was somewhat intrigued by the title of the movie "What the @#$!@ Do We Know", but it turned out not to be the new Chris Rock movie, but rather a pretentious infomercial for JZ Knight's Ramtha organization thinly disguised as a pseudo-scientific, pseudo-intellectual story about quantum physics, a speech impaired woman (Marlee Matlin) and some cartoon thingies. Much like Fritjof Capra's pretentious vanity movie "Mindwalk", this will sucker in a lot of people who can't even spell "quantum".

However, I am very sad that it looks like I'll miss seeing Garden State in theaters - just no free time and it'll be gone soon. Director, actor and Scrubs star Zach Braff's blog is hilarious (and insanely well trafficked). Oh well, at least it'll be out on DVD no later than Dec 28.

Speaking of DVDs ( I can do this forever you know) I watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off at the weekend. Awesome movie. I'd forgotten how much fun that was. And the main star is... anyone?... and the year it came out was... anyone?... Heh.

And the Star Wars trilogy on DVD arrived last week. If you've never noticed it, you have to watch the scene where the stormtroopers break into the control room where C3PO and R2D2 are hanging out. On the right of the screen a stormtrooper is too tall for the angled doorway and bangs his head as he comes through. It's over in a flash, but hellishly funny.

Two busy nights coming up, and a weekend away in Vancouver, so not so much time for blogging (or even reading) the next few days.

C'est la vie.

Biker Gang!

2004-10-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

It's a bit old, but here are the world's three cutest nieces (twins flanking older sister).

ICHIRO!!!

2004-10-01T22:32:00.000-07:00

After a very busy week with my wife away on business and with an incipient cold/whatever, tonight was time to kick back and watch the Seattle Mariners play baseball. It was a special night because Seattle mariner right fielder and leadoff hitter Ichiro Suzuki was gunning for the all time season record for base hits. The record was set way back in 1920 by a guy called George Sisler.

ichiro's pursuit of the record only really came into focus after the All-Star game when he just started hitting the crap out of the ball, averaging way over .400 in July and August. With three games left in the season he needed one to tie and two to break the record. This was after failing to tie the record in four at bats in Oakland the day before.

Predictably and yet amazingly, he tied the record in his first at bat. The, making a defensive play in right field he almost castrated himself chasing a foul nall into the stands. He jumped up on the padding around the seats, lost his footing and fell awkwardly. Fortunately he must be made of sterner stuff than mere mortals and all was well for his next AB, when he just pounded a ball up the middel to break the record.

What's really remarkable about Ichiro is that he ahs totally thrown the major leagues for a loop. He doesn't hit like anyone else. I've never seen anyone with that hitting style in the last 25 years (my entire life in North American). Ancient baseball pundits haven't either, which extends the timeframe of uniqueness. If Ichiro has any parallels in MLB at all, it probably dates back to 1920 or before, in other words, the year Sisler set the curent record.

Just to emphasize the point, the top 10 numbers in hits per season were all set on or before 1930, except for one player in 2001. That player was (oh, please, don't tell me you haven't guessed already) Ichiro Suzuki, in his first year in the major leagues. All but two of the top 10 are in the Hall of Fame.

Suzuki is just coming up to 31 (on October 22, just 5 days before my birthday - except I'm not going to be 31) and has spent four years in the US. He has the most hits in four consecutive seasons ever, in his only four seasons in the US.

The statistics are impressive, but perhaps the most impressive thing about him is his dedication to excellence and his own unique way of doing it.

Also, how far have we come from the days of World War 2 when a Japanese player can be so idolized (or at least appreciated) by a large segment of American society?

Add to this the impending retirement of latino Mariners icon Edgar Martinez (who also had a nice game with the bat in an 8-3 win), and it was really quite the cosmopolitan night at the ballpark.

Why I Hate The Christian Coalition

2004-09-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

I guess I could have been more politically correct and written "Why I Don't Appreciate the Christian Coalition", but where's the fun in that?. This post was kicked off in my head by the following clips from a news story on Yahoo news...

The coalition is finishing interviews of lawmakers for its voter guides, which national field coordinator Bill Thomson called the "B-2 bomber" in its arsenal. Combs wasn't ready to say exactly how many coalition voter guides will be printed. The group handed out 70 million in 2000.

...

Thomson, a former Marine, used military imagery to fire up the Christian Coalition activists to get out the vote.

"Never allow the enemy to block you," Thomson urged them. "Get around them, run over the top of them, destroy them — whatever you need to do so that God's word is the word that is being practiced in Congress, town halls and state legislatures."

So problem number one is that they exhibit a bunch of tendencies in action and words that are distinctly unChristian. The second, and my main beef, is that they purport to represent all US Christians (I'm sure in their minds there is something fundamentally wrong with foreign so-called Christians. After all, God is an American, right? But maybe that's just me being a paranoid foreigner.)

This hijacking of the Christian political voice can be traced back to Jerry Falwell and the infamous Tim LaHaye when they founded the Moral Majority around 1980. The really unfortunate part of that hijacking is that the mainstream church wasn't organized enough (and still isn't) to counter the very focused, unChristian message of the Moral Majority and later Christian Coalition. While the Newt Gingrich debacle of the mid-90s slowed down the fundamentalist (or in Jimmy Swaggart's case should that be fundamentalust?) juggernaut, they have snuck back to prominence under Dubya (whose family was Episcopalian, but he's drifted toward a fundamentalist Methodist perspective apparently.)

If it wasn't so frustrating it would be hilarious to listen to the Religious Right blather on about being persecuted when they are the perpetrators of plenty themselves (just ask the gay community, abortionists or just Godless Democrats described above by Thomson.)

One last frustration I have is that this kind of political rhetoric and activism obscures the really great work being done by other fundamentalist evangelicals as part of God’s church. Isn’t there something wrong when the “person on the street” associates the term Christian Coalition with political campaigns rather than taking care of the poor, the orphaned and the widowed?

You Just Can't Make Stuff Up Like This

2004-09-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Sinead O'Connor, wacky shaven-headed singer-songwriter of the early 90's took out a full page ad in an Irish newspaper to ask people to stop making fun of her. I kid you not.

O'Connor had her one big US hit in 1990 with "Nothing Compares 2 U". Not to be confused with "Nothing Compares to U2, especially Sinead O'Connor", which is not a song, merely an observation. When it comes to Irish political activism, Bono does it right, Sinead just screws up.

Bono can get heads of state to do his bidding and even managed to get the Pope to trade an autograph for a pair of trademark sunglasses. Sinead can't even get the VH1 to stop calling her crazy baldy.

Now the whole shaven-headed, Pope picture burning, wacky political activist thing is in the past. But she keeps on giving folks more and more reasons to consider her a bit off the beaten path.

In 1999 she was ordained a priest in a breakaway Catholic sect, and initially insisted on being called "Mother Bernadette Mary" but eventually she found the celibacy rule impossible to follow, so she gave that up.

Then last year she got interested in a movement called the "Death Midwives" that counsels chronically ill people. Hey, if I was chronically ill, I'm not sure I'd want a visit from a "Death Midwife". "What, you're trying to give me a hint here? I just thought I was chronically ill..."

However, that was last year, and Sinead has moved on to yet a different passion - stamping out head lice in children. I told you that you just can't make stuff up like this. Apparently nobody told Sinead that "stamping out" is just a turn of phrase, not the actual method they use for eradicating the little insects.

O'Connor compared her treatment in the press to that of the aforementioned Bono. "If ye wrote about Bono like you wrote about me, he'd kick your asses," she wrote.

Or maybe if we asked him nicely he could kick hers...

Aches and pains

2004-09-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

Phew, nasty scratchy throat and sneezy feeling the last few days. However, I still ended up running Jr High youth group tonight as there rerally weren't any backup options, filling in as a favor. Now Jr High are enough of a handful at the best of times, but at least four of the nine there tonight are diagnosed with some form of ADD (don't get me started on that, though) and I don't think they take their meds when they come. Man, what a handful.

After a tough time getting through some work on proverbs we ended up playing 45 minutes of basketball. Hence the aches and pains, in addition to testing the limits of the impaired pulmonary system. Oh well, one more day at work and the weekend is here.

Currently reading Brian McLaren's Finding Faith. I don't what it is with him, but I just feel so in sync with his thoughts it's scary. This is the third book of his I've read in just over a week. They've all had really different themes, but I love them all. Amazing.

Busyness, baseball and carpet

2004-09-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

Well, today has been interesting. Originally I had no obligations at church this morning, but Sue and I ended up being chalice bearers, I helped out with Jr High sunday school and played some songs with children's church. After church we were off to the Mariners game. This season has been a complete waste of time, and we froze our a$$es off at Safeco while the M's ineptly lost 2-1. Feh.

When we got back I had the lovely task of removing the last piece of furniture from our master suite (that being the bed) because tomorrow we're getting new carpet. The stuff that came with the house new was about as cheap as the builders could find, so we finally decided to upgrade where it matters. I can hardly wait.

Speaking of tomorrow, it's the first day back at work after 2 weeks of vacation and other goofing off. Can't say I'm too thrilled about that.

2004-09-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

Throwback to the 60s anyone?

You'll have to click the pic and look carefully at the upper edge of the license plate holder to see the whole thing. The license plate was attached to some rusting hulk of 70s Detroit iron (now I think about it, was there ever any other kind?)

Captured on the main drag at Westport WA in August.

2004-09-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

New car front...

and back...

...and the snappy custom blue & gray leather interior...

yes, this is my new baby. After 11 years of driving my 1993 Ford Explorer I finally decided I'd had enough what with the engine producing about 20 HP now. Spending a large sum of money refurbishing an 11 year old vehicle seemed a bit over the top, so it was off to the car dealers to see what's out there.

For the space, a Honda Pilot would have been probably the best option, but overall, I figured having some fun with a Subaru WRX was the better choice. I had to get the wagon for the space (but I like it better anyway) and with the custom leather interior and a kickass factory stereo (including a reasonable 150W subwoofer under the passenger seat) it's made commuting a lot more fun. With 227HP and a very light body, it goes when necessary.

Going from 20-60 mph takes roughly 3 milliseconds, which is very nice for merging into traffic. Since I live in a place where just to get out of my development I have to merge into traffic doing 60 in a 40 zone this seriously helps...

Pix taken by the ocean at Westport WA, on a youth group trip in August.

Catching up with life

2004-09-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

Well, back from Hawaii Thursday morning. Napped most of the day then headed out to church for the institution of our new Rector. Very cool service, and I feel very privileged to have been there. Our new Rector, Marda, has been our Associate for seven years and has been our priest in charge while our parish figured out our options following the retirement of our former Rector. Really, it was a foregone conclusion, and I don't say that because Marda represents the familiar, easy choice. If anything choosing her as our new Rector is our way of saying, "OK, we know where we're going - let's get started." Besides, she's just an amazing priest and leader.

Speaking of priest and leader, I did something I don't normally do on vacation - I read "heavy duty" books (well, mixed in with other stuff.) First up were a couple of Brian McLaren books, The Church on the Other Side and A Generous Orthodoxy.

The first book is a really useful look at specific topics to ponder and then do something about. Fortunately it's not a cookbook - it's a series of provocative thoughts that invite readers to address for themselves. Some will be more important than others depending on the context. I look forward to working on some of the issues myself.

The second McLaren book is a more grandiose venture. A Generous Orthodoxy is an attempt to create a space for a theology that is postmodern, post-liberal, post whatever we have now. Brian's personal experience informs the entire book, and his breadth of experience and the generosity that has been a gift to him from all tributaries of the Christian river serves him well as he weaves his story. A few pomo bloggers will be blogging about the book over the next few weeks. Check it out if interested.

My final heavy duty book was Renee Altson's Stumbling Toward Faith. Wow. It's not exactly the most coherent book you'll read, but as a stream of consciousness memoir of a brutal, painful upbringing it has no equal. Renee's tale of sexual abuse at the hands of her church elder father and the blind eye turned by the church is heart rending. It's also a cautionary tale that every single one of us in the church should read and internalize because this should never happen.

Major kudos to Renee for being brave enough to share her story. Renee blogs at ianua and is also doing a virtual book tour through blogland that you can check out here. As Jordon Cooper noted on the stop at his blog, this is a book that I will buy to give away.

On top of that I managed to read the last three Kay Scarpetta Patricia Cornwell novels, a really old Donald Westlake and the eighth and final (sniff) book in Melody Carlson's Diary of a Teenage Girl series. Ah, the joys of the beach and pool...

Greetings from Kona HI

2004-09-11T22:07:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so 5 days after arriving in Hawaii, I get chance to sit down with a laptop in an internet cafe. It's been pouring most of the afternoon here (shock, horror, gasp!) but it does happen once in a while. Had a lovely wedding anniversary yesterday, featuring a snorkeling trip and a sunset dinner cruise. very nice...

Anyway, it will probably be Friday before I get to write again, when safely back in Seattle. Meanwhile, I found Renee Altson's book Stumbling Toward faith today in Borders and it's been a gripping read for the first few chapters. More on that later...

Aloha :-)

Things that make you laugh

2004-09-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who was feeling sad, so I did the best thing I could think of to cheer her up - send her to a funny blog. So I sent her to dooce.com's guilty list. Now Heather (aka dooce, a play on the French word douce, for soft (no, not douche, which is the French word for shower, or something like that)) has been going through a rough patch lately and you can catch up on that by exploring the ever so beautiful site, but her guilty list is a kick. She also links to another blog for a story about roaches (the insects, not the smokable kind, although maybe you can smoke the insects, who knows?) right here and later, right here.

All in all a great way to lose the cares and woes of the day. But I have to say I absolutely loathe web pages that are white on black. I mean, do these people have any sympathy for people with poor eyesight? I suspect not, the bastards...

Survived the Onslaught

2004-09-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

No, not the WinXP Service Pack 2 upgrade, the Seattle area windstorm. It knocked the cable out for a few hours, which made my wife very sad, as she works from home and was unable to virtually attend work meetings. Well, so I was lying about the sad part.

The Vaio seems to have survived although something is screwing up my USB printer, other than that, all is peachy.

Well, we're gearing up for a big couple of weeks. First, church trip to Camp Huston this weekend. About 50 of us hanging out at our camp/conference center in the mountains. Very cool. Then we get back Sunday just in tiem to pack and leave for Hawaii on Monday. Then a week and a half in Hawaii (Big Island). Here's the Alii Drive webcam in Kona just down the road from our condo.

Then we're back in time (just, we fly back on a red-eye, get in at 6:30 am) for the installation service of our new Rector on the 16th.

Sometime soon I have a 120" screen to put up in the family room so we can view movies in glorious technicolor... And replace three faucets. I'm guessing that all happens in late September.

Wow, how do we keep up?

Fingers Crossed

2004-08-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

Installing Win XP Service Pack 2 as I type... I'll reboot once I'm done here.

To be honest, as much gooey press as Apple gets, Microsoft and Windows isn't anywhwere near as bad for upgrades and patches. As a long time (15 year) Macophile I can attest to the horrors of upgrading from system 6 to 7 to 8 to 8.x to 9 to 9.0.x to 9.1 to 9.1.x and finally decided that OS X wasn't really any better than WinXP, especially when the hardware cost twice as much.

The new G5 iMacs look nice, but meh, it's at least $1500 to get a superdrive (and a big whoop-de-doo 256MB RAM and 60GB hard drive), then it's a nasty slot loader... And notice how they omit the keyboard and mouse from the promo pix. It does look like it would make a nice tablet PC though...

Oh well, here goes...

Confession

2004-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Church this morning was really comfortable, if that's not too strange a word to use. I love the liturgy and some days I just get completely immersed in the flow of things. This morning I particularly felt this way during the confession of sin. It's said every week, right after the prayers of the people and before the peace.

In the liturgical sense it's a final act of preparation before the offertory which precedes the Eucharist. Most people think the ofertory is all about money, but in the grander sense it's all about the giving of ourselves to God. Before we can do that, it really helps to acknowledge how we fall short of perfection.

Here's the confession from Rite II of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.

A Confession of Sin is said here if it has not been said earlier. On occasion, the Confession may be omitted.

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

The Priest stands and says

Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life. Amen.

On any day this strikes me as beautiful, but today it struck me even more deeply than that. I am always amazed at the words

by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.

...acknowledging that failing to act can be just as big a fault as acting wrongly.

Beautiful stuff. No wonder those postmoderns are after our liturgy :-)

Oh Canada!

2004-08-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

If, like me, you live in the USA you know that the Olympics coverage on NBC TV is pretty much jingoistic sentimental crap. As an expatriate Brit and one time resident of Canada I thank God daily during Olympic times for the fact that I live close to the northern border of the US and the presence of Canadian TV on our cable system, in particular the CBC.

Now, it's become apparent that the CBC has been taking a leaf from NBC's big book of schlock, but fortunately they are slow learners and so the wall to wall coverage of all sports is still pretty much intact and the Canadian schlock is almost cute in its naivete. Also, the lack of Canadian medalists (with a few notable exeptions) means that they pretty much have to show other countries winning medals.

Anyway, with the Olympics wrapping up I am constantly reminded of the strange duality (or even triality if that's even a word) of my nationality. I'm a Brit. Born and bred. Still have the passport (recently renewed even). However, moved to Canada and lived in Montreal for four years. Still love Canada madly (best national anthem ever - easily), if not the Montreal winters. Almost got Canadian citizenship before moving to the US.

Living in the US is different than living in Canada. Well, duh, you might say, but the dynamic is very different. Canada, like Britain, is for the most part a self-effacing nation. We both get embarrassed easily and hesitate to trumpet our own accomplishments. The USA, on the other hand, is an in your face kind of place. All the time, and double when sports is on the line.

With this triune nationality I always wonder if there ever will be a time when I cheer for the US over Britain or Canada. Well, it hasn't happened yet. It absolutely made my day today when the British men's team pipped the US 4x100m relay team at the line to take gold. The fact that the US men screwed up an exchange to give it away just made it sweeter. Then there was Britain's Kelly Holmes winning the 1500m, her second gold. All in all a great day for Great Britain.

One final note on the Olympics - I couldn't have been happier than when Morocco's Hachim El Guerrouj won the 5,000m gold medal to add to his 1500m. Watching a 1500m runner move up to take on a bunch of 10,000m runners was fascinating from a technical perspective. Watching him burn them in the last 200m after a relatively slow race was really quite cool. However, I'm not sure he realized his two fingered salute (hey, I've got two gold medals!) was the British equivalent of the American middle finger salute. Of course, if I was a Moroccan and I'd just won my second gold medal after a couple of disastrous Olympics in Atlanta and Sydney, I might just be inclined to give the world a big, "Up yours!" too. (Of course he wasn't, but those little unintentional cultural gaffes are always hilarious to see...)

In the "Well, duh" category...

2004-08-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

Bush acknowledges miscalculations on Iraq

Stop the presses! Hold the front page!

To be fair, this is much better than Tricky Dicky's "mistakes were made" speech, where no specific fingers pointed at specific people, and no personal wrongdoing was admitted to. No, in this case, "President Bush said for the first time on Thursday he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be" after U.S. troops went to Iraq."

Now as a moderate conservative, who thought Bush (well, Cheney and Rumsfeld really) were insane to invade Iraq (and Tony Blair was equally insane for going along with it), I feel at least I've been vindicated a bit. The rabid anti-Bush faction believe he can do no right (not even giving him credit to pony up significant cash for African AIDS aid) and the rabid po-Bush faction don't believe he can do anything wrong and there are precious few of us in the middle.

Even my rabid pro-Bush carpool-mate agreed when it happened that invading Iraq was a stupid idea, but a year later somehow it was "the only course of action", or "inevitable".

Bullshit.

Now we have to make the best of a bad situation, but the truth is that it was eminently predictable from the get go.

Oh well. Interesting to see how this plays out in election coverage, if it even makes a splash. After all, it's not like it's really news, in the technical sense of the word, is it?

Interesting intersections - hate and fundamentalists

2004-08-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

First Adam posted this and then Dave posted this. The intersection for me is that I'm really not a fan of fundamentalists (right wing evangelicals, whatever you want to call them) and Adam's post made me ask myself if I hate them The answer, I think, is no. Unlike a "recovering evangelical" like Dave I have no personal historical axe to grind with them, but what does get me is the fact that I've seen the judgmental attitudes of fundamentalists wound so many people - some I care about deeply, others I don't know personally, but have read their stories.

If there was some solid biblical evidence that wounding people and ostracizing them was in general a good thing I guess I could buy it, but the fact is that the being for whom our religion is named (not giving you any clues) was and is the embodiment of the antithesis to modern right wing fundamentalism. The fact that they don't see it makes them even more like the Pharisees of the gospels than ever. Have they ever read the "remove the plank from your own eye before criticizing the speck in your brothers"? (Matt 7:3) Or the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14). I wonder. I think one telling point with fundamentalists is that they love to quote the Old Testament (especially all the rules) and they love to quote Paul (he was big on rules too) but they really don't focus so much on the biblical Jesus (rules, what rules?). Hmm, I wonder why?

Anyway, I think what I hate is the arrogance and the hurt that it causes to others, not the people. After all, isn't it the fundamentalists who say, ever so often, "love the sinner, hate the sin"?

Guilty Pleasures

2004-08-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

On a lazy Saturday (well, not so lazy - some cleaning up to do...) it's cool to just hang out and watch a little TV. One of my favorite shows is What Not To Wear. I really like the original British version with Trinny and Susanna, but for once the American version is possibly better.

If you've never seen it, the shows take people who have been volunteered by friends and relatives for a drastic style makeover. Their entire wardrobe is critiqued and most of it thrown in the trash. Then the victim gets either UKP2000 or $5000 to go replace it all, but with lots of pointers from the style gurus.

Now this might seem all materialistic and vain, but in reality taking an ugly duckling (and believe me, most are style train-wrecks) and turning them into a swan gives some remarkable insights into the transformation of the human spirit. And for a middle aged guy I've become quite adept at picking out fabulous clothes for my wife. Hey, I even bought a tux and we got season tickets to the ballet so we have a legitimate opportunity to dress up on a regular basis.

And with all this expertise filed away it's really fun playing your own version of "What Not To Wear" in people watching situations. Airports are particularly good.

One final thought - if you have ever, ever, ever even thought of wearing dress shoes and dark socks with shorts - shame on you.

Oops

2004-08-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

What happens when airplanes run rampant unsupervised...

Today's Motivational Prod

2004-08-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to be a motivational speaker. But I just couldn't be bothered...

For those of you having a hard time reading the caption, it's
"MEDIOCRITY - it takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late" it's from http://www.despair.com/ - it's in the Classic Collection...
Here's a newer one, appropriate given the ongoing family values debate... http://www.despair.com/demotivators/nepotism.html

Reimagining Spiritual Formation pt 2

2004-08-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

Well, as promised (much later, but it's been a tough job finding time to assemble my thoughts the way I thought I could, and even then it's way different than I thought...)

This is from the relationships as spiritual formation chapter...

P117
At Solomon's Porch our desire is to form friendships where we are invited into each other's lives with a level of trust that allows for spiritual formation. We can learn from one another because we have proven ourselves trustworthy.

Some people will be concerned that this view of knowledge is too relativistic, as though all ideas are open for reconsideration at the whims of those who are offered those ideas. But the truth is, that's really how belief works. We all have held beliefs that worked quite well in one setting but failed miserably when we tried to transplant them. This is often the case with students who enter college or adults who move to other countries. Sometimes it happens in the face of tragedy, where all that we thought we knew is thrown down. All that we learn after that point of reorientation will partner with the new situation - and, disconcerting as the experience is, our beliefs will change.

This malleability of our beliefs isn't bad. In fact, there is considerable good to the challenge of living a faith that's based on more than information and that is connected to the frailty of our humanity. In our community we've found that this understanding of belief actually helps us take risks by keeping us open to ideas we haven't had yet. It's a beautiful thing when, during our Bible discussion group, someone responds to an idea with, "I never thought of it that way!" The sense that spiritual formation is happening in that moment is palpable. What's more, it's often traumatic to be forced to question something we're not ready to question - but when we accept that everything is questionable at one point or another, we are more ready to at least talk through those questions.

"Malleability of beliefs", "keeping us open to ideas we haven't had yet." Both ideas that cut right across the grain of fundamentalist belief. There, everything is concrete and questioning is forbidden, or at the very least strongly discouraged. It may be tolerated in the "weak" but never in pastors or elders.

So here's one very positive facet of the emerging church - the ability to question anything and everything.

Here's another snippet...

P139
There is, for some, an even greater risk involved in becoming co-(re)creators in the world. In the three years since Solomon's Porch became a reality, I've had more conversations than I can count about the emerging church and why it's seen as a threat to the evangelical way of life. Most often, the concern I hear is that the "postmodern" church has no sense of Christian tradition, that it wants to scrap everything that's come before and make something new. Maybe that's true in some churches that call themselves "postmodern". But what I've seen in the emerging , post-industrial church is a desire not to ignore what's come before us, but to be informed and inspired by it as we create ways of living in harmony with God in our time The great risk of the church is not in losing our traditions; it is losing our ability to reimagine.

I really don't know what to do with the approach to faith that tells us all the answers have been discovered and we are simply to apply these to our lives. I don't know how we are supposed to worship with songs, prayers and confessions created for other times and places. And I really don't know how to live out an understanding of the gospel that says I don't have a part to play in what God is doing in the world. Creativity is at the center of God's image. It is how we see God and talk to God and fins our hope in God. I can't figure out any other way to respond to God's (re)creation of the world, to God's invitation that we join as co-(re)creators, than to live as creative people.

Really great stuff, especially the sentence I made bold.

The Gospel is all about participation, and if we choose to participate only by being sheep, what's the point? There's nothing wrong with tradition unless you really don't understand the tradition and how and why it became a tradition. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are unwilling to do the work and so tradition becomes slavishly following the rules - the rules someone else came up with - usually a long time ago. This is true for every branch of the church - evangelical, mainline or cult.

The truth is most people want to be told what to do. It makes life simple. The two fastest growing religious groups are fundamentalists and mormons and the biggest thing they have in common is a burning desire to control other people and tell them what to do. They probably see it as a benign control (it's for your own good...), but it isn't.

It seems to me the emerging church is in some part (at least in the US) a reaction to this. But the true vanguard of the emerging church will have a hard time keeping the ball rolling because the more people that jump on board, the more they're going to want to be told what to do. There are already hints that this is happening at the Emergent conventions as emergent goes mainstream.

Solomon's Porch are doing the right thing. They are being "the church" where they are at and they are designing it to use the skills and talents they have at their disposal.

If only we all did...

Life gets in the way sometimes

2004-08-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

Well, after trying vainly to get a post in last Friday before heading off for the weekend, this week has also been full of stuff, so I figured I'd just post something brief to break the vacuum.

The youth group trip to Westport (ocean coast of Washington state) was really fun. Just 12 of us this year, but a real solid 12. I had a bunch of tealites with me, and for campfire on Saturday night I was going to light them around the perimeter of the campfire area. Well, nice idea, and it looked cool for 5 minutes until a gust of wind blew them all out. And again, and again. Such is life. The church we were staying at moved their campfire from being buried in the woods to a wide open area, hence the problem, especially by the ocean. Also, did I mention the sand flies and mosquitoes? No? Well I should have.

After staying up until 3 am and 1 am consecutively I was pretty beat Sunday, then Monday was back to work.

I also finally got to revisit Doug Pagitt's book and there are a couple of beautiful sections I want to comment on in some depth - later today probably.

CotA Seattle Visit

2004-08-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

Spent a couple of hours Wednesday night at Church of the Apostles in Seattle (well, Fremont if you want to be picky). Talked quite a bit to Karen Ward about the state of the church (Episcopal and Lutheran in particular). The Episocopal Church has been hit quite hard by the fallout from the election last year of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Right now many congregations in the Diocese of Olympia (Western Washington) are down 15 to 20% in giving due to people leaving. Might not sound like much, but see how you get by on a sudden 20% pay cut. It's not pretty. Of course, this works its way up to the Diocesan budget, and things are afoot there.

The implication of all this is, of course, that any external focus on mission is lost. The Episcopal Church isn't that "evangelical" (small "e") anyway, but this just spurs even more navel gazing. In a normal environment CotA would be getting a decent amount of support to get established, but that's dried to a trickle for now.

Here at least is one area where we could learn from the big "E" evangelical churches. Oh well, more research...

Off to the beach with the youth group this weekend, beyond the reach of the internet (I hear they have the internet on computers now.)

Maybe get a chance to finish up those thoughts on Solomon's Porch before I go, though.

Reimagining Spiritual Formation

2004-08-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

Almost finished Doug Pagitt's book Reimagining Spiritual Formation

All in all a very good book. It embodies a lot of the good parts of the postmodern, emerging church ethic but also exhibits some of its minor annoying qualities, which shows we're all only human.

The book is a week in the life of Solomon's Porch, an emerging church somewhere in the Minneapolis area. The book is structured with each day of the week focusing on a particular thematic way of reimagining spiritual formation. The main story is written by Doug, the pastor, with sidebar entries and occasional main story diversions from the journals of church members.

First, the strong points. It's very honest. Everyone, Doug included, express fear and doubt and frustration - all the things that a lot of churchy books (especially those of an evangelical bent) usually avoid like a dying man at the side of the road. There are moments of transcendent truth. There are a few places where I thought Doug captured the essence of what the emerging church is all about in a deeply meaningful way. But to quote them I'd have to get out of my comfy chair, get the book from my backpack, which is in my car, which is my garage, and look them up, so I'll do that another time. Suffice to say there were several spine-chilling moments when I felt like God just said, "There it is!!! Remember it well." I hope I do.

Okay, enough praise. The book can be a bit heavy going at times. One of my main criticisms of the emerging church movement, as I have seen it thus far, is it is so darned serious. And this book suffers from that quite a bit. It, like a lot of emerging church folks, takes itself way too seriously. I mean we have serious artsy folks here, and serious artsy folks there, but where are the pomo stand-up comedians? Another criticism I have of the emergent church movement at large is that it's often indecisive and introverted, resulting in way too much indulgent self-analysis. It's like the movement spends half of its time on the therapists couch. To a degree, not a bad thing, but it can get wearisome. Doug's writing at times suffers from this. However, I guess if it's that or "Fix Your Church in 30 Days or Your Money Back" by Pastor Billy Bigsmile, I'll take the self-analysis.

The chapter on potlucks as spiritual formation was a bit over the top for me. I didn't really see anything in there that was so different from the average church potluck to be worthy of note. Hey, these people each bring something different to the potluck, thereby showing their diversity. Woohoo! Trusting the Holy Spirit to ensure that 35 people don't all bring broccoli salad doesn't exactly make it spiritual formation in my book.

But back to the good points. The emerging church is:
All about shared leadership - check.
Freedom to create - check.
Willingness to acceptance people where they are - check.

I know there's more, but I'm getting tired, so maybe I'll pick this up later (with quotes!)

2004-08-08T18:27:00.000-07:00

Youth With a Mission, or Juventud Con Una Mision as you can see it says in Spanish. These guys rock and do awesome things in a somewhat remote part of rural Mexico. Check them out at http://www.ywamculiacan.com/. This is one of the 15 passenger vans that they use to transport visiting youth group mission teams. I feel very privileged to have spent some time in this particular vehicle...

Emerging Church yada yada...

2004-08-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

Dave at The Grace Pages (site seems down right now, though) posted these questions to Maggi Dawn (really cool name for a priest, btw...) :

My questions are these:
1. How do you think the Emerging movement in Britain, insofar as it can be called a movement, differs from that in the US, if at all?
2. To what extent is the Emerging Church simply a rehash of the same old conservative evangelicalism?

Maggi posted a reply that you can see there, and I had the following thoughts, but at 1000 characters at a time, it took 4 posts to reply via comment. Hence, I'll post the entire text here...

maggi (& other dave)

I'm a longtime Anglican/Episcopalian who grew up in the UK, lived in Montreal for a while, now the US for almost 20 years.

I just got seriously interested in the "emerging church" movement a few months ago, mostly because my parish (Episcopal) wants to start a new service aimed (but not exclusively) at the 20something crowd. It was intended to be just a pure "contemporary" service. However, being fairly immersed in youth work, it seemed to me that it needed to be more or different than that.

We have two local examples - Karen Ward's Church of the Apostles and Mars Hill. Opposite ends of the spectrum. CotA, as it's known is trying to do something really new and different. Karen gave a short intro to CotA at our Diocesan resource day and that got a few of us really interested.

I had also heard of Mars Hill and went searching on the web. I found Adam Cleaveland's blog and a discussion of whether Mars Hill is truly "emerging". In brief, I believe Mars Hill is mostly just another megachurch with a slant towards the 20-somethings.

Well, from Adam's blog I discovered the world of blogging, and especially the pomo emerging church side. Just discovered it too late to go to the San Diego or Nashville conventions, though.

Anyway, that's just the preamble :-)

From what i can tell, the emerging church movement in the UK is more like anew creation digging out from the "ruins" of the traditional church, especially the C of E. In some ways the emerging church is also an answer to the stadium rock orientation of Soul Survivor and the like.

In the US, one of the things that ticks me off is the conservative evangelical fundamentalist church (c/e/f for short) is seen as the primary expression of church. The rise of Falwell, Robertson et al and the political clout the religious right gained in the 80s and 90s certainly makes it seem that way. But in many ways they are more organized and coherent. The evangelicals have turned church into more of an industry. The Christian music industry is overwhelmingly dominated by c/e/f out of Nashville. Youth group materials are overwhelmingly produced by the c/e/f mill. Youth Specialties is part of that, and so when it comes time to publish Emergent books and put on emergent conventions, there they are.

This is not to say that this is all bad. It's good to have somebody willing to step up to the plate, and to be honest, the organizers of these things really do understand that they are trying something new. The c/e/f rank and file, though, ARE looking for the next new thing (to replaced by next years next new thing, of course.)

The ranks and file are also VERY nervous about the acceptance they see in the emerging church. The most high profile issues there are women's roles in the church and the acceptance of the GLBT community. The mainline churches (and particularly the Episcopal Church) have been and are still on the front lines of these issues but the c/e/f community is probably 50 years behind.

For instance, Dan Kimball's books are really great. An excellent introduction to the world of what's emerging. However, as an Anglican, I can spot that more than half of the "radical, cool, emerging" material are practically right out of the 1982 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So I think the US situation is more complex than "emerging church" being devised by the c/e/f branch, but they are the most obvious and vocal.

If we can ever connect the liturgical church with the c/e/f then watch out :-)

Hmm, sorry about the 600 word reply...

a different dave

After that I thought of another cool blog title - YADA - for Yet Another Dave Analysis.

Well, I'll keep that one in reserve for the future sometime.

peace,
this dave

Computing Disasters and so on

2004-08-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

Well, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. I had lots of things to do today, but somehow a critical system file got corrupted on my trusty computer and in the end the only sane way out was to restore my C: drive to it's pristine factory glory. Not the end of the world, because all the really critical stuff is backed up here and there, but it is a pain the asp, as Cleopatra once said.

Still, as I hied my way down to the local Fry's to get some kind of system recovery utility that might work (didn't) I did at elast pick up a 200GB drive for $70 and installed that while I was dinking around. Now I was a Mac bigot for a long time - about 15 years - before I switched to my Sony Vaio a couple of years ago (after buying my Windows-only wife a similar machine a year before).

This Vaio has been so much more stable than any of my Macs ever were. So rag on MS all you like, Win XP has been more than just OK for me (echoes of Switchfoot there...) And adding a new hard drive today was a breeze - side panel snaps off easily. Hard drive enclosure pops right out, cables all ready to add an extra - it was a geek dream.

The other bright side (and there is one) is that I get to just reload just the stuff I need, not all the crap that I had loaded over the last 2 years. MS Office, Halo, (I even bought a game controller today...) and other cool stuff.

Anyway, all is well that ends well, and here's the proof - I'm posting the same evening with a much better computer.

Finding a Voice

2004-08-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

So blogging's an interesting deal. Journaling with the world looking on (or not, depending.)

I think half the battle is finding a voice - something you want to talk about. For me it's difficult. I love so many things - baseball, my church, my wife (probably should have put her first ;-), teenagers, my new car (after 11 years), my parents and brothers back in England, an often interesting and frustrating job that pays well.

Then there are things that piss me off - crappy traffic around Puget Sound, not because there are so many people (which there are) but because so many drivers here are clueless (mostly natives). Really, I mean way too many people think it's cool to merge into highway traffic doing 30 mph. Morons. See, there's something I know I "inherited" from my dad - I don't suffer fools gladly.

Then I know some of you out there will be saying, "But wait, he's a church person, he should love everybody, not be this sarcastic misanthrope". And I'll tell you I learned a great lesson from Linus Van Pelt (of Peanuts fame) when he said "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand." So long ago I learned to embrace my snarky side. In real life I can be really nice, though. No, really.

So lots of things piss me off and I'll write about some of them. Fundamentalists for example. Watch for that coming up. I know blogs are more sort of stream of consciousness, but there are some ideas I need to mull over first.

Anyway, for those of you that think Dilbert's a little bit tame, check this out. If that doesn't get you screaming with laughter or crying for too much realism, nothing will.

Creativity and such

2004-08-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

Creativity

Can't live with it, can't live without it. Pretty interesting guidelines, but it's funny how creative people have to tell you how creative they are all the time. Even have to have it in their job title - "Creative Director". Interestingly enough, how do you really "direct" creativity?

"Hey you!, be creative now!"

Of course only the advertising world calls themselves "creative". In the art world it's "artist" please. However, over in the engineering world we're just "product development". That's partly because in the adverising world it just takes some half-assed idea to sell pantyhose or tampons or bath soap. If it doesn't work, then no harm done, move along, nothing to see here, let's just try the next half-assed idea.

In the engineering world if we field a half-assed idea people die.

Bad airplane design? Oops, sorry, was that a relative of yours?

So we don't do that. We're not only pretty damn creative, we also have to think about what happens if ten different things go wrong simultaneously. And given the vagaries of human behavior that's a creative exercise in and of itself.

In fact, it may be the height of creativity to come up with the stupidest possible things people can do with your product. In many ways it's a sort of "stupid human tricks" guessing game.

So the next time you're relying on some critical piece of equipment, whether it be your car (or indeed the cars around you on the freeway), the toaster or the weedwhacker, remember the creativity of the engineers that went into the design and production of that item, and don't get too creative in using it (and no, that lighted mirror on the flip down shade is NOT for shaving with at 55 mph.)

Way to let off some steam...

2004-08-03T13:13:00.001-07:00

One of the blogs I read once in a while is Raw Faith. Looks like Karen had a button pushed one time too many and went off on this cool rant. Pretty lucid for a rant and given that, as always, there are some exaggerations and whatnot, it still raises a lot of great points about the authenticity of much that is the postmodern/emerging church. And yay she's an Episcopalian.

2004-07-31T07:46:00.000-07:00

The house we built (in progress, just barely visible) hiding behind the "shack" that was the current dwelling.

Harry Potter and other stuff

2004-07-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

Went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tonight before it departs theaters. Was quite amazed at how well done it was. I gave up a long time ago expecting movies to be the same or as good as the book. It's long enough since I read the book that any niggly details are lost in the mists of time. Letting go of much of the exposition to let the story move along was very much the right thing to do at this point in the HP story. The oart where Harry realizes it's he himself who canjures up the protective patronus spell, not some manifestation of his father is brilliantly done, and heck, who wouldn't want a hippogriff as a pet?

A movie I could have gone to see was Thunderbirds, but from the clips that have been shown on TV this looks like a marginal proposition at best relative to the original puppet series from the 60s which, oh by the way, was massively influential in my future career path. I guess I'll have to see it eventually, but turning it into a live action Spy Kids type movie is probably gonna suck.

Mission Trip Redux 1

2004-07-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been another week, but hey I just installed Picasa and Hello, so welcome to the world of photoblogging free of charge. The picture I chose to upload first is of some neighborhood kids around where we built a house in Culiacan, Mexico. In just four days we built such a cool relationship with those kids and they were devastated when we left. We were too. It was great to work hard for four days, build a decent little house and let the kids know some strange people from a far away place cared about them. Very tough to leave without a lot of tears.

2004-07-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood kids where we built a house

Back again

2004-07-20T18:49:00.000-07:00

So this is how it is. You post daily for a few days then you skip a day, then a week, then 5 weeks just like that. Well, nobody said blogging was easy. Well, maybe for people with no life. Truth is I've been gone (and I mean offline outta here gone) for two of those 5 weeks and the catchup in between has been difficult to deal with. Still, a fabulous 5 weeks.

The first week was the run up to our six day summer camp. Just being at work getting ready to be away for a week takes energy and time that I couldn't devote to posting. Then there was the being away part. Terrific camp. This was my 7th out of the last 9 years that I've staffed, so yay me! No, really, the staff and the youth are incredible and I had such a great time. The highlight was maybe the traveling Eucharist we had on the last night. It included a prayer candle station that was nothing more than tealights on picnic benches and yet was incedibly moving for many people.

Anyway, after that, two weeks (including July 4th weekend in the middle) to get ready for another week away in Mexico building a house for a (literally) dirt poor family. For the first time in just about ever I actually kept a daily journal and have even kept going since then. Of course it's one of those old fashioned analog journals with the pages and the writing stick.

Amazingly I read about 6 books on the trip as well as the hammering, nailing, screwing, painting and mudding. Three of them were the Degrees of Guilt trilogy - a christian teen trilogy about the death of a high school senior. Another two were a diametric opposite - two Chuck Palahniuk books. Wow, what a twisted mind.

Anyway, house built, returned home, friends wedding, play music in church, back to work, then fly to LA for a conference. Who says life can't be fun? Room service pizza imminent. g2g

Overwhelmed...

2004-06-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's really a week since I wrote anything. This past week has been blur of activity.

Monday night, host professional society dinner meeting. It was poorly attended, but only because we sent out the publicity way ahead of time, we changed the day of the week, the week of the month from our regular times and we also put the wrong date on. Oops. We did send out a correction, but apparently a lot of people didn't get it. Still, a good time was had by all who showed up. The presentation was on the new Personal Courage wing of Seattle's Museum of Flight - WW1 and WW2 fighters. The new exhibit is built around stories of the people who flew the airplanes, not just a bunch of hardware on display, which I think is a great idea.

Tuesday night, Vestry (church board) meeting. Nothing scintillating (last month we called our new Rector, so it's hard to top that).

Wednesday, youth group. My friend who helps run youth group didn't have time to plan anything, so he brought the 1973 movie Jesus Christ Superstar to watch. I've seen it once a long, long time ago, and man was I shocked. The theology is awful, the performances even worse. Apart from the two main songs that nearly everyone can remember, the songs sucked too. This was written by the same guys that put together Evita and Phantom of the Opera? Hard to believe.

Thursday was a council meeting for the same professional society as Monday's meeting. More the admin stuff. We did make some decent progress for next year, which is good, because I'm the chair as of July 1.

Friday was the ballet. Midsummer Night's Dream by the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Awesome. Plus, I get to dress up in a tux. The best part is forgetting what you're wearing and being occasionally reminded by people's reactions...

Saturday I was the Keynote speaker at the University of Washington's Aeronautics and Astronautics Department graduation. Try saying that three times fast. This was a beautiful and wonderful thing. I was asked by the graduation senior class to do this, which is an amazing thing in itself. It came about through the same professional society referenced above. We did some events with the student section this past year and they really appreciated it. I spent several weeks outlining my ten minute speech, but really kicked it into high gear this past week, finishing up with a lot of work on Friday. I had no idea just what the setting would be like, but I was in a packed auditorium with 70 students and another few hundred parents and relatives. It really was fun and as usual, the butterflies dissipated about ten minutes before I got up to speak.

Right after that was staff prep day for the week long youth camp coming up next week followed by a Mariners game, which we won 3-0, but which was one of the most excruciatingly slow games I've ever experienced.

Which brings me to now, Sunday morning, when I was supposed to be off to church but my car wouldn't work properly.

So much busyness. At what point is this a rich life, and where does it just get to be too much? I really don't like being idle, but this just doesn't leave me much time for reflection (as if I'm good at that anyway... sigh).

Oh well, at least this coming week isn't crammed with stuff (except the graduation party this afternoon, and welcoming the new kids to senior high youth group...)

Life goes on

2004-06-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

Going to be a busy week. Saw my wife off at the airport this morning for her monthly trip to St Louis. Got to church in time to serve on the altar, then met with a group from church after the service today to talk about developing a third (i.e. additional) service in the fall. Two and a half hours in Red Robin (burger restaurant) we had talked all over the map, but were generally in agreement that we're being led to do something "different". As Episcopalians, the whole postmodern "back to the future" deal isn't anywhere near as radical as it is for the evangelical crowd, but the real key is "participatory".

Given that we all think time is tight to plan something on a weekly basis for the fall, someone suggested we take the next year to develop special themed services at key parts of the church calendar, starting with All Saints Day. Follow that with something at Epiphany then the Great Vigil at Easter and then Pentecost and there's a trial run with the time and space to develop something really special at four major days in the church calendar.

Amazing what six people can do when given time and space to think and breathe.

But then tomorrow night I'm hosting my last professional society dinner meeting of the season, Tuesday night is Vestry (church board), Wednesday night is youth group, and Thursday I get my wife back. And all that's without even factoring in that pesky day job... (oh, I'll just design a really cool airplane or two while I'm at it...)

Whew, busy

2004-06-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

I like to keep busy, but life the past week has been insane. Two presentations to complete by the end of the week, house to paint, new cars to search for and music to practice and all this WHILE I"M SUPPOSED TO BE ON VACATION!!!

Still, I read Jen Lemen's blog today, and realized I don't have half the grief to deal with that she does, what with kids and stuff.

Went looking at new cars yesterday and today to replace the (paid for a long time ago) 11 year old Explorer. The Honda Pilot looked like a good contender - about the same size, lots of room for hauling guitar gear, reliable, not too much money. But today I went out and finally drove a Subaru WRX wagon. Two thirds of the cargo space (and not quite big enought to get a guitar sideways) but man, the driving experience is so much sweeter. Where I'd describe the Pilot (and my current ride) as ponderous at best, the WRX is like wossname off a shovel and sticks to the road like glue. The guy at the dealer there was also genuinely pleasant. At last some folk have figured out you don't have to be salesbot to sell cars...

Almost forgot... two nights ago we went to a dress rehearsal of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Pacific NW Ballet. We got just about the worst seats in the house and it was still cool. I've never been to a "funny" ballet before and it was remarkable how the dancers were able to convey the humor with just motion. The guy who danced the role of Puck was frickin' awesome, too. We go next Friday for real in our cool 2nd tier box seats. All dressed up, too. It's just so cool lounging around in a tux. It does make one feel incredibly Bondish.

Well, 20 minutes and I'm off to our Friday night youth service. Weather is gorgeous, it's a shame to be indoors, but it's always cool seeing the youth step up and start to lead stuff.

As they say in the land of single cells - adios, amoebas!

Whiter than white

2004-06-01T23:34:00.000-07:00

Spent a good part of today repainting the stairway and upstairs hall. We did it at Christmas, but I was sick and we gave up one coat short of a good job. It finally looks prety nice. We went with a pretty hard white, which is the only place in the house that is. It has a clean, crisp look to it that I really like. Unlike life, which continues to be messy.

Lots to do in the next few weeks, including big project at work, give a speech at UW graduation, staff a week long youth camp, go on a mission trip to Mexico, then give a paper at a conference. Meh, what's life without a challenge? For those of you familiar with the old UK TV show It's a Knockout, the Paisley family is once again playing it's joker. For the rest of you, well, go google it, I guess.

Still, every time I try to declutter life it just fills up with useless crap, so I may as well fill it up with cool stuff, even if it does get a bit stressful at times.

Memorial Day

2004-05-31T23:24:00.000-07:00

Interesting that in England we have Remembrance Day on November 11, which is the day to remember fallen veterans, particularly those of the first World War. In the US Nov 11 is also a minor holiday of note, but renamed Veteran's Day. The bigger deal though, is Memorial Day, which ends up being a much bigger deal and just a tad short of July 4th. I mean, who wants to remember those Veterans on a dreary day in the middle of November when the weather is terrible? Americans love their holidays in the sun. Never mind that Nov 11 is when WW1 ended, and that conditions in that war were miserable for most of the time, and it would seem appropriate to remember it, and war in general, that way.

I saw a news article that said the WW2 memorial in Washington DC was officially opened now because WW2 veterans are dying at the rate of 1000 a day (I'm assuming US veterans, as the US media couldn't give a rip about foreigners...) While it's not likely we'll run out of WW2 vets any time soon, it is a sobering thought. That was the generation that, as cliched as it may seem, fought the battles that made the freedom to bitch about stuff today possible. Still, it's also the generation that brought us Cold War paranoia (the survivors, anyway), so it's not like it was all peachy.

No matter how stupid war may be, I'm always reminded of the Jesus quote on the matter of giving up one's life...

John 15
12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command.

Now I don't necessarily believe that laying one's life down on the battlefield is quite as noble as Jesus giving his life for the world, but it's close.

I think every generation has to ask itself, "Exactly what are we willing to sacrifice for our faith?"

Baptism of fire

2004-05-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

Today at church was really a lot of fun. Being Pentecost we had the whole red vibe going (representing the tongues of flame...) Strangely enough I had a dream last night in which I realized that flame isn't red - it's yellow and maybe orange. Red is for embers and such. In past years we've had a balloon arch across the altar held up with red and white helium ballons. I walked in this morning and there they were - except that they were red, orange and yellow. How curious is that? Pentecost is also one of the major days for baptism in church and we had three today. A friend of ours had their few month old baby baptized, there was a young boy from another family and the husband from another family. So five months, about 7 and about 40-ish. Given the wars that have been fought in the church over the years about when people should or should not be baptized I was thrilled that the answer in my church is "whenever the time is right".

I also got to lead the little kids (K-2nd grade) in a song at the offertory. They don't get to do much in church, so it was great to have them up front. They rocked, even. I looked across at one kid and he was just standing there with a deer in the headlights look. Fortunately the rest of them were OK... In fact the parish loves the little kids to bits, so they could do anything up there and people would love it. Sometimes I think maybe that's how God views us - no matter what we do, however minimal or unimpressive, God still loves us and thinks we're cute and lovable. Well at least when we're trying to be good.

Welcome to Disaster Area

2004-05-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

First let me say this isn't a blog about earthquakes, forest fires or airplane crashes. It's just about life which can, but usually does not, include those things. Well, sure some weeks it may seem like it, but there you go.

No, the name is a tribute to Douglas Adams, inventor of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe. Disaster Area is the name of the rock band and it's notable because every couple of years my wife and I try to remember the name of the band and invariably can't. So we have to thumb through the books to find it again. I figure this way I'll be one step ahead of her next time...

For those of you unfamiliar with the book and/or band, here's a nice summary, courtesy of http://www.realhhg.3rdrock.co.uk/realhhg/hhgdisas.php

DISASTER AREA
from the work of Douglas Adams
Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the history of the Galaxy, but the loudest noise of any kind at all.

Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's PA system contravenes local strategic arms limitation treaties.

This has not stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, but is in fact totally bent.