Shining Lights

It was a day for shining lights in the Windy City. I know I'm going to miss one or two, but here's a brief list.

• Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core, spoke for 45 minutes this morning to a spellbound audience about a "theology of the bridge," his metaphor for ways interfaith cooperation can overcome those who use religion to dominate or separate people of different faiths.
• A workshop with Hamsa and Emy of IFYC discussing concrete ways we as campus ministry staff can promote religious freedom and respect in our own environments. It was their first workshop, but they carried it off without a hitch and really opened our eyes.
• I sit down to lunch, and one of our campus ministry students hands me a list of all the things she and the rest of the group have been planning for this academic year. Completely. Freaking. Unprompted. By. Me. This is what I was hoping we could do after returning from the conference, and now it's already done. Time to hang on for a wild ride this year, I think.
• A remarkable conversation with B, a seminary classmate serving in a new call since we saw each other last. Her new call is a) a very important synodical staff position, b) one for which she is very well-equipped and, I imagine, at which she is succeeding wildly, and c) one which usually goes only to ordained clergy, regardless of whether the clergyperson in question is qualified. Here's a great example of the church not being bound to its past when looking to its present needs. Professional lay ministry is a growing part of the church and needs to be lifted up when we do it right!
• A plenary session on social media that turned out to be more valuable than I suspected it would be. Lots of helpful information, but the caveat by which our use of that information can be judged: "Don't mistake effort for success."
• Another workshop with Rosella and Mike on Alternative Spring Break programs. Rosella and Mike are two incredibly vivacious 20somethings who have been carrying out heavy ministry responsibilities over the past two years, if not longer. I was floored by their intelligence and commitment to the important ministry they are doing, and I wish I had known about them prior to this conference.
• Finally, a gut-busting dinner with our friends from Christus House at the University of Iowa. We all went to Gino's East for true Chicago deep-dish, and I'm about ten minutes from succumbing to a major food coma.

It was a day to celebrate the many ways God is active in this church. In the midst of all our anxiety about mission support, social issues and the future of our denomination, we need to take time to look around and see the fearfully, wonderfully made people carrying out important ministry in our midst. God be praised: this church will have a future if we are wise enough to encourage and empower those with such remarkable gifts.

Grace and peace,

Scott

In Which Old Things Become New-ish OR If There's Wallpaper Borders In Heaven I'm Not Sure I Want To Go.

Lots of you blowed up stuff real good over the weekend - good for you. We spent our lovely holiday weekend working around the house, literally. Lots of things to do for which we've finally scraped together some dough (including a generous guilt love offering related to the UB, which we gladly spent). We didn't get it all done this weekend, not by half, but we're off to a good start.

I need to say this first: when my wife gets the bit in her mouth, it's best just to let her go until she runs out of steam. HOLY. PAINTING. BATMAN. She's awesome, but exhausting to watch. We played the heathen this Sunday and stayed home, choosing to sleep in. Once everyone was awake, however, it was ON, baby. I corralled the kids downstairs while Beloved started scoring, soaking and scraping the awful wallpaper border off our dining room walls. No, it wasn't nearly as bad as some houses (my brother and his wife had six layers on one bedroom in their house, I think), but it's just freaking annoying to stand there and scrape above your head just so's you can slap on some new paint. At any rate, once she had the scraping done and sanded down the holes I'd spackled the night before, she jumped right into the painting.

At that point I could no longer control the Sisters downstairs, so upstairs we came to watch the progress. That meant "helping" Mommy, of course:

Meanwhile, we also made a trip to Lowe's and bought lots of fun new things for the house: new doors to replace the ones we ruined when the carpet was installed, drywall patches for the basement bedroom (yes, I finally got it patched, and will sand and texture tomorrow!), new curtain hardware for the dining room, stain for the doors and cabinets (and, eventually, the trim as well), and most importantly, new vinyl flooring for the kitchen. I wanted to do porcelain tile, but that was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY out of our price range, so I'll have to wait to tackle that project. My brother's coming in a few weeks, and we'll send Beloved and the Sisters off to visit her sister while we boys install the vinyl (and likely take in a ballgame or something fun on our own).

I'm of two minds about this kind of home work. On the one hand, the clutter and mess drives me nuts. I HATE having things scattered hell to breakfast around our house, especially since Alanna has reached the "I can take everything out of this?" phase and regularly demolishes our movies and bookshelves. On the other hand, it's a lot of fun to see the end result of all that work, right? We're finishing up the dining room/kitchen painting tonight, so it'll be nice to see how all our work makes the house look that much nicer (and more in line with our taste as opposed to the former owners).

Best of all, we get to enjoy it for ourselves. We watch a lot of "house porn" these days (DIY and HGTV are two of the channels we didn't lose when we went to low-tier cable), and it seems like everything is geared toward increasing value for resale. While we're certainly not opposed to making money on the house, we're not going to be selling for a while, hopefully, so we made these changes for US to enjoy. That, combined with the satisfaction of doing the work ourselves, makes for some enjoyable living these last few days. Now if only I could keep the garage clean for one day...

Grace & peace,

Scott

Home from Holden Village... *sigh*

No, this isn't my photo.

Yes, this was the view from just outside my 'porch' over the last week.

No, I'm not entirely ready to be back from Holden Village just yet.

Yes, it was a wonderful trip, and yes, the best moment of the last two days were the hugs from Beloved and the Sisters at the end of the journey home.

Thank you to all our friends at Holden for a wonderful week. More details to come once the creaking, smoking machinery formerly known as "film development" wheezes my photos back to me from teh interweb photosite.

Grace & peace,

Scott

The, er, Kindness of Friends

My beloved black 4th gen Nano bit the dust a few weeks ago. 16G of tiny little sonic wonder deemed unrepairable and, worse, not replaceable by the folks at Apple. Combine that with our new dedication to save money rather than use credit for purchases we don't "need," and I'm woefully behind on audiobooks and podcasts.

But here comes a good friend to the rescue. She calls Wednesday morning and says she's coming with a suprise for me. It's an old iPod Mini. Completely functional, not being used because her child got a new one last year, only 4G but with proper tending I should get a lot of use out of it before it bites the dust. There's only one problem:


Stop that snickering. I mean it.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Pop Culture Roundup

It's been good books, brutal TV, Harry Potter and good folk music around here lately. Last week I downloaded The Time Traveler's Wife from audible.com after seeing a movie preview when we went to Transformers 2 (I think they were targeting the "payback date" crossover demographic). Right now it's going to be really tough to finish the book before going to the movie, because if the movie is even half as good as the book it'll be the best film we see this year. Wow - this is some novel I'm hearing as I run/drive/work around the house. Highly recommended.





I finished So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger last week, and if you haven't tried Enger's work yet, you're also missing a treat. His debut novel was Peace Like A River, and I'd put him in the same realm as Marilynne Robinson or Norman Maclean - northern U.S. writers who compose somewhat episodic, really well-written prose that draws heavily on character. Enger's second novel, like his first, is a journey novel - one hopes that he'll stay put sometime in the future, but we'll just have to wait and see.





In preparation for the season premiere of Sons of Anarchy, I've been watching last season on DVR to refresh myself on what happened, especially the first couple of episodes, which I missed the first time around. This is some good television, even if it's violent, vulgar, and certainly not for anyone too young to vote. If you haven't seen the commercials for the season premiere, you should watch for it - one of the most terrifying commercials I've ever seen. Let's just say that Ron Perlman is a lot scarier as the leader of a motorcycle gang than he ever hoped to be as Hellboy.




And in a few weeks, lots of folks will be headed 'up north' for Storyhill Fest Midwest. Unfortunately, we'll miss the event - the first few weeks of the semester are too valuable for campus ministry for me to take even a weekend away. But if you like camping, folk music and hanging out with laid-back, fun folks, you should definitely take a look at heading to this festival. Also, for those of you in the Twin Cities neighborhood, Storyhill will be performing at the Great Minnesota Get-together, the State Fair, September 2-3 (I think).

Last week, while enjoying our first overnight getaway without the girls, we watched the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Let's just say that as funny as Judd Apatow's "40 Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" might have been, "FSM" is just not a date movie. It was, frankly, more uncomfortable than humorous, and this might be our last Apatow flick for a while, even if it was written and directed by others. Just not our style, frankly; take that for what you think it's worth.

Beloved is trying hard to understand Harry Potter better without reading the books. Dyslexia means that several thousand pages of reading just isn't an option, unfortunately, nor is audiobooks as she's rarely in a spot where she can listen (and she's not interested in purchasing any kind of iPod or mp3 player). So, we've been spending our evenings watching the movies. Tonight we start "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" - should be fun all over again. Maybe we'll just have to go see "Half-Blood Prince" again when it hits the cheap theater!

That's the roundup this week.

Grace & peace,
Scott

Tending the Garden

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." Genesis 2

It was really quiet when I got the the Center this morning at 8:30. I took advantage of an interruption in internet access to do some puttering and pottering around the Center.

One of my projects here is to 'green the place up,' for lack of a better word. It's a pretty sterile building, so I've kept my eyes on plant sales and picked up a few over the past few months. We started with some palms for the sanctuary, and a pothos which is currently taking off like crazy. Then about a month ago I was at Lowe's and saw a rack of spider plant hanging baskets on sale for $5. I snapped two of those bad boys up, one for the Center and one for the house.

Here's two great things about both pothos (pothoi?) and the spider plants: they are almost impossible to kill, and they both produce lots of opportunities for offspring. The spider plant was ready to be split when I bought it, and finally last Friday one of our students stopped by, split the plant and showed me how to pinch off and prepare plantings for the next generation of spider plants. Soon, I hope, we'll be greening up a storm around here.

There is something wonderful about tending plants like this. I watch them grow around our house (if I can keep the cats out of them, that is) and marvel and the variety and power of what God creates. I feel, very strongly, the call to stewarding the creation which God made part of our very being, according to Genesis 2. Some of my best days are those in which I can tend to this little corner of creation God has entrusted to Kristin and me: pruning, planting, watering, mowing, weeding, composting - all of that work is balm for my soul. Today I spent some time tending to this place's need for life, too - and I hope that as we support the growth of the plant life around here, it will reciprocate and help us feel as if this is a growing place for people, too. I want that very much, and I don't think it's out of the question to hope it might happen just like that.